Turning process into content

Thanks to Paul Henderson for pointing out this post by Robin Hamman at cybersoc.com. This is another, much more useful, angle on what I was saying in my 'Email's broke . . . and it ain't worth fixing' item.

He says:

When I give presentations about blogging I'm frequently asked:

"How much time does it take to have a successful blog? How much time do I spend blogging?"

These are important questions but I find them almost impossible to answer because I don't think of my days as being parceled into times I am blogging and times I'm not. I think of blogging as a process - a process that not only generates content at the end, but that itself can become content. That is, I try to turn the processes and tasks I'd already do as part of my job into content.

When we developed our bid to run the Innovation Exchange online and in the open people said "but people could steal your ideas". In a very embarrassing incident someone told my dad that I was "mad". On this Robin says:

Share your rough notes, meeting minutes and preliminary results as soon as you can. Sure, there's always the risk that someone else might come along and nick your ideas but, unless you're publishing plans for a nuclear reprocessing plant, it's a lot more likely some helpful soul will pitch in with a helpful comment, pass you a link or contact, or tell you you've got it just plain wrong before you spend too much time and effort on the idea.

This is exactly what happened with the IE. And we got the opportunity to demonstrate what we are; an open collaborative organisation. Contrast that with the traditional, cloak and dagger, approach to bid writing. In this situation, no one knows you are bidding. You're lucky if your bid is read by more than an over-worked procurement officer. Around 500 people read ours, 90 contributed and we got nominated for an award!

One comment by Tom van Aardt on Robin's piece also struck a chord with me:

Here's another tip for turning a process into content:
Don't email it if you can blog it. Instead of sending out emails - or worse still mass emails - blog things that you need to share with other people. Unless it's highly sensitive, it'll get more feedback as it's open to more people. Email still has a place, but most ideas improve as they're discussed by more people.

There . . . if I'm mad then I'm not the only one!