Steve Richards: Sorry Ed but you are not a Scoble!

June 15 2006

Steve Richards claims that I compared my blog to Robert Scoble's, that he knows Robert Scoble, that Robert Scoble was a friend of his...and that Ed, you are no Robert Scoble:

Ed I don't see any of these characteristics in your blog,  for me your focus is on debunking Microsoft marketing, and I readily admit that you have some valid points to make there,  I no [sic] for sure that most people would prefer you and your peers to blog about your great products and processes, to encourage a whole host of passionate developers, users and consultants working with your technologies to share their passion and expertise.
Let's be clear -- In my posting from Monday, I didn't say that I'm blogging like Robert Scoble.  I said that, like Scoble, one of the audiences I reach is my peers and colleagues within my company.  Scoble seems to agree with me as to this value in his posting yesterday:
Ed Brill, of IBM, notes that corporate blogs are often best used to talk to internal audiences. I totally agree. There's something about putting an idea in public that gets it considered a lot more strongly than just writing an email to a contained group of people.
Anyway, Steve is one of a few people who have been vocal in telling me in the last few weeks that I'm spending too much time attacking/defending vis-a-vis Microsoft, and not enough time touting the great and wonderful stuff going on with Notes and Lotus.  I actually agree.  I don't like to have to spend all this time on defense.  I would like to be telling more good stories about stuff going on with Notes today and plans for the future.  But:
  • As noted elsewhere, defense is a necessary play on this playing field today.  For far too long, IBM/Lotus took the sucker punches and dirty tactics without so much as a peep.  The weblog offers a way to reach hundreds of customers, simultaneously and unfiltered, to clear up issues and concerns.  I've learned that this is working quite well -- at one customer, a recent blog posting completely ended discussion/question about the future Notes roadmap.  That's payback for me, so I'll keep doing it.
  • I could do more to challenge IBM and Lotus, positively and professionally, in this blog.  Part of why I asked the other day for IBM readers to identify themselves is so that we all can do this -- commentors as well as me as author.  I hope that seeing that there are dozens of key IBM contributors reading this site is inspiring more people to participate in discussions (with valid names and e-mail addresses) here in the future.
  • I do intend to broaden some of the topics I write about.  I've had some personal focus challenges in the last few weeks.  In the next few, I really do want to start to think about how to write about collaboration more broadly.
One very important point I need to respond to from Steve's blog posting -- I do actually blog on my own time.  Well, it's hard to tell what "my own time" is, really, with a job that spans the globe and where I work from home.  But blogging is not mentioned anywhere in my IBM job description or performance evaluation -- it's a means to an end, in part, in terms of having a clear and open channel to reach my customers. But it's not my job.  My job is to make Notes sell -- and for me, the blog is a tool that helps with this.

There's another question floating around this week that's related to Steve's posting.  Steve says "Robert truly evangelized new technologies, ways of working and cultural change not just within Microsoft but across the industry".  I don't sit in a chair where I can do this for IBM.  I do, at times, get jazzed about some of the incredible innovation coming out of our development and research teams.  And I will write about it.  But I can't be a catalyst for JSR942 and XML-SOAPDISHbis.  That's just not my expertise.  

I also can't be the source for answers to unconfirmed rumors about IBM.  There was a blog post this week about marketing changes going on within Lotus.  I've been asked by a couple of customers for official comment about Volker's blog entry.  I can't do that.  It's not that I don't want to share news and information about what's going on inside Lotus -- it's that I can't do that when it's IBM confidential information.  The new marketing VP isn't confidential, but I didn't think it was really all that relevant to my readers (though I'm happy to have yet another talented one-timeLoti back in the fold).  The rest?  What can I say?  Nothing.  It's not appropriate.  Am I reading?  Of course.  Am I discussing internally?  Often.  And that's one of the benefits of blogging and having a great network as a result of it -- I get to channel "finger on the pulse" feedback that the organization wouldn't necessarily get otherwise.  It's sometimes a one-way channel, and it's always going to be that way.  While Volker is a great friend and excellent journalist, it doesn't please me to see postings like his.  I don't want IBMers to leak information to outside sources, especially because the information is often inaccurate or incomplete.  Even linking to Volker's blog is probably not a smart move -- it could be perceived as encouraging to other colleagues to leak other rumors or half-baked/incomplete information (which is, he says politically, neither confirmation nor denial about anything that Volker wrote!).

