While DMI (please forgive me, Michael Beirut ;-) just held its first conference on “Empowered Innovation” the next European conference titled “Design Leadership” to be held in Amsterdam/NL from March 29-31, 2006 is already on its way.
In particular I’m proud that DMI invited me for running a Leadership Forum called: “Blogging for Design Leadership: What Corporate PR can’t say!”. The Leadership Forum Sessions are a recently added extension to the classical conference speeches held by keynote speakers. In contrast the Leadership Forum sessions rather emphasize the dialogue with a smaller group and are held parallel to other sessions. My main goal for this session is to discuss the opportunities that arise from sharing process knowledge (both via internal blogs as well as public blogs) and what to keep in mind when you enter the blogosphere with your company.
On one hand I agree with my former MBA student Oliver Thylmann (now founder of a web-startup with a focus on online performance marketing solutions) that “Blogging will loose the hype”:
“You will stop seeing reports that company x now does this blog thing. It will stop to be news and it will become something of a part of the marketing/media mix. This will when the growth will really take of, when not everything will be called blogging for the heck of it. The general idea of being open in your communication, allowing feedback, starting conversations, posts being displayed with newest first, attracting niches, … all this will become very important. …”
On the other I’ve had many conversations with a broad range of international business people about blogs. And unfortunately so far not too many did really grasp the considerable impact blogs might have within your organization as well as their impact on external (authentic) communication.
Therefore I’m driven by the following scenario: Imagine reading a diary say your own recordings from many years ago or the diary of a contemporary witness. Beside being interested in the” What” referring to events and facts, the “Why” issues reflecting on motives are usually far more interesting. By the same token blogging goes beyond telling your department or the public “What” you do. Blogs are about sharing the “Why” resulting in a win-win scenario for you and your audience.
If you find the time come and join the European Design Management community in Amsterdam. In case you have already registered and plan to join my session feel free to drop me a note on your questions and issues you’d like to have addressed. I’m looking forward to hearing from you :-)
