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Monday, February 20, 2006

Commons kick-off

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The Communication Commons is up and running.

I’ve been working on the Commons with IABC staff—notably Publications VP Natasha Spring and CTO Chris Hall—for many months, and it’s gratifying to see something online. Now we just need to content to start flowing!

The idea behind this latest online effort from IABC is based on the traditional definition of a commons—some land near town to which all the villagers have access. This bit of virtual property is near IABC, but everybody online can visit and participate. The Commons is, essentially, a community of communication-focused blogs. In its launch phase, three blogs are up and running:

• Employee Communications
• Branding/Marketing
• Measurement

As time goes by and we iron out the various wrinkles from the Commons, we’ll add more. We’re thinking about blogs focusing on media relations, ethics, crisis communications, nonprofit PR, investor relations, and several others. For each blog, we’ve recruited about five thought leaders from among the ranks of IABC’s memberships. We studiously tried to avoid the “usual suspects,” the luminaries who keep showing up as conference speakers, workshop leaders, and article writers. We wanted to find communicators who are outspoken, professional, and thoughtful, but otherwise unknown to the wider audience. Each of these individuals (most of whom have never blogged before) have agreed to post at least a couple times a week, ensuring a steady flow of commentary.

Meanwhile, on the main Commons page, Natasha and I will provide news and updates along with pointers to interesting conversations taking place on the various Commons blogs.

There’s still a lot of work to be done on the Commons infrastrcture. It makes sense (as Neville pointed out in today’s podcast, during which we discussed it) to have the IABC logo somewhere on the pages. And Chris Hall has been developing bio pages where you can learn about each blog’s contributors. That should be up in a week or so.

But content is already there. The contributors were notified Saturday that the blogs are ready for their contributions. Since today’s a holiday (President’s Day in the US), I expect we’ll start to see most contributions begin tomorrow, Tuesday. But Anders Gronstedt has already contributed a preliminary post to the Branding blog.

I’m excited about this. I love the idea of a community of group blogs dedicated to communication. And I love the idea that IABC members—real people doing real work—will help elevate IABC’s profile. After all, if this works the way we envision it, IABC should become a far more attractive membership to people in the communication profession who are impressed by the caliber of expertise displayed by the Commons bloggers.

I welcome your thoughts. But even more, I welcome your participation.