12 Reasons Why Businesses Don’t Blog
A list compiled by Suw Charman in e-consultancy why companies don’t blog and why PR agencies aren’t qualified to advice organizations.
12 Reasons Why Businesses Don’t Blog
A list compiled by Suw Charman in e-consultancy why companies don’t blog and why PR agencies aren’t qualified to advice organizations.
Gareth Knight in e-consultancy on implementing new Web 2.0 features in a corporate environment:
“This situation reminds me of the good old early days when clients asked you to build a web site for them, and then also expected you to write the copy for the web site, even though you didn ´t know enough about their business or industry to do the job justice.”
Shamus McGillicuddy in SearchCIO.com on the Web 2.0 label:
“Some vendors are selling products labeled “Web 2.0″ technology. But when it comes to Web 2.0, technology is just a means to an end. The real business value lies in what the technology enables: better collaboration among users. In fact, a growing number of companies are developing new business models to take advantage of the collaboration the technology empowers.”
Jay Rosen wrote an inspiring post:
“The people formerly known as the audience are those who were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and a few firms competing to speak very loudly while the rest of the population listened in isolation from one another” and who today are not in a situation like that at all.”
From a JupiterResearch press release on a new report “Corporate Weblogs: Deployment, Promotion, and Measurement“:
“By engaging prospective customers in active dialogue, companies can showcase their expertise and domain knowledge, creating a forum for communication of their strategies and visions.”
A couple of figures from the press release:
Rod Boothby in Innovation Creators on a web 2.0 scenario for projects:
“The idea is simple: one blog for each new project. A project page should do at least three things:
“The performance culture really is in deep conflict with the learning culture” is the message from the cover story in BusinessWeekonline on the value of failures:
“Indeed, for a generation of managers weaned on the rigors of Six Sigma error-elimination programs, embracing failure — gasp! — is close to blasphemy. Stefan H. Thomke, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of Experimentation Matters, says that when he talks to business groups, “I try to be provocative and say: ‘Failure is not a bad thing.’ I always have lots of people staring at me, [thinking] ‘Have you lost your mind?’ That’s O.K. It gets their attention. [Failure] is so important to the experimental process.”
Download the introduction of Experimentation Matters here. The six principles for managing experimentation and explaining how they can be used to drive innovative development can be found here.
Chris Anderson in WIRED Magazin on blogs, user reviews and photo-sharing:
“Now we have armies of amateurs, happy to work for free. Call it the Age of Peer Production. From Amazon.com to MySpace to craigslist, the most successful Web companies are building business models based on user-generated content. This is perhaps the most dramatic manifestation of the second-generation Web. The tools of production, from blogging to video-sharing, are fully democratized, and the engine for growth is the spare cycles, talent, and capacity of regular folks, who are, in aggregate, creating a distributed labor force of unprecedented scale.”
In elearnspace George Siemens comments this view:
“The real story here isn’t that people are “happy to work for free” (they aren’t…we work for many factors, money is only one. Reputation, connections, personal growth – these are all drivers of why people engage in activities without a monetary benefit. For many, monetary value comes in different channels – bloggers may share their ideas for free, but they gain consulting opportunities…the article touches on this briefly at the end.). The real story is that the value point for content has shifted…and that the power to publish and distribute exist at a level that enables anyone to express themselves. Getting others to read and watch is a different matter. Instead of a dozen resources being watched and read by millions, we have a million resources being watched and read by dozens.”
American economist Dr. Eilif Trondsen (SRI Consulting Business Intelligence) presented an E-learning framework that combines knowledge management, simulation, gaming and e-learning in their various forms. He went on to say that the previously rather formal learning process will become more informal, and explained that the Extended Internet is the most suitable method of communication to allow informal and individual learning networks to develop.
Launch the video presentation with synchronized slides here [Recorded: June, 2005 in Dresden, Germany. Duration: 00:36:20].
Dr. Eilif Trondsen, Head of the Learning On Demand Programme by SRI Consulting Business Intelligence, a spin-off of the Stanford Research Institute. The SRIC-BI combines content-based research programmes with corporate consulting. Over the past 25 years, Dr. Eilif Trondsen has developed extensive know-how in this area by managing and collaborating on various national and international projects. He is specifically concerned with electronically based learning (e-learning) and electronic commerce (e-commerce). Dr. Eilif Trondsen holds talks on developing strategies for e-learning, future developments in global business environments, e-commerce trends and strategic management planning at international conferences.
Career Stages:
For more information please see: http://www.sric-bi.com.
