This message says it was posted by Cathy, but it is really from Eric. I posted it to begin discussion and my response to Eric follows:
I've been ignoring my email for a few days, but I did get the message and have now signed in.

While I think it is great that you're encouraging us to communicate, I have to say that I'm a little skeptical of a blog. I'm not sure what advantage it has over e-mail except that it is something new, and people tend to have fun with a new thing and might use it more (until it isn't new anymore). Otherwise e-mail actually seems better. We could enhance the e-mail experience by creating a mailing list (like with Yahoo! Groups or something) so that you have a single address to reach all subscribers, people manage their own e-mail address changes, you end up with a searchable archive of messages, etc.

So I don't want to derail what you're trying to do, but I've had some experience with things like this at work. The pattern we've seen there is:

1. Introducing the new portal site, where you can communicate with everyone in the company using this cool and simple web page!
2. Flurry of activity, wow this is cool, communication happens.
3. People get busy and forget to check the page.
4. Because people forget to check the page, fewer posts show up.
5. Because fewer posts show up, people check the page less frequently.
6. Still fewer posts. Does anyone actually read this?
7. If I want to be sure someone reads this, I'd better send e-mail.
8. Cool portal site abandoned.

Feel free to persuade me otherwise. Or if you want me to look more into a mailing list and offer advice that way, I can do that too. Or if you want to debate it as a group we could do that -- but I didn't want to post "seditious" comments to the blog.

Love,
Eric

posted by Cathy Crandall at 10:18 AM