On blogging
There is SO much going on that I should be blogging about: the Novartis Data Federation Initiative, Nimbus, SharePoint, where we’re going with architecture in NITAS, RDS search, and many, many others.
Annoyingly, those sort of topics take me a long time to write effectively about, and thanks to all these things going on, I’m having trouble finding the time to do the writing. I will get to them, but likely not this week.
That said, there is one thing I’ve been asked about several times recently that I can cover fairly quickly, so I will: this blog.
I’ll do it in the form of an FAQ, which saves me from having to write well-formulated paragraphs.
Q: Why are you blogging?
To share information and perspective. To provoke some thought. To get feedback. To try to be transparent.
Also because I believe, we (Novartis), would be better off if we had a lot more blogging going on, so I’m trying to do it to set an example and to get a sense of the challenges in building that kind of world. It’s all part of the Scientific Web thing I’ve mentioned once or twice.
Q: What do you like about blogs?
Blogs aren’t necessarily better than email, or news articles, or forums; they’re different, with different characteristics.
One of the best things about them is that they are persistent.
Email is transient… it goes out, it’s read, it vanishes into archives or get deleted. Blogs stick around. You can point to them as reference, you can find them in search engines, you can link to them. I’ve heard from several new employees in NITAS who, after joining Novartis, read my blog entries dating from the past year. They now have a better idea of what’s been happening around here and who I am, even before I’ve met them.
Q: Why aren’t you blogging more? How frequently do you update your blog?
I don’t do this more often because writing these things takes time… it takes a particularly rare kind of time: time when I can focus on something and put a bit of creative energy into pulling my words together. That sort of time is incredibly sparse right now, and much of that is going into management tasks that I cannot delay.
At one point I was shooting for a weekly blog entry. I decided not to do that because I found my tendency was to write something to meet the weekly goal that turned out to be irrelevant. (“My top favorite tunes this week.” “Lotus is REALLY driving me nuts today.” “Ode to caffeine.” “Things I hate about travel.” etc.) So now I write these when I’m able to find time, which isn’t frequent enough.
Q: Are these blogs official?
Yes.
(Honestly - everything I do for Novartis is being done by me, which makes it officially by me, right? If not, could you please let me know how I can temporarily suspend authority?)
Q: What does official mean?
Here’s what I think that question is about, and is what I mean by official: I am using the blog as one of the ways to make announcements and to communicate. I mean what I say in these things. Announcements of things like the DLI are serious.
I also mean what I say in email, but a lot more people see it here than in most email, so there’s that much more pressure to get it right and stick to it. I think that pressure is important.
I realize that SharePoint blogs can be edited after the fact, but I treat blogs as part of the record. Once it’s posted, it’s up, modulo fixes such as de-typoing, adding links, etc.
Q: When will you send email, and when will you blog?
We’ll have to see how this evolves. At present, if it’s time-sensitive or if the communication is only of interest to a limited group (e.g. NITAS), I’ll send email.
If it’s something that should be persistent or may be of interest to other people, or if I’m interested in comments, then I’ll put it on the blog. And, per request, if that blog post is particularly important to NITAS personnel, then Carol or I will send out an email note with a pointer to the blog.
Q: Do I think others should blog?
Yes. And some are. Yay!
I’ve noticed Joe Jiminez is blogging regularly and being quite public about it. I think that’s fantastic.
But I’d love to read more from associates at all levels - project managers, developers, analysts, unit heads, and many others.
Q: Why don’t we have better blogging tools in place?
Yeah.. I find the default SharePoint blogging tool to be very annoying. I’ve got a long list of things I’d love to see changed. I toyed with using Community Server but ran into some issues with that as well, some of which I think are now fixed.
But we have SO much to fix in the web and Intranet space that I decided not to push it at the time. It wasn’t a priority. Bringing up another server (e.g. WordPress or Movable Type) would have been cool but would have added to the chaos.
So I’ve just gritted my teeth and posted into the little textbox that SharePoint provides.
Now that SharePoint is taking off and we’re looking at some major improvements in the coming months, I do expect blogging tools to get better, and to develop a more coherent blogging approach in NIBR that others can take advantage of. There’s not a concrete plan yet, but I expect there will be within the next 2-3 months.
If we get that right, it will include an RSS reader strategy that will help people keep track of blogs easier than by checking them manually. (People can do this now if they know how, but this will improve for everyone in the next year with Outlook and a few other things in play.)