For the last 15 years I’ve been trying various software packages, free (as in open source) and bought to share information effectively with our very small company. We’re only 4 people, but each of us has his/her own area of expertise, and just shouting out an idea is just so disruptive. So we join the email overload.
This has continued to be the case until a few days ago it suddenly dawned on me that internal blogging might be the answer! The information shared on this blog for instance is phenominal, if a first time visitor takes the time to root around mahmood.tv, I can guarantee that that visitor will probably get to know me than a lot of my friends. Sad by true.
The idea is what if I utilised the same sort of energy to communicate with my staff, and extend that with time to communicate through a blog to my customers and suppliers as well?
I’ve come across two articles which suggest that doing so will benefit my business, and I know that this will be the ultimate knowledgebase system I was looking for.
Now start our corporate blogging experience… I’ll report back here within a few weeks/months with our experiences in the hope that this will help others and hopefully these “others” will share their experiences here as well.
The tool I’ll use is Xaraya of course as it is the most flexible package out there for what I have in mind. Yes, I’ll share my full set up of our Xaraya installation here as well for your benefit.
Comments
Corporate Blogging
But isn’t the whole point of a blog to be able to express those opinions and share those feelings that you are unable to/intimidated from/barred from expressing face to face with your government/boss/lover/family ? Can you imagine what your team would have to say?
The Johnster
Corporate Blogging
You don’t know until you try! I love that idea.
Re: Corporate Blogging
Blogging quite simply means Web Logging and is in [b]”It’s a time and date stamped chronological log of entries that cannot be restricted to a certain stream of thought”[/b] (100 points to whoever can tell me who I just quoted and from where!).
You can pretty much use blogs for what ever you want, for example my Biology course coordinator at Uni has created a blog to get out notices to all 1000 of the students doing the course, quickly and effectivley.
Corporate Blogging
Hey, Mahmood. Great idea!
In other news, I’d love to hear your comments re today’s [i]Wall Street Journal[/i] article “After High Hopes, Democracy Project In Bahrain Falters.”
‘Have blogged about it here: [url=http://sisu.typepad.com/sisu/2005/05/quotthe_demise_.html]On the road again[/url]
Sissy
Corporate Blogging
You should put together a comprehensive package, I bet Bill Gates would come and buy you out if it started selling. It could be like an interactive corporate newsletter.
-Mike in the US
Re: Corporate Blogging: Phase 1
Comprehensive manuals is definately a must.
billT
Re(3): Corporate Blogging
thanks but no thanks Chris 😀 i’ve already got about 4 gmail accounts overflowing with about 50 invites each 😛 How about you take a pic of yourself holding up a placard which states that “Stravinsky Won 100 points in a bloggers’ quotes contest @ Mahmood.tv” or something like that anyways and post it up here?
That would be lovely, well worth the 100 points and added to it all i’ll send you a 360 yahoo invite 😀
cheers!
strav.
Corporate Blogging
Bill Gates already has CMS software and you can bet hes got people looking at what he can borrow (I didnt say steal) in open source aoftware. I tried to get our national soccer organization to look at open source CMS packages but they went with the Microsoft package suggested by a developer. Expensive with licenses every year etc. Xaraya is a far superior package and has more upside but I would suggest postnuke for a novice. OF course with Mahmood help its not a problem.
billT
[Modified by: billT (billT) on May 10, 2005 07:14 PM]
Corporate Blogging
Mahmood,
Will you have to take permission from the Ministry of Information to be able to start this novel idea?
Just wondering!
Miracles never cease in Wonderland!
Re: Corporate Blogging
That’s the “traditional” (if you can call anything less than 5 years of age tradition!) blog is exactly what you refer to, however thinking about what a blog has become, especially as far as Xaraya is concerned, it can be used as a full knowledgebase system.
What you need for an effective Knowledgebase system are: (1) categories, (2) search functionality, (3) access rights. Everything else is a welcome extra.
I’ll be brainstorming this idea over the weekend to come up with a workable plan which is amenable to evolving and then set it in motion. The most important factors are permissions and what I would want to have in the public domain and what to remain internal. This is going to be the greatest challenge I think. Any help from the Xaraya roles gurus welcome!
Re(1): Corporate Blogging
do I qualify if I answer?! 😆
That’s very imaginative Chris. Another way of looking at blog software is at its core it is still just a website with a collection of articles. Having the ability to sort these articles chronologically, or by title, rank, etc is a bonus and lends some order to the site. Taken even more simply, a blog is a way to display database stored information in a structured fashion. So essentially, any dynamic, database-driven site could be used for anything you want to put it to as long as you know how to structurally display the information.
