THE MOST PRESSURISED events I have ever survived involved working alongside exceptionally observant inspectors. I got those experiences while a flight safety officer and instructor pilot in the US Air Force years ago. Our inspections always ended well. They taught me that some of the best information came during the out-briefings. And the very best info never made it into print. They were shared as "dirty notes" normally read directly from nonattributable yellow sheets of paper. The same thing is happening now online as Robert Scoble starts winding down at Microsoft. He's the beneficiary and many of the things he's hearing and seeing have to stay inside the Redmond campus. Occasionally he slips a few nuggets online worth considering since they affect best practise in other companies.
In a recent blog post, Scoble writes about Microsoft's blogging policy, a rate-me-paper scheme and the value of vidcasts for employees.
UPDATED one hour later: I'm citing extracts from Scoble's blog even though I know the mere mention of his name here will attract a half-dozen trackback spammers within three hours of publishing this post. You know you're an A-Lister when your URL published anywhere alerts the spambots. I know this to be true because the previous post about educational resources attracted no spammers but within an hour of this one publishing, three drug spams attached themselves as trackbacks to different parts of IrishEyes.
Back to Scoble's musings on his winding-down at Microsoft.
Microsoft will continue blogging. From Scoble: "If you had any doubts whether the company was going to press on with blogging and customer conversations, have no doubt. Alex says the company is going to accelerate its usage of blogging. He says that they are seeing so many good things come out of the blogging movement inside the company that they'd be stupid to try to slow it down."
Rate the Presenter. Microsoft runs a ThinkWeek and that means the obligatory ThinkWeek site. This is cool: "Every employee can visit the site and vote for their favorite ThinkWeek papers. Oh, and they can see what Bill and other people thought about the papers."
People like seeing colleagues ramble. Scoble says, "I just realized I'm having the most weird experiences ever since I told everyone I quit. Not only did he give me one of the best interviews I've ever gotten but after the camera is off he gave me some personal business advice about things to look for in the video space."
Robert Scoble -- "Cleaning up from the Media Storm"
Netcraft -- "Scoble News Bogs Down Podtech.net" (The surge of traffic to Scoble's new employer brought down the Netcraft web server.
Shawn Reed -- "Scoble Gone. Microsoft Goes On."