So Steve, I'm not trying to be Robert Scoble.  I am trying to learn from Scoble and other "corporate bloggers" what I can do to be a better communicator and a better blogger.  My technorati top 5000 (ish) ranking and hit counts (on some days, not far off from Scoble's!) seem to say that things are good, but of course they can be better.  Constructive criticism is always appreciated.

(PS: Steve, your comments system is incredibly burdensome.  I know I need to upgrade and be able to trackback, but I don't have the energy to create yet another username/password on some system somewhere just to tell you that this posting is here).

Ed Brill Bhaile Átha Cliath, Éire (Dublin, IE) Category: Add/View Comments [26]

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  1. 1  Bruce Elgort http://www.bruceelgort.com | 6/14/2006 10:56:44 PM

    { Link }

  1. 2  Gregg Eldred http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf | 6/14/2006 11:20:19 PM

    Steve writes about IBM blogging or blogging on IBM products "...that there are so few and that they rarely show much passion for the great products that IBM has in this area." A lack of passion? Did he see the blogosphere when an Analyst released a certain report? :-) The Show-n-Tell Thursday posts are mining the great minds all around the Notes/Domino product areas. The number of bloggers that have an interest in this space is pretty incredible (although I do think that there is always room for more). And the stuff that was coming out of 'Sphere jazzed a lot of people up. While we have only one podcast, { Link } , it packs a lot of punch. Look at all of the blogs that you link to, those are just the tip of the iceberg. Hit any one of your links and see what those people are linking.

    While you may be a "Scoble-equivelant" at IBM (meaning a face for IBM/Lotus), I enjoy your style much better. And Robert was in a position where he could take his video camera all over the MS campus and report on the stuff that was/is going on. You do not have that type of job. But maybe this is an area that IBM/Lotus can take a page from the MS Playbook and use.

    Wow, I can't believe that I actually wrote so much! Rock on, Ed.

  1. 3  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 6/15/2006 1:43:40 AM

    @2 Gregg, we do have more than one podcast. LotusUserGroup.org has been doing "podcasty goodness" from several events, including plans for some from tomorrow's Irish Notes User Group meeting. { Link } and more.

  1. 4  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 6/15/2006 3:52:30 AM

    I don't get this "lack of passion" angle. On one hand we are told that there is no excitement in the IBM blogging world. On the other hand we are told this:

    "... If it's MS vision = boring; IBM vision = exciting - so what. Exciting isn't normally what makes money in IT."

    { Link }

  1. 5  Steve Richards http://steves.blogharbor.com/blog | 6/15/2006 6:10:29 AM

    Ed as I hope you realised my purpose in making the post was to nudge you in a more productive direction and not to attack you. Whilst I think your blog is very useful, I really do believe that there is a lot that IBM can learn from Microsoft about creating a buzz around your products and I think you can push the boundaries of what you blog on to try and achieve that.

    As you note in this post "at one customer, a recent blog posting completely ended discussion/question about the future Notes roadmap" your blog is really useful, but also note that this post is exactly the sort of positive post I was trying to encourage you to write. Also Ed whilst a flame war is definitely of no interest to me I don't think I ever implied in my post that "he knows Robert Scoble, that Robert Scoble was a friend of his...and that Ed, you are no Robert Scoble" my point was actually more about the fact that Roberts blog was not really a corporate blog, it was a personal blog and Robert was on a personal crusade, your blog is very different and that's the point I was making. As you say "I don't sit in a chair where I can do this for IBM" well neither did Robert, his Microsoft role was not to evangelise blogging and RSS and to bully Microsoft into implementing it, but he still did it because his was a personal blog.

