Delayed while ramping up activities at my new company and working through some fascinating late-Roman empire history. More on that soon.
However, in the spirit of this blog, I feel compelled to focus some attention on the mess in the Middle East. If anything is an example of returning again-and-again to a zero sum argument, surely it is the clash of cultures and values that have been playing out for thousands of years in that region. More on that soon as well.
Seems that as the blogosphere continues exploding with content, there are more than a few of us who see something appealing in the term "Circular Logic." A quick search yields the following:
...and I'm sure there are more.
Now as some of you know, I'm a marketing guy. I understand the importance of carving out a distinctive space and defending one's brand. However, I have no interest in "marketing" this blog in any way. It started as an experiment to get myself familiar with blogging tools and to have a creative outlet beyond the boundaries of work. It has grown into something different, something enjoyable (for me, at least) in its own right.
So for the time being, I don't particularly care that there are other Circular Logics out there. In fact, the proliferation has a kind of poetic reasoning all its own. After all, I'm writing this from the city of Saint Francis, half a world away from the home of its namesake monk who, with what I'm convinced was more than a touch of playful irony, preached diligently to the birds.
If you haven't yet come across Big Picture Small Office, one of the best-written blogs about the corporate world, I strongly urge you to link over there as fast as your fingers can type. The anonymous blogger -- "Big Picture Guy" -- is ensconced within a large manufacturing corporation at the highest level. Things have recently taken a turn toward the dramatic as his (or her?) company prepares for a major round of layoffs.
At times it can be hard to know what is real and what is simply creative license in the blogosphere, but assuming this is legit, the insider's view is remarkable, and the writing continues to outshine most anything on Circular Logic, or most other blogs you'll come across.
I'm not aware of any travel writers in ancient Rome. I'm not even sure when the whole genre got started, but it was clearly in place by the time the concept of the Grand Tour was in place in 18th and 19th century Europe. In fact, you've got to wonder what the folks at Merchant/Ivory would have done if Europeans didn't take long, introspective vacations -- usually to Italy or some highly cinematographic location.
Travel writing has become one of the more predictable yet irresistible mainstays of modern publishing. Bookstores reserve large sections of real estate for the genre, some even going so far as to have entire separate stores devoted to travel writers.
Cable television is full of travel shows providing what James Joyce's artistic savant Steven Dedalus would define as pornographic art: art that fosters desire or longing in the audience. It is perhaps telling that food often plays a role in these shows as well.
I'm not sure if our recent cross-country trip and related writings in a personal blog inspired any desire or longing (who really longs to go to Missouri or Ohio, for instance?), but we certainly had fun. Now back in the daily grind, I'm looking forward to the upcoming Rome series on HBO and getting my mind back in the cacophonous mess of news, opinion, innovation and corporate hijinks that constitute daily life for a marketer in Silicon Valley.
No "logic" theme here; just a simple declaration that it is good to be back.
A few weeks back I wrote that the lawyers at my company were circling because of my team's efforts to develop and sponsor a 3rd party blog. Not a corporate blog, mind you. Just a sponsored site where issues relevant to our market could be discussed and debated.
Well, I'm happy to say that we've been able to bring some of our legal colleagues on board with the concept. A little more robust disclaimer language was all that was required at this stage. That, and the need to get other sponsors on board as quickly as possible.
In different times this might have caused more concern. At the moment, more attention is (rightfully) being paid to driving the business and increasing sales. I don't think we're out of the woods on this yet, but at least the circling has become a bit less threatening.
The legal team at my company has started showing signs of agitation about our blogging experiments in marketing. Specifically, a legal newsletter "alert" has been making the rounds, and has led to at least one lawyer's call for us to shut down all our blogging activity until a comprehensive legal position can be staked out.
Reasonable advice if we were doing our own blog, but what about when you are sponsoring a 3rd party blog? In our case, I fear bureaucracy may win out and crush a promising experiment before it gets its legs. Stay tuned...
Lawyers and blogs. Not likely to be best friends as the medium develops, although you wouldn't know it based on the number of lawyer blogs that crop up in a simple Google search. I like Kevin O'Keefe's site (of course it had to have the requisite trademark symbol). Lawyers and blogs have been on my mind today because I met with our legal team to discuss policies for blogs this week.
Of course, there is the predictable controversy over content ownership and employee rights. InformationWeek had a good piece highlighting the struggle for both employees and employers to adjust to this new form of expression. One highlight:
Forrester Research advises companies to provide guidelines not only for company-sanctioned Weblogs, but also for employees who do them on their own time. The IT research firm even recommends that managers occasionally view the personal Weblogs of subordinates to see what they're saying.
This could be a bit Big Brotherish, but it makes sense, particularly in a public company. Perhaps something Martha could blog about once she gets out?
Even though this blog is my own personal area -- a place to be serious or playful or expository depending on how I feel -- my "day" job puts me in a position where I have access to information I simply can't discuss in a public setting. Knowing the rules, and having some common sense and discretion, is an imperative. I should be fired if I disclose something confidential, but I should also be allowed to have and run my own blog. With freedom comes responsibility, although I suspect that distinction may be lost on many blind supporters of Dubya.
Most of the business blog chatter I've seen is either by, for, or about PR firms. In fact, our company's agency, Voce, received some of the radiant kudos from a 2005 Business Blog Award presented to Media Guerrilla's Mike Manuel. At my company, my team has launched a blog in order to build awareness of a new category of business solutions. We don't write or edit the content, but we have set the wheels in motion as a founding sponsor late last year. You can check it out here.
Funny that I haven't noticed much content out there about blogging from a sponsor's point of view. Plenty from PR people, and from corp com type's struggling with the best way to get their execs online without looking like bozos. But not much from sponsors trying to build a brand or a category.
Of course, this blog isn't intended to be a business site, but every now and then I'll be dipping my toe into the issues I'm seeing on the corporate side of things. So today I'm thinking about lawyers, and the way they react when first confronted with a blog.
Our lawyers are skeptical, but still learning the ropes. I expect I'll get an earfull shortly about what a bad idea it is to do a blog at all. I'll report back later. Hopefully without a book length disclaimer attached.
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