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June 26, 2006

Wikiwise 50 -- #48: IBM

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Posted by Giovanni Rodriguez

Our entry this week is IBM. We will write about it tomorrow. But for now, take a look at their "Hitchikers's Guide."

UPDATE: 7/1/2006

Over the course of one year, we will be conducting a survey of organizations that are supporting emergent behavior in the enterprise using social-media tools. The organizations do not need to use wikis per se, but they must be supportive of emergent behavior at the management level. To nominate an organization for this series, please comment here.

Apologies for the delay on this one -- it was an unusually busy week -- but here's our continuation of our mini-profile of the I.B.M. blogging initiative. A few key facts:

--with more than 5,000 internal and 100 internal blogs, this may be the world's largest corporate blogging project.

--it is also perhaps one of the greatest examples of developing a social media platform "from the inside out," a theme we will be exploring in greater detail here at Future Tense.

--as blogger-in-chief Christopher Barger noted in article earlier this year, "any time you can make a company of 329,000 people feel smaller, that's a good thing."

The sheer size and scope of this initiative will compel many other companies -- not just technology, though they happen to be leading the way (no surprise) -- should compel many other companies to look at this experiment. They might also want to check out I.B.M.'s excellent blogging policy, which encourages everyone at the company to write so long as they follow general communication policies (especially important at a public company) and clearly indicate that their opinions are their own, not I.B.M.'s. I recently met with an internal communications manager for a another large technology company, and we discussed the idea of developing a "community of communicators." The I.B.M. project provides excellent guidance to companies interested in developing that kind of culture.

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