Along with the internet technology itself, the 1st Dresden Future Forum focused particularly on the effects of that technologys use. How will the current developments influence our lives and our work? What will it take to prepare us humans for life in a digitised world? What demands will our education system face, for example? Which business models make sense, what standards are necessary? Although the limited scope of a one-day event allowed no more than a brief spotlight to be cast on these issues, it quickly became clear that the subjects presented here both caused and merited much discussion and will continue to do so.
In her keynote speech, Michelle de Lussanet, principal analyst of the European telecoms and mobile team at Forrester Research, posited the fundamental theory that in future no company will be able to succeed if it does not adapt to the development of the Extended Internet and endeavour to integrate it into its business models. She noted that this new Internet, which will soon connect not just computers but all objects of daily life, is already being implemented in many places.
Dr. Andreas Schleicher, Head of the Indicators and Analysis Division of the Directorate for Education in the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) and responsible among other things for the “Programme for International Student Assessment”, also known as the PISA study, pointed out that a country like Germany will have to excel in education to the same extent as it is more expensive than other countries. Never before have the opportunities resulting from a high standard of education been so great, but at the same time the risks associated with a low level of education have also never been greater. He also noted that our education system could be much further advanced today if the knowledge of those working within in were networked. Information technology must create new learning environments that enable networked learning from home, from school or from libraries. Today’s transfer of knowledge on a “just in case” basis must be replaced by knowledge transfer on a “just in time” or “just for me” basis. The required individualised learning creates untold potential for the use of modern technologies such as for example the Internet.
In the following round table discussions, Dr. Eilif Trondsen, Head of the Learning On Demand Programme at SRI Consulting Business Intelligence, a spin-off of the Stanford Research Institute, presented an e-learning framework that combines knowledge management, simulation, gaming and e-learning in a wide range of forms. He went on to say that the previously rather formal learning process will become more informal, and explained that the Extended Internet is the most suitable method of communication to allow informal and individual learning networks to develop.
In their round table discussion, world-famous mountaineer Kurt Albert and Steffen Prasse, Program Manager at T-Systems Multimedia Solutions, revealed surprising similarities between mountain climbing and managing programs, for example in distributing tasks and responsibilities within a team.
Stephan Schambach, CEO of Demandware, Inc., pointed out that the two big trends “Open Source” and “Software as a Service” � can be combined, making traditional software development, licensing and sales models obsolete.
Prof. Gerhard Banse of the Fraunhofer Application Centre for Logistics System Planning and Information Systems explained the principles of technological impact assessment and described its methods. He pointed out that technology impact assessment must be discussed on three levels: on the level of the individual, on the level of businesses and institutions and for society as a whole.
In the project discussion with Dr. Klaus Radermacher, Managing Director of T-Systems Multimedia Solutions, Eberhard Burger, building director in the reconstruction of the Dresden Frauenkirche, emphasised that transparency, honesty, credibility, open communication and the involvement of all participants, who must have understood the project in its entirety, are what guarantee the success and high level of acceptance of the project. Traditional, formal, linear project management was not sufficient to meet the requirements of the complex reconstruction of the Frauenkirche. Of decisive importance here was a project manager networked with his team and continuously available to solve any new problems as they arose.
Prof. Karsten Buse, holder of the Heinrich Hertz Foundation Chair of Deutsche Telekom AG for Communication Sensors at the University of Bonn, used selected examples (such as storing information at atomic level) to demonstrate that developments in acquiring, transmitting, storing and displaying information will continue to take place in quantum leaps.
The contributions heard made clear that we are at the beginning of a development that will change our society. Progress has reached a point where everyday objects of any kind can be equipped with state-of-the-art information technology and thus given “intelligent” properties. The effects of such a far-reaching informatisation of our everyday lives in the longer term can hardly be fully assessed today. Discussion in terms of technology impact assessment in connection with the Extended Internet is still rare. The wider public so far seems unconcerned with the prospects ahead. One reason for this could be that everyday use of information technology is increasing almost unnoticeably, so that we often only become conscious of technology when it fails. Countless fields of application for “intelligent” items of everyday use are imaginable. Which of these are used is decided not so much by their technical feasibility, but rather by their economic viability and also legal and moral acceptability. In the long term, the wide range of possible applications provides many challenges, for example in the regulatory field, with regard to the reliability of the technology used or concerning privacy protection.
The event made it clear that there is a need for discussion in the context of the increasing informatisation of our everyday lives. The announcement that T-Systems Multimedia Solutions is planning to continue the Dresden Future Forum was therefore all the more welcome. The event was presented by Prof. Peter Glotz, former director of the Institute for Media and Communication Management at the University of St. Gallen.