I gave a talk at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on the use of weblogs for communication and information management. The talk incorporated components of several of the past presentations I've given on this topic. I covered these points:

1) why weblogs are emerging as a viable replacement for Knowledge Management software and as a supplement to an enterprise intranet portal

2) why weblogs are a good idea right now

3) what weblogs are being used for and how

4) strategy for dealing with weblog growth

5) ideas for sustaining use and measuring success.

A large part of my talk is focussed on case studies at Lucent, describing how we've used weblogs for communications, information sharing and knowledge management.

The LANL information ecology is similar in some ways to the Bell Labs ecology of years past. The CIO works at a high level on planning and funding and a decentralized system of IT organizations exists at LANL. It was great to see that the CIO works harmoniously with the diverse web-based systems that are developed and maintained by the individual organizations around LANL. This is exactly the environment that is perfectly suited to the emergence of weblogs. In my talk, I discuss at length the benefits of diverse "information ecologies" -- a concept taken from Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O'Day's literature on the topic -- and how weblogs created out of bottom-up publishing efforts fit into this picture and provide a sensible, low-cost, high-value alternative to web publishing processes mandated from the top down. The concept of diversity as a key component to ecological health is validated in what has evolved at LANL.

A few people I spoke with at LANL stated that they are already considering using weblogs and wikis for some internal information management. Everyone in attendence of the conference was already aware of what weblogs are. The controversial public blog, "LANL: The Real Story" was more than likely the site that introduced many LANL staff to blogging.

While my talk emphasized the importance of weblogs as a publishing format, I also touched on some of the issues of giving messaging power to the masses because of its relevance to LANL. I pointed to the recent resignations of Jordan Eason at CNN and the demotion of Dan Rather at CBS following some mob-blogging related to statements made by each of these well-known public figures. The "LANL: The Real Story" blog was created to provide a public, uncensored forum for LANL staff to air their concerns and express their views about how the Labs were being run under director George P. Nanos. Nanos closed the Labs because of security concerns when classified tapes went missing. The report of missing tapes turned out to be a clerical error, but the shut downs cost the country an estimated $850 million. Last week, on May 6th, Director Nanos resigned. The story is covered in the New York Times.

These stories about the movement of messaging power away from centralized control to the masses is fascinating, controversial, and a bit unsettling. At some level, it is phenomenal that a technology can be disruptive enough to create a major shift in the control of power within a social system. Essentially, in the cases of Rather, Eason and Nanos, what we're viewing is the democratization of social systems and organizations, although some people would probably call the open criticism that's been appearing on blogs mob-rule. Blogging is surfacing controversial issues to stakeholders that probably would have been hidden in the past -- swept under the rug. In today's weblogging world, the statements and actions of important public figures can be challenged rather than accepted. In the cases mentioned above, when the statements or actions could not be successfully defended, the public image of the organization was affected to the extent that the organizations feared reprisal in the form of pulled financial backing.

I should mention that while I don't believe this power-shift to be a bad thing, there is, of course, potential for mobs to utilize blogs in malicious ways. The first step in dealing with controversial blogs should therefore be more communication, not less. In the case of Jordan Eason, whom I believe should not have resigned, CNN should have reacted immediately, blogging the issue on their own and allowing conversation to happen between CNN and the public. The lesson in all this is that we live in a world where people believe in democratic rule and in ideas around open communication (like those espoused in John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty"). The right reaction to these types of disruption is to react to it in kind with open debate and conversation. What these individuals and organizations could have done is used weblogging for their counter-message and as a platform for defending statements and actions rather than simply evading the issue. Has the lesson been learned by the media? We'll see the next time this happens.

But to return to the topic of my talk, which is not nearly as provocative as the talk of the Nanos resignation, there is clearly a lot of awareness of the power or blogs, not only as vehicles for unovering hidden issues, but also as a tool for information and project management. There are reports of blogs being used at LANL already, and many of the web developers in the audience had specific questions about how to select from the various technologies offered in the blog publishing space right now. Some individuals were interested in how we at Lucent are approaching the need to publish blogs. I communicated that my organization's role has mainly been to react to the needs expressed around blogging by providing consulting and developing strategies for dealing with weblog growth. I empasized that I believed in the decentralized approach to weblog implementation because such an approach allows content owners to retain control and decision making power related to their needs and the technologies they choose to fill them. That said, I also believe that a centralized solution may also be successful if well-conceived and flexible enough to allow content owners to control their data and the use of the blog.

I provided some ideas for dealing with weblog growth in the near and long term including the RSSification of enterprise databases and the creation of weblog RSS aggregation and archiving services. I also touched on the idea of integrating some of this output with other enterprise information systems and using applications that allow social behaviors. These ideas were outlined in the presentation I gave at Computers in Libraries, 2004.

The conference provided a good opportunity for me to connect with web developers in a community similar to ours at Bell Labs in the hopes of continuing to discuss how we use weblogs to meet key business needs in our respective organizations. As LANL staff move forward with their projects, we hope to share our experiences. Hopefully the outcome of our dialogue will result in best practices over time.