    I hope you see this as constructive debate and I would be quite happy to discuss this further, but not via counter blog posts, feel free to email me and I would be happy to talk to you.

  1. 6  Steve Richards http://steves.blogharbor.com/blog | 6/15/2006 6:18:19 AM

    Sorry, I forgot to say in the previous comment that maybe in order to make the general point I wanted to make to you, I didn't give enough attention to the point you were trying to make. You said "I said that, like Scoble, one of the audiences I reach is my peers and colleagues within my company" I do completely agree with you and also agree that Scoble does that as well.

  1. 7  Steve Richards http://steves.blogharbor.com/blog | 6/15/2006 6:29:14 AM

    Responding to Gregg, I agree that there is a small amount of momentum building around the blog and RSS communication channel coming out of IBM/Lotus but it is nowhere near as mature as in the Microsoft space, and there is a lot to improve. I don't believe that it's an issue of resources, rather it's an issue of corporate willingness to embrace the medium and that's why I keep prodding poor old Ed because he's the only person to have stuck his head above water. I would for example like to see more blog posts from researchers in IBM working on collaboration and productivity, more blogs by product managers, architects and developers, more video's and more podcasts. Some of this I would like to see from the community, but to get the ball rolling I would like to see more evangelism sponsored by IBM. Oh and by the way I am not sure which analyst report you meant, but if it was from the Radicati group then I was pretty involved { Link }

  1. 8  Stu Downes http://www.sdownes.co.uk | 6/15/2006 7:07:23 AM

    The one point that should be taken from this is that IBM need to do more blogging, in a similar way to the MS blogs. Focus on the technology and services. I love Mary Beth Raven's blog and think more should be encouraged both for products and solutions.

  1. 9  The Technocrat www.geeklimit.com | 6/15/2006 9:31:03 AM

    Maybe it was meant as a compliment? Not sure about anyone else, but I've had scoble in my feed reader three times, and only was able to stand it for a few weeks before I took it out.

    Ed, on the other hand, is why I started blogging and was the first/is still in my feed reader.

    The reason is simple: I'd much rather read intelligent, technology-focused writing from IBM and Microsoft, but IBM was the only one I get it from.

    The last time I had Scoble's feed in my reader, I wrote him off forever because for the last time, I was sick of hearing about Second Life, commenters on his kid's blog, parties he was going to, etc. To me, MySpace is the appropriate place for that garbage.

    Now Ed, you get into a little bit of travel blogging, and that's cool, because it's in context with what people are coming here for: an IBM perspective from an IBM employee. What set me off with Scoble was the constant posting about nonsense that had nothing to do with Microsoft, sprinkled with reports of him hanging around people who were actually having a hand in Microsoft's business.

    In this sense, there is a big difference between being a corporate in-house reporter with a blog, and reading the blog of someone who actively has a part in the company's development. In a corporate blog, people seem to prefer the latter, which is why a comparison between edbrill.com and the scobleizer blog is ridiculous: edbrill.com is a true corporate blog, while the scobleizer blog was a personal blog that was stuck between being personal and corporate.

    The criticism of Scoble (at least from me, but I've heard this elsewhere) is that Scoble's position should have been handled by someone more technically- or business-oriented in the daily life of Microsoft, and it was increasingly frustrating to look to that blog for the "Microsoft equivalent of edbrill.com", and get a large percentage of personal content not affiliated with anything Microsoft.

    Sorry for the long comment, but I feel like it would be a shame for people to classify the Scoble blog as a corporate blog. Corp blogs have so much potential, as Steve details above, it would be a shame to have the blogosphere see Scoble as the image of a corp blogger, as that blog very much is not an ideal template for what a corporate blog should be.