Another important factor is the interactivity issue. With the threaded and nested comments it gives us internally a chance to add more information to an issue. For instance a ‘publication type’ (in Xaraya-speak) could be created just for installation details at a customer site showing information of what system they purchased, when, who’s in charge of that system, what was actually delivered, serial numbers, maintenance contract expiry date as a main post, then every time Sudheer visits the customer for scheduled or unscheduled maintenance he can enter a comment on the main article detailing his work and observation. Sangeetha then can further comment on it detailing the charges incurred and the invoice raised. I would look at it from a sales point of view and determine that they’re due an upgrade of the installation should they wish to maintain the system’s value or indeed search on customer name and see what else can be proposed.
A supplier than can look at the record (in a restricted fashion, here comes the permissions thing) and can quickly see how many systems are actually on maintenance contract which are back-to-backed with the manufacturer and how many are coming into maturity.
The customer can look at his own record and add details, raise an issue (technical support request) or simply get the details of the work done on their system and its history, thus judging that the maintenance contract is a good thing and he doesn’t have a problem justifying renewal.
In another section, we can create a “tips” section for the various systems we sell, categorised, which are open to the public to view and benefit from.
Another is the web links section where we would list all of our partners, customers and interesting how-tos found around the internet which everybody can contribute to by entering more links.
And the story continues…
I realise that this is way too much to do in one go, but it will form a good ‘big picture’ to help me visualise the project.
As you can see, that was me thinking aloud, which brings me back to the ‘traditional’ interpretation of what a blog is!
Re: Corporate Blogging
Oops! PUT THE BRAKES ON! The Creative-Graveyard Ministry must be consulted first!
Re(1): Corporate Blogging
Chris, you got that quote from [url=http://www.bahrainthismonth.com/features/may_personality.html]here[/url] and the Big Daddy of Bahrain’s blogs or rather the Grandaddy – Mahmood Al Yousif, was quoted as saying that during an interview with Ravi Kalmadi from Bahrain This Month.
Now do i get my 100 points or am i late?
Cheers, strav 🙂
[i][PS: i lost my password to this blog after netscape got updated on my comp 🙁 ][/i]
Re(2): Corporate Blogging
No, your not too late to claim your prize! you can have 100 points if you like, I don’t know what you can do with them though!!
I’ll change the prize, you can have a Gmail invite if you like, send me a message over this blog or something.
Corporate Blogging: Phase 1
Here’s the result of an hour’s brain-storming, the diagrams show what ideally the site should contain. It should be one database serving content to both the internal and external realms with proper access control. I don’t think this is final as I need to determine not only how the permissions should play out, but also the categories and sub-categories as well as publication types. As it is here, there are too many pubtypes to contend with. Another thing is to determine what should work with a blogging tool as Xaraya currently does not support remote blogging on several different pubtypes. Therefore I need to find a way to let the others in the office freely post information to relevant places on the site without having to jump through hoops.
Re(1): Corporate Blogging
[img]http://www.chrisamillion.com/xangapics/bloggersquote_1.jpg[/img]
Re(2): Corporate Blogging
hahahahehahahe! Photoshop should also offer a spell checker Chris!
Re(3): Corporate Blogging
wow…that’s embarrassing!
Try this one!
[img]www.chrisamillion.com/xangapics/bloggersquote_2.jpg[/img]
Corporate Blogging
Mahmood the corp blogging is great to catch up on what is going on and so forth but wil it help in outlining what tasks need to be done, and what happened with them?
I suggest integrating a wiki page with the blog like this one http://shared.snapgrid.com/gtd_tiddlywiki.html
It has the Getting Things Done system so you can create agendas, a place where everyone can put their ideas (someday maybe) etc. The options with it are endless and its all web based so any advanced browser can access it. This way your company can list the agenda of future meetings, on the road put their ideas in a nice list. The only issues I have with it is that cause its really simple and doensn’t require a database you can’t keep a history.
Corporate Blogging
^^^^-nibaq
(I really need to get an account)
Corporate Blogging
I was monitoring this topic the first time you posted, it is very nice idea (who turn the bulb) for more then 9 month I was looking at similar idea and they are just expansive to subscribe to, I am speaking about ASP model (old name) what they call them now Utility Computing.
I can join force with you to test the sales and marketing side if you want.
Regards,
Sadeq Shehab