Blogging Success and –deleted–

By Jake • May 29th, 2008 • View Comments

DangerIronically, as I wrote my FAQ post on starting a blog, ORACLENERD was blogging his termination.

The reason, his blog.

The coincidence is multi-fold:

  1. The ‘NERD underlines why enterprise people are generally wary of blogs–writing blogs, having blogs written about their company, having people who work at their company write blogs.
  2. The only reason I know about the ‘NERD at all is because his blog is aggregated into Eddie’s OraNA.info.
  3. He threw me a trackback a few weeks ago, pointing me to an interesting article.

He’s not sharing (or I can’t find) the details about his termination, but the tag “humility” tells a lot about his story and attitude. The summary version seems to be that he blogged something he shouldn’t have.

Blogging is a hot potato. Dan makes an interesting observation in comments:

I think it’s strange that some places fire employees over what they blog or that they have a blog. I’m much more likely to hire a candidate if they do have an active blog. Different strokes, I guess.

Many companies agree and have embraced blogging and transparency, e.g. 37signals, Sun, and Twitter, whose most recent posts openly admitted and apologized for architectural shortcomings.

Right, wrong or indifferent, if you blog long enough, you’ll eventually cross into that gray area; remember Mark Jen?. The good news is that the ‘NERD is being professional and taking accountability, which only adds to his stock.

Like Mark Jen, I’m sure he’ll land on his feet somewhere; we’re hoping it’s soon, and he’ll keep blogging, under the watchful eyes of his new editor, his wife.

Good luck ‘NERD, keep us updated.


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  • Thanks Jake, I appreciate your support.

    My wife got a chuckle out of her mention...because of course I'm sitting here at home with her playing crosswords and other stuff I don't normally get to do. ;)

    I haven't completely decided whether I will re-blog what got me fired. I'm a bit gun-shy right now. I want to, but I want to make sure I do it right (and wifey approves it)!

    chet
  • My wife serves as my sounding board too. Having free time is a great luxury you won't often get; of course, affording it is another matter.
  • I wish 'NERD all the best.

    I read another interesting blog post on the exact same topic posted today itself by Jeremiah Owyang -- " The Many Challenges of Corporate Blogging." Very interesting list of challenges.
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