(Thank you to CSIA for putting this event together. The following are brief notes taken as the event occurred. I hope this gives you the gist of what was said, and by whom. If I misquoted any of the speakers I hope they will contact me and give me the opportunity to correct my error. John Gaudio, J.G. -- john@gaudio.com I can be reached at 303-933-4497.)
Ben Wright was the Moderator. Panelists included:
Jeremy Wunsch, Data Forensics
Chris Leh, Holland & Hart
John Carmichael, NewsGator
Dan Ogdon, eBags
Ben says that blogging can be very very scary, there are 10 million blogs out there.
Dan asked, What is a Blog?
A personal Journal. The blogosphere has a very long tail. That is for every famous well known blogger there are many less famous bloggers. (This is just one aspect of the long tail, another describes the frequency with which search terms occur. J.G.)
80,000 new blogs are created daily. Big events cause spikes in blogging.
Is the blogosphere talking about you? Technorati, a search tool for blogs, can tell you.
Searching for "Dell Hell" in Google comes up with 2.4 million results. One influential blogger complained about Dell service, and many others, (the long tail) jumped on the bandwagon. Look for "micropersuasion", a white paper on the subject.
Corporate Blogging, your people tell the story.
Partnership Blogging, Get others to blog for you.
Blog frequently.
Examples include Ice.com & BlueFly.com.
This is excellent for organic search.
Increase customer acquisition, (the finding of new customers J.G.)
Provide a personal face to your company.
Syndicate content.
Keep control of your brand, and more.
Approach blogging as a media channel. Calvin Klein, Budget Rent-A-Car, and Monopoly take this approach using their "body bloggers" and hope that other bloggers, parts of the tail, will follow.
Benefits of Partnership Blogging include extending the brand by harnessing affiliated communities.
What about RSS? (It stands for Real Simple Syndication J.G.), and is just a little peep that comes when a piece of software contacts a favorite blog or site, which then let's you, the RSS subscriber, know that something new is there for you, and gives you a brief description of what to expect. This is done through an RSS reader.
Some RSS readers can be found at Bloglines.com & NewsGator.com.
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John Carmichael, NewsGator
RSS, Really Simple Syndication, All you need to know. A simple way of publishing.
Publish whatever your thoughts are about yourself, your company or your cat.
Go to Google, put in a term of interest, and the word blog. You'll find someone blogging on it.
Companies both publish and monitor RSS feeds. Kryptonite could have nipped problem in the bud, but they didn't. It cost them 12 million dollars when they waited 7 weeks to address the problem of someone blogging about an easy way to pick their bicycle locks. They ignored the blogosphere to their detriment.
NewsGator started in 2002. Greg wrote his own program as a plug-in to Outlook. The sold 2000 plus at 29 dollars each, in a month.
Venture capitalists came on board. They're now in their 3rd round, unsolicited. They are the premier RSS aggregator in the space.
NewsGator went from 2 to 50 people in two years, and they're hiring.
All major media companies are now publishing RSS.
If you go daily to a website, you can instead subscribe to their RSS feed, and when something changes you'll be informed. The new information comes to you.
John has his own personal blog. If you publish a blog you will be found. If you don't want to be found. DONT WRITE A BLOG.
If a feed turns to crap, unsubscribe. With RSS you maintain control. This is much better than subscribing to an email newsletter.
RSS allows you to create a keyword persistent search. This means you can keep tabs on what you're interested in.
RSS is seeing exponential growth. There are 22 million RSS Feeds today.
Web 2.0 is about content. There are many products coming that include RSS built in. This will show up without us knowing it's there.
RSS can be a bandwidth hog. NewsGator Enterprise server can be a solution to this. It goes out once to a feed that many users use, then updates all those users. It also allows the company to configure it to subscribe some things to their employees automatically.
Put reports, notes, etc. into you blog. The boss can subscribe to your RSS feed, and know what you're doing. RSS picks up changes every hour, or at whatever rate you request.
Aggregators consist of a number of feeds. Feeds are like sections of a newspaper, posts are like articles.
http://csiaonline.blogspot.com is the new CSIA blog. (Currently it consists mostly of questions for this event, and descriptions of some major players. At some point in the future it may provide additional information on CSIA. J.G.)
Most of us live in Outlook. NewsGator can include the feeds to which you subscribe inside of your Outlook.
Try blogging, don't be afraid. Enjoy and have fun.
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Chris Leh, Cleh@hollandhart.com, Holland and Hart, the legal side of things.
Chris is attuned to the risks for his clients. He doesn't want them to be sued.
Company and individual liability.
Employment Law Meets the Blogosphere: 5 Challenges for Employers.
Old rules still apply. What's different? Blogs tend to be raw and revealing. They're inherently public, which poses tremendous opportunities for business. Big opportunities to mess up. You can't unring a bell.