  1. 10  The Technocrat www.geeklimit.com | 6/15/2006 9:34:11 AM

    @4 Ben: When people ask me if IT is exciting, I tell them, "IT is kind of like working in a fireworks factory, if things get exciting, you're doing something wrong." :-)

  1. 11  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 6/15/2006 9:52:22 AM

    @10, LOL.

    OK, so let's stick this out there: maybe the reason there aren't as many "visible" developer /technical weblogs from IBM is because they're actually producing code and shipping it on schedule?

    *cough*

    Yeah, cheap shot I know ;o)

  1. 12  Robert Scoble http://scobleizer.wordpress.com | 6/15/2006 10:01:31 AM

    I actually agree with Technocrat. I should have been more involved in Microsoft's business and reporting more directly on that. But, that's why Microsoft will do just fine without me. { Link } have lots of people blogging technology.

  1. 13  Doug Irvine  | 6/15/2006 10:08:30 AM

    On the subject of writing about other things. I'd love to hear you discuss the Web 2.0 threat. From very small companies that can start from scratch (instead of the Notes client) to giants like Google who one of these days will offer GMail for corporations, I don't think Microsoft is your only competition.

  1. 14  David DeWell http://workdomosphere.blogspot.com | 6/15/2006 10:11:02 AM

    You know, what I don't understand is if you are going to blog about something... take the time to type it up and think it through... then why not defend it.

    Steve, you seem to have forgotten that typing something does not allow for inflection. If you are truthfully trying to start a "discussion" about Ed, then why use your blog to respond to his blog posting. As you said in your reply in @5, "I hope you see this as constructive debate and I would be quite happy to discuss this further, <b>but not via counter blog posts</b>, feel free to email me and I would be happy to talk to you."

    Well, Steve, flame wars start like this. Maybe, if you were going to post something that could be taken in a context other than you wished, you could email Ed and discuss it with him first. Now it looks like you are attempting to clean-up a mess that you have started.

    I personally have no problem stating my opinion in my blog but before I do it, I realize that I may get some replies or emails that I may not like. But I definately think about that and wonder whether or not it is worth the grief if I feel I will get it.

    Oh, and Alan was very much on the money about the keynote address. Luckily, MS Media Player allows you to increase the speed. Made it a much better presentation in 2x speed.

  1. 15  Brian Benz http://www.softwaresoapbox.com | 6/15/2006 10:58:36 AM

    Ok, I went back and read both posts.....

    Ed, you are complementary to Scoble, you do compare the effects of blogging and credit much of the success of corporate blogging, rightfully so, to Scoble, but I didn't see any comparison of you to him.

    Robert, I assume the references to you in the past tense in Steve's post are a little annoying.....

    And Steve, you are no Lloyd Bentsen...

    ({ Link }

    ;)

  1. 16  Steve Richards http://steves.blogharbor.com/blog | 6/15/2006 11:52:18 AM

    For David, I did actually post on my blog at the same time as I responded to this post. I posted a comment to my original post, which provided a link to this discussion thread. I thought that was most productive. My post was as follows "Ed made a considered reply to my comments which you can find here if you are interested { Link } it's a useful balance piece and points out some mis reading on my part, but there is definately some value emerging from the debate"

  1. 17  David DeWell http://workdomosphere.blogspot.com | 6/15/2006 12:27:30 PM

    @16 - Well, then that is fine. I would find a discussion fine, but a slamfast is not needed in a forum such as this pertaining to two distinguished individuals in the blogging community and IT industry such as Ed Brill and Robert Scoble.

    Certainly, I can see where Ed would feel the need to respond to this post on your blog. My point is not that I felt you only responded on your blog, but the fact that you responded as a main topic of your blog in the first place.

    I felt Ed's post was definately not a narcissistic response as your title would infer, but a statement on how blogs have changed communication but externally and, more importantly, internally.

