In KM Review this month a paper from Bill Ives and Amanda Watlington "Using blogs for personal KM and community building". A nice paper, even for those who already know a lot about weblogs and their role in KM. Functions of weblogs summarised in seven C's:
- Creation
- Collection
- Context
- Connection
- Conversation
- Community
- Collaboration
In the end of the paper the authors say: "The current status of blogging policies is similar to the situation with e-mail 10 years ago". Prove for that I saw this week in a (proposed) policy for e-work by VNO-NCW ("Gedragscode E-work"). All kinds of rules about how to deal safely with electronic and mobile information, what types of site not to visit and so on. So far, no problem, I understand that companies want protection. Then, Rule 3.2 says (let me translate): "It is not allowed to use Electronic Communication means for unacceptable personal purposes". Some examples follow, and among them "keeping a work-related personal diary ("blogging")". What confuses me most is the 'work-related' part of the rule. So, even though it is useful for my work (work-related) they see it as the same level as playing games, on-line shopping, looking at streaming video (which were some of the other examples)!
I hope my company doesn't copy these rules without thinking (about the seven C's for example, or knowledge sharing in general).