Remembering to reflect on your own journey

Last week I had a telephone conversation with Liz Azyan about the progress that Devon has made around social media etc since we spoke last on this topic late 2009.

One of the great things conversations like that do is make your reflect on how far you and your organisation has come in that time.

One thing I haven’t been doing very well lately is looking back through my own blog and seeing how my thinking has evolved, how ideas developed and changed as well as how my approach has changed…This is actually very empowering and liberating to see first hand that I have made progress individually, my thinking in some areas has come to light and made practical difference to people working for the council.

It also shows me where I have left behind some ideas in favour of news ones, but I haven’t clearly articulated to myself that I’ve changed direction and that is something I find important as my mind is full of “stuff” and I need to make practical steps to make sense of that in ways that not only I can understand but others.

I thought I’d take a look at my blogs footprint through a wordle and get a sense of the topics I blog about using my blogs RSS feed. (

When I looked back at the content I posted on my blog during January of 2010 – a whole 2 years ago now – I was in a different mindset, a different world almost…I was in fact in a completely different job, one focused more on strategy first than practical application….whereas now I have to think about both of those in equal measure.

I blogged a total of five times and the majority were about risk and governance and of course there was the now compulsory UKGovCamp blog post (January is the UKGovCamp Rock Fest Month)

However one post, which was more of a link to previous thinking and external blogging content was the Facebookisation of the Enterprise post – essentially suggesting and proposing what could happen if the IT department behaved more like facebook and created a platform for stuff to be built upon.

I’ve taken aspects of the thinking around that and have taken this into the Content Strategy I am writing.  It is interesting to see how little ideas last and evolve into other aspects of my thinking.

So in looking at all of this, I’ve decided to be more reflective overall and to first look back at my own thinking before I write something on the blog, or use that challenge of my own thinking as the basis of a blog post itself.

Do you reflect on your own blog posts? How has your thinking evolved over the months and years you’ve been blogging?

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confused of calcutta >> More on the Facebookisation of the enterprise

Following on from my post last year about intranets and what drivers do local government need for them.

This post by Confused of Calcutta starts to not only articulate what people need internally in “facebook terms” but also pulls out the fundamental changes that IT departments need to go through.

It will be important for IT departments to get the basics right and to offer real value to staff. This also means that IT will need to truly understand the business it sits within.

Can we say that IT departments in the public sector really understand the nature of the business they are a part of. Probably not, but then again can anyone really understand the true breadth of public services.

If the IT department was made to behave like Facebook, what would an enterprise look like?

via More on the Facebookisation of the enterprise – confused of calcutta.

I like the question, it starts to make you think about what your IT offering should be and how you can align that with the business. This also requires IT to change from just being a “Provider” of services to an “Advisor”, helping and understanding the business achieve its business goals and strategies. I have recently commented on a post by Todd Biske which also highlights the shift IT has to go through.