Two of my blogging colleagues Andy Piper and George Faulkner recently pointed out that IBM’s social computing guidelines have been published and now Sun’s guidelines on public discourse has been updated.
Give people access. Create a great company culture. Guide them.
As George Faulkner says, “This was a fantastic collaborative effort and the result is, in my mind, a reflection of some forward thinking. IBMers are on Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, and are on a wide variety of internal tools as well, publishing at rapid pace. Having a clear and understandable set of guidelines will only help us all to understand this new freedom as we connect with the world.”
Image courtesy of The Paper Boat
It certainly is an interesting space! As the distinction between private and professional worlds collapse guidelines may become irrelevant. But in the infancy of this strange social networking adoption they can provide a little certainty in the chaos.
Again, my virtual jaw drops in awe of the “Be adult, Work hard and Have fun!” simplicity of this brave new world. It’s like being invited to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party for thinking beings. Indeed the ‘Big Blue Box’ has morphed quite nicely into a grownup Big Blue Marble and a paragon that others will follow. 5 Woots
I have to say again, it still blows MY mind that IBM allows all employees to self publish. Blogging, wikis, podcasts, even html-friendly page design… unreal. All IBMers have been granted a level of freedom that I believe is unparallelled. I’m in the thick of it, but still say ‘bravo.’
@Gavin yes I do think they give people a degree of certainty and sense-making amongst the chaos. A license to plork.
@Barry I look forward to reading your guidelines!
@George I hear you! What a great opportunity it is, to have access to such great publishing tools! Really, really wonderful. I have been able to meet some great minds and learn so many useful things!