So, I have a corporate blog now, in addition to “dive into mark,” which will remain a personal blog. A corporate blog is just like a personal blog, except you don’t get to use the word “motherfucker.”
Also, you don’t get control over your blog’s look, feel, markup, software, features, URLs, feeds, comment registration system, or accessibility. You have no access to hit counts or referrer logs. You have no control over the popup window that asks your readers to fill out a survey when they leave your blog. I’ve made a business case for getting raw access logs and referrer logs, but no word yet on when they might be available.
I expect this lack of control will free me to concentrate on my writing, which will be scrutinized by two levels of managers and a team of rabid lawyers.
Ha ha, just kidding about that last part. I’ve met an IBM lawyer, and she assures me they’re not all rabid. But it should go without saying that corporate blogging involves a fair amount of common sense, and by “common sense,” I mean “self-censorship.” I will not be writing about unannounced products, internal policy, or juicy corporate secrets. There is no editorial approval process to guarantee this; once I click “Post,” it’s live to the world. But really, if you haven’t learned how to censor yourself by now, you have no business starting a blog anywhere, much less one on your company’s domain.
Also, I am almost ashamed to admit that, after working at IBM for five months, I don’t actually know any juicy corporate secrets. I obviously need to spend more time in meetings.
So what will I write about? Stuff related to my day job as an accessibility architect for IBM. Cool stuff coming out of IBM’s Emerging Technologies group — once it, you know, emerges. Probably other stuff too. These things have a way of taking on a life of their own.
Well, Mark, you can say all the amount of ‘Motherfucker’ here on your personal Blog, if not on Corporate Blog. You still have that freedom here. ;) :D
Comment by Amit Gupta — Wednesday, August 11, 2004 @ 4:15 pm
Dinner’s on me if you can get a human-parsable equivalent of “motherfucker” on your corporate blog without getting fired.
Comment by Paul Hoffman — Wednesday, August 11, 2004 @ 4:49 pm
Mark — I’m curious. Is having a blog for certain people at IBM considered part of doing your job? or is it that certain people choose to have them because they want them to be part of their job?
Comment by Derek Featherstone — Wednesday, August 11, 2004 @ 5:01 pm
Gasp… Oh my god… That’s ugly! ;-)
Comment by Thijs van der Vossen — Wednesday, August 11, 2004 @ 5:02 pm
Welcome to the personal blog / work blog world, Mark!
Comment by Joey deVilla — Wednesday, August 11, 2004 @ 6:07 pm
I think the real question is whether you can keep your personal blog without getting fired (not that I want that to happen to you, or want IBM to turn out to be that kind of company, it’s just, you know, the history).
Comment by Adam Rice — Wednesday, August 11, 2004 @ 6:35 pm
Mark,
Weird. We get access to the referrer logs and hit counts for our blogs on blogs.msdn.com but then that’s because it runs .TEXT which provides this info for each user. I think you can also control the look and feel via theming but web design was never my strong point so I’ve never investigated this.
Adam,
What has Mark ever written in the past that was firable offence? His blog seems pretty tame to me. Are there posts about drive-by’s, tax fraud and other criminal activity that I’ve missed?
PS: Thanks for getting rid of TypeKey.
Comment by Dare Obasanjo — Thursday, August 12, 2004 @ 12:32 am
How interesting: there are no longer four lights.
Comment by Phil Ringnalda — Thursday, August 12, 2004 @ 1:34 am
Dare: See http://diveintomark.org/archives/2001/11/15/first_things_first which links to http://diveintomark.org/archives/2001/10/09 which is not there, as obliquely referred to in http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/01/12/transitions
The post Mark was fired for was at http://diveintomark.org/archives/2001/09/22/addiction_is and is unsummarisable, although I grabbed a copy of it before it expired out of google’s cache.
Comment by James — Thursday, August 12, 2004 @ 2:01 am
James,
I remember those posts. Reading the addiction one was my ‘I should bookmark this blog’ moment. I hadn’t realized Mark took it down but it is obvious why he did.
Comment by Dare Obasanjo — Thursday, August 12, 2004 @ 2:28 am
Mark says: “A corporate blog is just like a personal blog, except”
No cat pictures either… Although I am glad to see a window opening towards IBM’s accessibility work.
Comment by Isofarro — Thursday, August 12, 2004 @ 4:30 am
“Addiction is” is here: http://addictionis.org/
I’ll set up a redirect, thanks for the reminder.
Comment by Mark — Thursday, August 12, 2004 @ 6:35 am
If I ever get a corporate blog, I will definitely say cunt and motherfucker.
But, I hope things are fun at IBM.
Comment by matt lee — Thursday, August 12, 2004 @ 2:00 pm
What popup window with a survey? I didn’t get one. Am I not worthy of a survey? I believe I should be told.
Comment by Armin — Thursday, August 12, 2004 @ 3:54 pm