In an article at Time this week, Meet Joe Blog, Grossman and Hamilton suggest that part of the reason for blogging's success is the author's bias and personality. That's absolutely true. Sick of the fence sitting media the community is out to find a source that tells it how they see it, and blogs are all about that. It's a fundamental for blogs that supplement journalism. However, that's not why Sun Blogs will make a difference, because it's not about breaking news stories. A year ago I couldn't see how corporate blogs would make a difference, I wondered if it would just supplement journalism, but today my experience shows otherwise. There are other reasons why blogs make such a difference. Two, at the very least, that will make Sun Bloggers worthwhile. Blogs turn the organisation inside out and improve internal and external communication.
Historically if someone wanted to know some information about engineering work within Sun you'd have two avenues. Reading newsgroups in the hope one of them posted there, or logging a bug. Even within Sun the later was often the best method. Typically both of these are reactive. You'll only hear from someone when they've been approached or seen an issue they can help with. With blogging though, it's all proactive. Meaning that the author has willingly given their time, energy and knowledge to post something. Again generalising, this means that they are more likely to be willing to help when contacted because they've spent the time to start the dialogue. So, why bother speak to a sales person, looking in a newsgroup, or logging a bug when you can go straight to one of the lead X engineers, for information, or mention a bug to one of the Java engineers and have it looked at straight away. Blogs mean that the inside of the company is now visibly on the outside. Turning Sun inside out.
Another great side effect of blogging is the community that it builds. A magical, invisible, bond between bloggers. My role at Sun is currently two fold. I'm a Partner Account Manager looking after a collection of partners that add significant value to our customers, and also have my own customer who I help directly. This means I'm on the front line. I joined the sales side three years ago after being a Sun Systems Engineer (SE) for four years. When you're at the front the way to build contacts in our engineering group is to have a Systems Engineer do what we call a rotation. This meant sending the SE for a few weeks to an engineering group like those in Menlo Park, and have them sit with a bunch of engineers involved in development, helping where they can. Now this is great fun. Especially in the hey day of the dot com boom where donuts were supplied every Wednesday. However, as a lowly sales rep it's not that easy to tap into these amazing resources other than by working with System Engineers who know the right people. Until now.
I should mention at this time that I live at the most isolated city on the planet, in the most isolated country in the world, far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy. This means two things. It's a wonderful place to live because it's all so relaxed and laid back, but it's hard to communicate with the rest of the world because of the differences in time and space with the rest of the 6.3 billion people on the planet. That makes me an expert on the difficulties in remote communication.
Why does this matter? Well working for a global company that does most of it's engineering in the other hemisphere, it's tough to get answers to some of the more curly technical questions, or help partners get access to resources that help their cause. However, given I blog, I've recently been able to call on a couple of Sun's high profile bloggers for help. I've never met either of these guys face to face, but have spoken through email and mail groups on several occasions. Now apart from the fact that these guys are down to earth and very approachable, I wouldn't have known who to ask for help without having seen their blogs, and because of the community it has built they've been comfortable enough to help me out. It's just like I've spent a few weeks on rotation sitting by their side building a network. So now from my desk I've teed up a meeting for a local partner with our JXTA team in the U.S. and we're on the road to fixing a bug in Star Office that could mean it's adopted by a local end user. Both made much easier because of the Sun blogger community.
So blogging at Sun has already started to help the company two fold. By turning the company inside out it means that customers have the ability to tap into proactive, open people with a wealth of knowledge and enough influence to make serious change. Internally it contracts time and space so that communication travels more quickly and easily allowing us to help each other more effectively. It makes a large global organisation seem like a small local group in the next room, and builds a community similar to those built by conversation at a water cooler. Maybe it's time to change our slogan. The network is the people.
Historically if someone wanted to know some information about engineering work within Sun you'd have two avenues. Reading newsgroups in the hope one of them posted there, or logging a bug. Even within Sun the later was often the best method. Typically both of these are reactive. You'll only hear from someone when they've been approached or seen an issue they can help with. With blogging though, it's all proactive. Meaning that the author has willingly given their time, energy and knowledge to post something. Again generalising, this means that they are more likely to be willing to help when contacted because they've spent the time to start the dialogue. So, why bother speak to a sales person, looking in a newsgroup, or logging a bug when you can go straight to one of the lead X engineers, for information, or mention a bug to one of the Java engineers and have it looked at straight away. Blogs mean that the inside of the company is now visibly on the outside. Turning Sun inside out.
Another great side effect of blogging is the community that it builds. A magical, invisible, bond between bloggers. My role at Sun is currently two fold. I'm a Partner Account Manager looking after a collection of partners that add significant value to our customers, and also have my own customer who I help directly. This means I'm on the front line. I joined the sales side three years ago after being a Sun Systems Engineer (SE) for four years. When you're at the front the way to build contacts in our engineering group is to have a Systems Engineer do what we call a rotation. This meant sending the SE for a few weeks to an engineering group like those in Menlo Park, and have them sit with a bunch of engineers involved in development, helping where they can. Now this is great fun. Especially in the hey day of the dot com boom where donuts were supplied every Wednesday. However, as a lowly sales rep it's not that easy to tap into these amazing resources other than by working with System Engineers who know the right people. Until now.
I should mention at this time that I live at the most isolated city on the planet, in the most isolated country in the world, far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy. This means two things. It's a wonderful place to live because it's all so relaxed and laid back, but it's hard to communicate with the rest of the world because of the differences in time and space with the rest of the 6.3 billion people on the planet. That makes me an expert on the difficulties in remote communication.
Why does this matter? Well working for a global company that does most of it's engineering in the other hemisphere, it's tough to get answers to some of the more curly technical questions, or help partners get access to resources that help their cause. However, given I blog, I've recently been able to call on a couple of Sun's high profile bloggers for help. I've never met either of these guys face to face, but have spoken through email and mail groups on several occasions. Now apart from the fact that these guys are down to earth and very approachable, I wouldn't have known who to ask for help without having seen their blogs, and because of the community it has built they've been comfortable enough to help me out. It's just like I've spent a few weeks on rotation sitting by their side building a network. So now from my desk I've teed up a meeting for a local partner with our JXTA team in the U.S. and we're on the road to fixing a bug in Star Office that could mean it's adopted by a local end user. Both made much easier because of the Sun blogger community.
So blogging at Sun has already started to help the company two fold. By turning the company inside out it means that customers have the ability to tap into proactive, open people with a wealth of knowledge and enough influence to make serious change. Internally it contracts time and space so that communication travels more quickly and easily allowing us to help each other more effectively. It makes a large global organisation seem like a small local group in the next room, and builds a community similar to those built by conversation at a water cooler. Maybe it's time to change our slogan. The network is the people.
Posted by ar on qershor 15, 2004 at 03:04 PD PDT #