Tuesday, September 1, 2009

A note on my blogging obligations to myself and others

There are various blogs that you read which are either formally or informally connected to the blogger's business. For example, Jesse Stay's blog, while it is a personal blog, does in some way/shape/form represent the SocialToo product. Even Robert Scoble's personal blog does in some way/shape/form represent whoever is employing him at the moment.

Empoprises and its series of blogs is a little bit different. I definitely enjoy writing about business, music, the Inland Empire, and NTN Buzztime under the Empoprises banner. And I definitely enjoy writing stuff in Facebook and last.fm and FriendFeed and LinkedIn and wherever else.

But that's not my primary writing obligation.

You see, I had a day job that is not formally connected to any of the Empoprises blogs. And because my employer is paying my salary, my primary writing emphasis goes to my employer.

How does this manifest itself?

Well, for one, the vast majority of you will never see everything that I write. While I produce all sorts of stuff (including biometrics stuff) that shows up on Empoprise-BI and LinkedIn and elsewhere, my primary biometric blogging is performed behind the firewall. For several years, I have been the primary contributor to a corporate blog that is connected to the biometric industry. Therefore, when I run across a biometric story, my first obligation is to see if it would make a valid contribution to the behind-the-firewall corporate blog. If that's the case, you usually won't see it here...and if you do, it will appear here AFTER it's been shared behind the firewall.

Citing another example, I have been attending Oracle OpenWorld for the last several years, and I've been blogging about Oracle OpenWorld for all of those years. However, I don't pay my way to Oracle OpenWorld, and I don't get blogger credentials for Oracle OpenWorld. Since my employer pays my way, my primary writing obligations are to my employer. Because my employer really doesn't care about my trivia habit (beanbags or giveaway pillows), I'll share them here in my blogs.

So why do I mention this? I have my reasons.
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