What to Blog?

Julie Leung’s entry about Privacy and Secrecy resonated with me this monning, coming so soon after conversations at work about their blogging policy (or lack of it). Writing on a blog is sharing with a community, even if few people read it. You can share your thought processes, the things that are bugging you, the stuff you want to remember. But there’s always some kind of self-censorship, driven by both internal or external restrictions. I wouldn’t write here the same sort of things that I’d put in a hand written personal diary , but I may write more than I would relate in a conversation, partly because I’ve had time to reflect and can think during the writing process instead of the immediacy of talking.

The connectin to work? We don’t have a blogging policy, but they are slowly thinking their way towards them (i did have to explain what a blog is). We were discussing the dismissal of Joe Gordon from his job at Waterstones and the difference between commenting on a blog and havimg a loud conversation in a pub: permanacy. Something I say here could be round for a while. The team memeber I was in conversation with, is currently extremely conservative: employees should not document any aspect of their work life. I’m more in line with restricting discussion about company strategy, business decisions etc, which is in line with current policies about conversations, emails etc to other people. On our actual products, I should be able to say what I like and don’t like.

But if they go with the most extreme view, that makes a third to a half of my waking life off limits. And work is normally the area of the life that causes the most problems. If things piss me off, if I’m working silly hours or if things are going great, why shouldn’t i vent here. If I worked for Waterstone’s I definitely couldn’t. Where I am now, I’m not sure.

Back to Julie’s post, there are things that I would not share, things that I do share and things that I want to, but it may not be a good idea.

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