Two months ago, I maintained a very active internal blog as an IBM employee within the internal IBM BlogCentral. IBM has impressively introduced tools for advanced collaboration – dogear for social bookmarking, an employee directory (blue pages) that allows people tagging, the wonderful sametime 7.5 for corporate instant messaging, wikicentral, and more.. Upon my return from mat leave in March ’05, I studied web 2.0 and pushed my learning in a company that would embrace it. I was so happy to blog internally.
About IBM. As of this past summer, a little less that 1% of IBMers were active bloggers. 3% had blogs (active and inactive). But in a company of 329, 000 – a 1% adoption creates the largest blogging environment in a private domain – that I know of. And quickly, those who were blogging got to see the light. The power of enterprise 2.0 and its promises towards collaboration, innovation and employee retention.. I say that last benefit cautiously because I did leave IBM. But the enterprise 2.0 did lift my belief in IBM. I love the company. I just can’t travel the way my job required of me. With more time, I could have found the right job in IBM. *sigh*.. I did get a few perfect job offers on my last day.
That said, I enjoy my new job immensely. The home building industry is rich for learning and I see where I can make strong contributions. I know I can help easily in the areas of branding, research and web strategy & development. What I deeply underestimated was the contribution that I could make in e-business in an industry still shackled in traditional processes.
I have this book called “how digital is your business”. Truthfully, I’ve never cracked its spine but its cover title serves to inspire me for this industry.
I was invited to present to the Northern European Marketing Board for IBM on my views on web2.0 marketing. Its a long story.. but I unleashed a presentation in IBM on web2.0 – its importance, why the conditions are right for this major internet revolution to stick and to my great surprise and flatterly, I contributed to a massive wave of web2.0 thinking inside of IBM. I got to meet the greats – a phd student, Pranam Kolari, who masters in blog spam (splog), another student, Sacha Chua, who researches corporate adoption of social networking tools and doubles as an incredible web2.o evangelist, yet another, Aaron who studies wikis and enterprise 2.0 pushing IBM’s innovationjam full of ideas (and who was my original inspiration for blogging), another ibmer Jen who doggedly pursues the creation of web 2.0 services, another IBMblogger Luis, who, as a knowledge management contributor, managed one of the most popular blogs inside and outside for IBM, and still another who has educated me on the future of second life.
I miss my blog. I feel separation anxiety for the posts that I no longer have. But happily, I learned that 31 people in IBM were reading my blog today. And I’ve been gone for two months.
Laurie.
Posted by Laurie Dillon Schalk 
