Nice post, and I like the analogy to Hyde Park Speaker’s Corner. That’s what this is. In the sense that the City of London created the Corner, and keeps it clean, it sponsors what happens. If terrorists use it right now to incite hate speech, they will be shut down.

That *could* happen here, because this site is hosted by TomorrowToday.biz.

BUT, to answer your question directly. This is a blog site, not an extension of our company. We have a compnay website for that, with over 200 articles on it that DO express an “official” position.

As long as you standing on your “box� you can say what you want. I have been there many times. It has never entered my mind that the people standing there are representing the UK\England\London\ or the residents of the City of Westminster.

The Speakers are speaking their mind. The great thing about standing there listening is that you have three choices:
• Believe the speaker is speaking the truth
• Believe the speaker is not speaking the truth
• Be indifferent to what the speaker is saying.

There are many other parts of the UK that one would not be given the freedom to say what you want as at Speakers Corner.

What makes Speakers Corner such an attraction? Is it the quality of the speaker’s speech? Is it the topic of the speech? Could it just be the way the speaker looks? It is probably a multitude of factors.

I have written the above as I hope that TMTD will stay a free “speech�location.

BUT

Is the fact that the site is sponsored by a company important to this forum?

Is it important to the TMTD image that we know if the person is an “insider/outsider�

The interesting point for me is that Graeme has not indicated what the outcome was of the discussion. Graeme has cleverly left it up to the community to comment. I am sure that TomorrowToday.biz will be lead by the communities response as well as from a business impact.

“Michael asked, “There are still just two words that concern me about blogging … Quality Control. How do we implement that in an environment with free flow of information … or maybe better yet – do we need to control it? How do let our customers know what the difference is between an uneducated opinion, and some well thought out prose?â€?â€?

This is a hard question to answer. It is something that TMTD will have to monitor. Depending of the philosophy and how this environment is nurtured, it will grow to be a place where people come to blog/read what others have to say or it will just slowly die and be switched of.

It is up to us the members to regulate to forum. There are many different members each wearing their own hat.

To answer Michaels question on whether you need to control it. Simple answer is Yes, as it is a site sponsored by TMTD.

How you manage the quality will depend on how the functionality of responding to a persons blog is used.

PS Bronwyn makes an important point, which TMTD has to consider, when people link to http://www.tmtd.biz/, is it just a blog site or is it an extension of TomorrowToday.biz

There’s no “marking” . And I’m very relaxed (I know my email style seems intense sometimes, but I’m not not really .

((Quick aside before answering your question: We ARE the blogging experts, and we are so BECAUSE we have these debates. The “we” in the previous sentence is NOT TomorrowToday (as a company) but rather certain individuals within the TomorrowToday team, and some associates, too. In each company we assist to get blogs going, there are people who “get” blogs and people who don’t, and the conversations we have are helpful for us and for them.))

Now an answer:

If people were to use this blog to get an impression of “what TomorrowToday is”, they would be wrong. This blog (as the header says) is for musings, observations, futureneering.

The original intent of the blog was simply to create a space where people within the TomorrowToday network could “dump” the thousands of “random” thoughts they have every day. There are no guidelines or censorship (yet?), and we hope that by controlling who can actually send original posts we can somehow vaguely guide the direction the blog takes.

The underlying theme(s) of the blog links to TomorrowToday frameworks and insights, but are not meant to be a showcase for them. This is not a sales site.

This is a great conversation, and if I can directly answer Michael’s original question – the key to the blogosphere is that you must seek out the voices that you want to listen to, and ignore the rest. We hope people will seek us out – but we know that only “connection economy” type people will get us.

My opinion (and that is my opinion – not necessarily everyone’s) is that a blog is a place to dump, share, muse, think out loud, connect and see what comes back. It can build relationships, transfer knowledge, be fun, whatever, and I see this blog as being just that.

However – I ask these questions about defining the blog because a blog can be anything to any person, and it can have a purpose that is more focused – purely academic, just fun, supportive etc. You only have to look at Mike’s post – “Blogs that matter� to see that.

I also asked the question about the purpose because this debate seems to have been raised a few times in different forms and is still going around. Hell you guys are supposed to be the blog experts here – why are we even having this debate?

I think it is a very valid point that Michael makes that if someone were to use the blog as a point of reference about TT.biz, they would have to spend a fair amount of time clearing the noise, in which case perhaps they should be directed to the e-zines and the blog becomes secondary.

As a point of interest, I did a shout around the office this afternoon about what people thought about hosting a blog on a company site in terms of content and origin and the unanimous consensus what that they would expect it to be an open forum for internal and external people to interact on, but would like to be able to clarify which voices represented the company so that they knew who they were dealing with from a relationship perspective.

