video: staff blogs at sun microsystems

Sun, like many corporations large and small, has a staff blogging policy. But more uncharacteristically, the company has embraced, from the top down, members of staff blogging. According to Simon Phipps, Chief Open Source Officer at Sun, the company doesn’t want a customer’s first contact with the company to be with a PR or Marketing professional, but with the person who actually wrote the software.

It’s a good thing the company is so forward thinking, or perhaps it’s because they are – the Sun Staff Blogs Portal lists 3288 blogs and 69,440 posts. About 10% of the total Sun workforce uses the inhouse blogging platform (derived from Roller), with perhaps 20% of those actually posting there. Other members of staff use their own blogging platforms, which isn’t forbidden, and simply let the Sun staff blogging portal know the URL of their RSS feed for inclusion there.

There’s more useful information in Simon’s presentation, the first 10 minutes of which I’ve captured on video and posted here:


Download Video (9mb mp4)

[Website forBlogs and Social Media Forum 2, London, 05 June 2007.]

One Comment

  1. Indeed. Less is more. If a politician could answer just yes or no sometimes. They’d stand out a mile above the fray.
    thats a great quote Robin.

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