A Month is a Long Time

Blimey. You take your eye of your blog and what happens? More than a month goes by and you’ve not done a thing with it. I had an excuse: a pathetic new year’s resolution to only blog about positive things. And lo, I could think of nothing.

But I’m not going to completely throw that out with the Christmas tree, because one of the undoubtedly good things that’s happend recently is Framfab’s blog.

Framfab, you may recall, is the company I work for. Yes, they have a stupid name. Their new site (launched at the same time as the blog) is, er, framfabulous, but their decision to incorporate an employee blog is outstanding.

Just in case you’re thinking “well heavily censored, obviously,” I can tell you that it isn’t. While employees have to ask for a login to post (but not comment – that’s completely open), anyone can get one. Once you’re in, you can post anything you want – there is no editorial process, and best of all, you can decide to make the post appear on the public web site if you want. There’s currently about a 5:1 ratio of public to private posts but I expect that to get better. While comments from outside are also turned on, I don’t think we’ve had any yet. Things are going to get interesting if punters start getting in on the act. Hell, we might even get Tom Cruise!

There have been some calls to impose an editorial gateway, if only for client confidentiality and the “Chinese wall” policy we have to adopt sometimes, but it looks like we’ll cross that bride when it comes to it. There’s also the knowledge that only a hard core of employees will post, while the rest will lurk and feel it’s not for them. Online “communities” are strange beasts, not much has changed since the days of Wildcat, fido and usenet on that score.

But for now though, I’m positive! The Cluetrain‘s a-coming to Framfab!