Blogs are a necessary platform for the exchange of views. Another version of a town square? Is this not a written form perhaps of talk radio. Where ‘listeners’ are invited to call in and rant or applaud? And sometimes you get some really odd people and opinions – and it’s clear that these are not necessarily opinions of the radio station. But it allows one to get a pulse on moods and trends.

And as with a talk show, if they’re talking about something that doesn’t interest you or irritates, then change stations. Likewise, read the bits that jump out, skim through the ones you find moderately interesting and ignore the rest.

Or maybe those are the ones you should be reading…..

What do *you* think the purpose is?

(And why would it be important for us to “define” the purpose? Does it feel like an advertorial? Why can’t it just be a place to dump thoughts about life, the universe and everything?)

What is the purpose of your blog?

You need to clearly define in your minds what your objective it – to interact and collect/share information – or let people know about who you are (ie promote your business). It is a subtle difference, and it has two very different audiences. New clients don’t want the noise, and to new clients the quality and comment/origin is important. It is about building a relationship – and understanding who your relationship is with.

Surely ‘the market’ will decide whether a blog has value or not, and whether there is time to engage, read, conversate, or whatever. Whether it’s worth reading or whether it’s complete garbage?

This issue of ‘control’ interests me. Be it quality or quanitity. I subscribe to over 20 different blogs. I read several newspapers and magazines. I have access to 50 TV channels. I don’t read or watch them all the time and not from cover to cover, or end to end. Some views and opinions I like, and some I don’t, and the mix of those is what get’s my juices flowing.

Maybe we’ve become overly reliant on ‘the editor’? Suddenly we get into an environment where there isn’t one and we get twitchy?

And Michael, uh, or was that Mike? Quoting Uncle Ben was a pretty desperate move me thinks.

Start with a conversation – that’s what our blog (any blog for that matter!) is about, eavesedrop on any discussion, and add or take away your two pence worth. Cherry pick if you like – if you have the time.

And that’s my question – do people have the time to wade through opinions … regardless of who offers them?

(Mike, let me know when you get the eyebrow thing right, cause I still haven’t managed to – and I’ve been trying ever since I saw Paul Viv do the spoof!)

You are partly wrong. This blog is an “open space” where people who want to connect with TomorrowToday can do so. It is as much about sharing “our information” as it is about getting our network to share its information with us. We deliberately do not make a distinction between the two, since we see the need to create the future as a collaborative effort, rather than a teacher-pupil environment.

Even if we were to let you know who was “part of” TomorrowToday and who was not, it would not help you. TomorrowToday is not that type of company. As an organisation trying to live the values of a 21st century, virtual, fractal, networked, professional services firm, the individuals in the organisation have their own positions on issues which may differ from the “majority” position. However, neither the majority nor minority positions could be labelled “the TomorrowToday position”.

If that’s too post-modern for our clients, I am not sure what we can do to assist them other than making ourselves available to answer any questions they may have about who we are and what we do. That would be our preferred method anyway – for our clients to see this blog (and our website) as an invitation to interact, rather than a position statement.

One of the advantages of using Blogger.com is the fact that you can choose to allow people to post anonymously to your blog. This sets up some really interesting dynamics.

If I was able to post as Michael, would people view my opinions differently? Would my comments hold more weight? Is that what free speech is about?

Careful Michael, it starts with people mentioning our names in a comment together – next thing you know we’ll be competing for your spot at Top Billing. You just have to help me out with the eyebrow thing…

Is blogging for everyone? I have been bold in theorising that blogging is becoming a necessity. But maybe I’m wrong. I know of companies that still keep their customer database on a Cardex system (aaaargh). Like crocodiles who survived whatever it was that wiped out the dinosaurs, they continue to function in a world that has outgrown them.

Although eveything in me wants to resist control, regulation, rules and censorship, I am aware that (to quote Uncle Ben in Spiderman), “with great power comes great responsibility”. Is effective blogging about respect? I’m not sure…

Firstly, if we want absolute fact, we’ll check encyclopaedias, what I get from this blog is great opinions about stuff. I think if you start over-regulating your content you loose a lot of what makes you unique. I find that blogging is quite self-regulating, a few times, when we’ve been wrong about something on our blogs, we get corrected within hours by a reader. That rocks. Also, I think you have no quality issues here at all, it’s one of my favourite reads.

The second thing, and I know I’m be ridiculously anal here, but it kills me whenever you refer to individual posts as blogs. A blog is the site. A post is the individual article. Sorry, I’m such a girl/geek…!