Chris s an employment lawyer, not an expert on IP, but his company has such people if you need them.
If someone says something bad about you, do you want to sue them? Often the answer is no, though he's "delighted to take on those challenges" when it makes sense. ;-)
Future Judge Alitos who are blogging today may be in big trouble.
Danger #5, Blogging Employees,
NRLA Prohibits Retaliation for Concerted Activity. You don't have to be a union shop to be covered.
Colorado law prohibits termination for lawful activities when off the premises. Think twice before terminating someone for blogging on their own time.
There are some exceptions.
Ellen Simonetti, Fired by Delta, had photos taken in a plane in Delta uniform, and was fired when she put them on her blog site. Delta was OK as she had used Delta's IP on her blog.
Danger # 4
Use of Confidential Company Information.
Patentable Inventions
Trade Secrets
Confidential Information of Employer or Its clients.
Danger # 3 Harassment of Others
Defamation
Danger #2 Misrepresentations
Delegation of Key Functions to Untrained Personnel.
Marketing - False Advertising
Public Relations.
Danger #1 -- Electronic Discovery
Everything you say in a blog can and will be used against you...
-Products Liability - Repository
Much of discovery is e-discovery
Spoliation
Document Retention
Make sure you have a Policy Re Blogging During business hours.
________________
Jeremy Wunsch
Blogging, Protecting yourself against the risks.
LuciData, LLC,Presdent and Director of Data Forensics.
Human Nature, sometimes we brag about bad stuff, emails and other files hold our misdeeds.
Jeremy likes human nature. ;-)
What is Computer Forensics?
Reconstructing data as it was last week, ..2 years ago.
Passwords, Encryption, Deleting Web History, He will find it and give it to the lawyers.
"Emails are our friends."
Why do corporations call him?
Protection, you don't hear much about them because they try to stop the information from getting out and doing damage.
Internal Investigations,
Legal Discovery
Regulatory Compliance Review
Other Employment Related issues.
Current Challenges include Hot-mail and other messages that are stored in cache files, Jeremy can get them. Removable devices, USB drives, CDs iPod, Blackberry
Newsgroups - Posting Boards
Newest challenge - blogging
--Blogs pose new and potentially costly risks.
-- Unmanaged Weblogs put your company's assets, reputation, and future at risk.
Check out http://InternalMemos.com, http://FuckedCompanies.com.
Look for your company, look for your competitor's companies.
Are leaks intentional or unintentional? Marketing sometimes "leaks" a memo to improve their reputation.
Information leaves organizations freely. Security generally protects companies from incoming information.
Negative publicity is a big problem. Exxon, -> Valdez That's still what we think of when we hear Exxon.
Companies lose value in response to negative publicity leaks.
If you're going to blog, and he recommends that you do, do it carefully. Contact Chris at Holland & Hart. Establish policies. If you allow it, monitor it.
Be ready when IT happens, because IT will happen. The question is not if, but when.
Have a corrective action plan. You have to treat your employees the same.
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Questions:
Should start-ups consider a blog?
Yes,
Blog versus website? Reserve your domain name, consider establishing a blog first to save money. (Blogsites can serve both functions well. Check out Blogsite.com, J.G.)
What about ROI? It's a hard thing to determine. It will gain you traction.
The cost of a keyword search on the blogosphere is free.
If someone says something negative, is it incumbent upon me to correct it?
Answer, It might be. Regarding trade secrets you may need to say something to protect your IP.
Who is legally responsible for information that harms my business.
"Publisher" is legally responsible, just as a newspaper is responsible.
If someone else is posting on your site they are responsible, but you have some responsibility as well. An intermediary can give copyright information to the copyright office so that you can be notified.
Can the blog be suspended? In some ways, yes, but once information goes out it can be repeated in other places. It may never go away. You can refute something that's not true, and do it in big bold letters.
What about employees blogging? How can you take the risk? You must manage the risk. Create policies, and trust employees. You can also choose who you allow to blog on your own blogsite.
There are products that monitor what goes out of the company in blogs, chat, email, etc. Corporation should be monitoring this.
Warning, if you monitor, and you know information that you wouldn't otherwise know, there may be a liability issue. How much do you want to know.
Don't let your ad agency write your blog. People won't trust it. (also they don't use the same terms, so searches will not find you as well. J.G.)
McDonald's created a blog by a french fry. The blogosphere "ripped them a new one." Be honest.
Powerline.com recognized Rather's problem. The author was in a law firm which was fired by CBS. There can be a price.
Should I filter my blogs?
Hyperlinks like "luggage" may work better than ebags for findability as more people search for luggage than search for ebags.
If you accept comments make sure you filter them, and let people know that you filter them.
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