And in today’s energy-packed episode I rant about Adobe not selling VlogIt! in Australia; Nel and Sheville’s new book ‘How To Do Everything With Podcasting’ and the major cause of concern that I have with it; answer Sallie Goetsch’s question about “why vlog?” (Happy Birthday, Sallie!); and ask why Debbie Weil seems to have made such a very large faux pax.
Debbie’s actions have become a temporary discussion point in the blogosphere, particularly around the notion of ethics. Tris Hussey has weighed in in defence of Debbie (albeit with a few caveats), and so has Steven Lewis (and the conversation there includes input from Debbie herself). The conversation is also very lively over at Allan Jenkins’ post and at Dave Murray’s. Even Neville over at FIR has vocally weighed into it in the latest edition (#257).
As I commented on Steven’s blog, the reason for my surprise at Debbie’s actions are thus, and I accept that perhaps this is a reflection of our different nationalities:
Despite the fact that I have created blogs for some of my clients, I would never solicit ‘comments’ for them. At most I have let the world know, via my own blog, that the new blog exists and link across to it. It’s up to the reader of my blog if they want to click and go. If I feel that a particular post has ‘legs’ that aren’t been seen by folks, I might blog about it on my blog and again include a link across to the post. But that is as far as I would go.
I agree with Tris Hussey and others that the reason people have not left many comments may well be because the blog is boring (and yes, I accept the legislative constraints Debbie’s client is under. But why brand the blog as she/they did? Why not brand it as something non-product associated and leave a very clear disclaimer that the blog is sponsored by the client?).
I agree with Tris — I think the “don’t tell them you know me” was a key element to the uproar. Tris kindly ascribes this to humour on Debbie’s part. I’d therefore love to believe this is true and look forward to Debbie confirming it.
And I understand why she left off the names of the other email addressees (for privacy reasons); but I think she could have, in the body of the infamous email, listed the names of those she was contacting (because it was a very obvious ‘blanket’ email sent out to a whole load of folks, not an individually crafted one-to-one email).
All in all Debbie has been a fabulous advocate for social media within organisations; I am thus surprised by how she has gone about this particular project. Again, it may be to do with nationality differences and the nature of promotion within a tough town like Washington compared with the very ‘British’ approach we in Australia/Adelaide have.
The video
Here’s the video — if you subscribe via email you may not see it, but you can always catch it over at YouTube, where you can also subscribe to receive word of every new edition of my vlog as soon as it gets published.
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Debbie Weil
