Ed Brill

By now there is little to add to the story of Robert Scoble's decision to depart Microsoft.  I heard hints of this months ago, and am not surprised given work/life balance stuff that dad would want to be nearer to son.  Plus there's the whole bargain of the deal -- in Scoble's blog entry about his job change, he hints at his Microsoft salary being close to US$85,000.  Microsoft was getting a huge bargain for all the positive goodwill that one man generated for that company.  Anyway, I wish Scoble the best of luck in his new role and hope to see him again at another geekdinner/nerddinner kinda thing in the future.

One of the other things that Robert Scoble did for Microsoft was evangelize the value of "corporate blogs".  One of the unseen audiences for my weblog is the internal IBM audience.  I think Scoble was very successful at using his blog as a bit of a "bully pulpit" -- getting other Microsoft groups/individuals to see things differently.  His audience wasn't just customers, partners, and competitors -- it was co-workers, too.

In my travels, I often hear how many IBMers are reading edbrill.com.  Somewhere around 5% of all hits come from ibm.com addresses -- and that obviously ignores the IBMers that originate from comcast.net and hundreds of other work-at-home ISPs.  I've seen a lot of good come from IBMers who happen across this blog, choose to read it because they've worked with me, or the occasional link to the blog which I've sent to customers.  This becomes a looping process -- IBMer gets value, keeps reading.  It's even inspired some of my colleagues to start blogging on their own.

But what I've never done is "out" the IBMers reading this blog.  Certainly I have a vague mental picture of this, but I've never explictly asked...until now.  If you are an IBMer who regularly reads this site, please leave a comment on this entry with your name and title.  It's optional -- I know some of you (especially those IGS Exchange guys :-)) probably aren't up for the public exposure, and that's fine.  On the other hand, if you're willing to share those details, I think the rest of the readership will get an idea of just how far-reaching blogging has become at IBM.  If you're feeling really gutsy, leave a comment as to why you read this blog (and other IBMers who blog, if you wish), and if/how it has helped in doing your job and focusing on customer success (a core IBMer value).  I honestly don't know where this will go myself -- but I bet I'll have some idea by the time I hit the ground in Dublin on Wednesday.