Blogging Coworkers can be Good
Well, duh, right?
I’ll be discussing the intersection of work and blogging as a hobby in my talk on Monday. As I was running through ideas this morning pondering what to say, I realized many of the people I’ve talked to about it seem to approach it as a negative thing. One point the organizers asked me to cover is how libraries can develop policies to guide what people write on their personal blogs. Much of the media coverage I’ve seen about people blogging at work is negative. People are becoming paranoid about what blogging coworkers might say about them online. I was almost going to fall into this mindset in my talk, too.
But not all blogging coworkers are bad. So why don’t we hear about the others? Because "all news is bad news?" Because hearing how a coworker’s blog helped someone else isn’t as interesting as hearing how a worker’s blog cost a company a contract?
So here are some examples:
- Blogs can let us know more about a coworker than what we learn in the workplace.
- How many of us take the time during the day to talk to our coworkers about more than just work stuff and the usual polite "How are you?" By reading someone’s blog, we can learn about them as a person. Ok, everyone’s thinking of that really personal stuff on LiveJournal being too much, but that’s not exactly what I mean.
- Blogging coworkers can help us with big life events.
- How many people are reading or read Wendy and Joey’s wedlog to learn about their wedding and the process of planning a wedding?
- Hobbies!
- Many of us probably share hobbies with our coworkers. Do we have time to talk about these shared interests at work? I could learn knitting tips and locations for great hikes from some of my coworkers, if they blogged and I knew about it.
So why not talk to them in person, right? Well, we don’t always need the information at work for one thing. I don’t usually hike at my desk, but on a gorgeous day like today, I’m pondering trying some new trails. But where to go? For another thing, I work in a very chaotic environment where people aren’t always in the office because they’re out covering events or where we’re often swept away by deadlines and racing just to keep up with the work. It’s not always possible to hang out near the water cooler chatting.
There are also hiring issues here, too. We hear stories about people who haven’t been hired because a search committee hasn’t like what’s on their blog. What about people who are hired because of something on their Web site (which just happened to two friends of mine)? Or what about people who decide to work for an organization because employees’ blogs reveal it’s a great place to work?
