do it. think it. blog it! ... a twisted world

When others make mistakes, We learn. There have been numberous blogging catastrophies in the most recent past. Here is my attempt to providing you those links so you could read and judge for yourselves. Some of these links are credible, and some are just links. You be the judge..for yourself

• Article by Kate Lorenz on CNN
• Papal Bulls list of bloggers who have been fired
• Washington Post article on Jessica Cutler who got fired; and then won a book contract
• InternetWeek on Joe Gordon getting fired from Waterstone's for blogging
• Journal Space
• Google 'Blogophobic.'

When organizations provided email address to their employees, it was considered to be ethical to use that email address for ONLY official purposes. However one could still retain personal email addresses at yahoo, google, hotmail etc... However, using ones personal email account during work hours for prolonged periods of time was considered unethical too... as that would constitute gobbling up corporate bandwidth.

Most companies that allow their employees to blog have Blog Guidelines and some dont. Its always helpful for one to find out about their own organizations Blog Guidelines from their managers or their Blog server administrator. This would enable one to be JOB SAFE if ever one finds any particular employee's blogging to be a sheer waste of corporate energy. A SAFE blogger would blog After Hours. But blogging during the day sometimes is not too bad either; as long as one knows his/her limits and makes up for the Blogging Time in some form or the other. We often hear the term Comp Time, very soon we shall soon hear our employers using the phrase "work harder and more in lieu of Blog Time"

For companies that do not have BLOG Guidelines I'd strongly suggest they DO establish blog guidelines, policies, procedures and "Next Practices.". This kind of leadership is not too hard to find, But one has to Identify the "leader" to establish these rules. The best way (from my perspective) to discover what works is to conduct public discussions and investigations around specific cases (of corporate bloggers).

"The key to learning is not the medium nor the message, it is the quality of the dialog with your peers that really matters. More is learned on the playing fields and in discourse with peers than from the sage on the stage." Denham Grey

Here are a few tips that may help:

• Don't blog at work. Ever. "You could get in trouble for using company resources like an Internet connection to maintain your blog.... "
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation published a guide to help keep bloggers from being fired.
• John Foleys InternetWeek article on Who Owns Copyrights to Corporate Blogs

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