Blogging While Employed & Finding Value

I’m finding it difficult at times to keep my mind on work, mostly because I want to follow the threads of the tweets those I follow on Twitter are providing – and it’s time consuming to do so. There is so much good information out there about how social computing can transform an organization – or even an individual (see Nancy White’s wonderful article here) – and I want to study it all.

I’m not exactly a newbie to this stuff, as I’ve been tweeting for around a year now, I’ve had a blog for seven or eight years, and I’ve been a member of Facebook for quite some time as well. However, the exigencies of my work and family life have kept me from participating as fully as I would like to. This is especially true of my work life. I want to write about it but worry I should not do so, as it might be perceived as disloyal or, heaven forbid, tantamount to sharing information they do not want to make public. I know all about the first amendment, but I like my job – despite the company’s hierarchical, command-and-control past and (mostly) present.

Thankfully, there is change in the wind as more and more people are discovering just how useful social computing can be and how important it is to the future of our company – especially as the market for our services is changing and the need to move from strictly government contracting to far more commercial endeavors increases. Our reluctance to change, I’ve discovered, is not limited to my industry (see this post) – which I find heartening, if somewhat disquieting.