  1. 18  Steve Richards http://steves.blogharbor.com/blog | 6/15/2006 1:46:35 PM

    David, points well made. As I said on my own blog, I mixed up two issues, my frustration over the lack of enough good information in the blogsphere on what IBM is doing in the collaboration space, and my gut reaction to the title of Eds post and as I said I misread the detail of the post. When I read in the title of Ed's post "a simillar effect at IBM", I misread that as meaning the blogs were simillar. In fact Ed was asserting that the effect of the blogs was simillar when in fact the blogs were completely different. Blogs do have an incredible self correcting mechanism, which no other medium does, and the comment system allows for a considered view to be progressively arrived at. Thanks for keeping on prodding at me.

  1. 19  Steve Richards http://steves.blogharbor.com/blog | 6/15/2006 2:14:51 PM

    ... hopefully my last comment - this time for Ed, I have made some changes to the comment system, you can now comment without an account! Thanks for pointing that out, as I am always logged in making comments always seemed easy to me!

  1. 20  David DeWell http://workdomosphere.blogspot.com | 6/15/2006 3:43:49 PM

    @18 - Aww, Steve, my absolute pleasure. But prodding is a term that would suggest that I am annoying you with my responses. So with that, I shall detach from this comment thread.

    It was fun though. Nice to see a Microsoft advocate (or at least somewhat) have passion and intelligence in their posting. Appreciate the words.

  1. 21  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 6/15/2006 10:40:12 PM

    A lot said here.

    The comment about Web 2.0 is interesting -- I do look at things like gmail/zimbra in the e-mail space, and a lot of other tools... I'm frustrated that people see wikis as an either/or "versus" Domino (including some IBMers, unfortunately). I should write about some of this more, and not just from a "we're better" angle.

    David - "prodding" isn't always a negative, I think Steve was just pointing out that blogging, as opposed to other media, is not always a "write once and move on" approach. We've discussed this before, when Forbes published "Attack of the Blogs" last October. Doc Searls was the one who raised it at the time -- that Dan Lyons published his brouhaha and moved on, while bloggers typically will visit and revisit a story until they get it right and all the details are out there.

    Brian - thank you for catching my Lloyd Bentsen salute. :-)

    Last - @8 Stu is very much on the right point. I have been pushing other IBMers to blog. While I'm excited about "Hannover", I'd like Mary Beth Raven's site to become the authoritative one on the Notes "Hannover" UI. And Rocky's on the Notes/SAP connectivity. And Steve Castledine to be very open about how his blogging template is movin forward in 7.0.2 - and beyond! And Alan Lepofsky's - well, nevermind, he and I share the same goals of course...

  1. 22  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 6/15/2006 10:42:47 PM

    @21 ... you share the same goals because you are the same person! :)

  1. 23  Axel  | 6/16/2006 2:15:54 AM

    I came to the conclusion that its a matter of taste.

    Some love to read about alleged or real misachievements of Microsoft, others don't.

    So why not concede this little joy to the ones who like Microsoft bashing.

  1. 24  The Technocrat www.geeklimit.com | 6/16/2006 11:08:04 AM

    @12 Scoble: glad you agree. I actually think as a blogger, your work at the scobilizer isn't bad. The problem was with the marketing of it, as I'm sure you came to realize.

    No matter how good a blog is, if it's pointed at the wrong audience, or if the audience is expecting a certain type of content and doesn't get it (there is a difference between the two), there will be problems.

    Hopefully your new digs will let you keep doing what you want, without the expectations (assumptions) of an audience that is looking for Microsoft-insider-centric content.

  1. 25  Tony Cocks  | 6/17/2006 8:06:21 AM

    Blogs are best when they have a human face and this why Rob Scoble has been such a success in ■blogsville■, his honestly about Microsoft didn■t do any harm either. :o) Like Rob I think it■s really important to question the companies we work for and blogging is probably one of the best ways to do this....it is however about the spirit in which this is done. The Scobilizer I feel got the balance right.

    Ed knows me pretty well and hopefully won■t be offended if I say that edbrill.com could do with adding just a little Scobilization to the mix now and again.

  1. 26  Tony Cocks  | 6/17/2006 8:07:07 AM

    What no apostrophies? :o)