Ready for the Blogosphere?
Two days ago I read an interesting report (PDF) from Alertnet, the humanitarian support branch of Reuters Foundation. It is the summary of a workshop from July 24 in London about “Are Aid Agencies ready for the Blogosphere?” Nearly 50 people attended from 30 British-based organisations, plus experts from the media and non-profit sector.
In the blog-post on the workshop they write: “As one blogging true believer has said, blogs should be written while sitting in front of the computer in dirty pyjamas. They’re not the type of thing you write while wearing a suit. Much of aid agency communications is of the wearing-a-suit variety. Open and frank discussion is rare.”
About 2 years ago I tried to get the organisation where I work blogging – and resigned after a while, for there was to much skepticism from the side of the management. (However, I started then this blog.) Now it seems that a new interest of the international department is coming up again. I’ll sketch a conception draft in the next weeks, when I find some time…
Other aid agencies have started in the last times. A friend from the Swiss branch of a big international NGO to whom I sent the link about the Alertnet-workshop told me that it came just in time – they are about to launch a blog and he is just preparing a presentation to the management body.
Blogging can also be dangerous: A Swiss blogger about web security and anti-spam was attacked last weekend by spammers with a diffamation campaign, where in a faked mail he was announcing his suicide (I also got this mail). He got 10’000 reply-mails and a visit from the police in the night who wanted to prevent his suicide – of which he didn’t know. And the Google copyright expert William Patry just closed his blog because he was writing about the dangers of the copyright development and had loyalty problems with his job.
Not from the blogosphere, but from another sphere: artwork at the roof of Zurich Main Station.
