Gimikera Is In
Your resident gimikera is here to share her expeditions in this journey called life.
On this day (June 14), everyone who is part of the blogosphere will celebrate the International Weblogger’s Day as a way of marking another year’s worth of changing the way the Internet sees personal journalism.
As a sign of solidarity, I shall be drafting my own essays to answer the following questions:
1) Why did you start blogging, how long have you been doing so, and why have you continued?
2) Do you think webloggers have a lot of power? If so, what, and how can it be harnessed?
3) Why do you think weblogging has become so popular?
Why not create your own essay so we can join 7 million bloggers around the world in celebrating InWeDay.
Check out www.chronicled.org/intlblogday on how to become a participant.
Here’s my entry for this event:
Why did I start blogging?
Truthfully, I started blogging in 2003 since all my officemates were doing it. It was hosted in blogdrive and I didn’t pay much attention to it. We even created a common blog where we all served as authors but our interest in blogging waned until finally some of our blogs died a natural death. Still, others continued maintaining their blogs and made it part of their daily routine.
My interest in blogging resurfaced when I saw that a friend hosted her blog in Friendster. Her blog had a dynamic badge from Flickr and at that moment, I knew that I wanted to maintain a blog in Friendster too. Just a few days after my discovery, Friendster allowed its members to create blogs through an easy-to-follow procedure and just like that, I became part of the blogosphere once more. Since the day I created my first post on April 19, 2005, I’ve been improving my blog to best reflect my personality as a gimikera with a zest for life.
New Gimikera Is In banner
I have grand plans for my blog and hopefully, I can get started on my next project — creating a vlog or video blog.
5 Things I learned while browsing through blogs:
5. Your sidebar is just as important as your blog’s content. I often check out a blog’s sidebar first before reading the entries since I’m constantly on the lookout for ways to improve my own blog.
4. There is a thin line between browsing through blogs and lurking.
3. It’s nice to have a blog description at the top of your site so people can get the gist of your blog at a glance.
2. If you like a particular feature of a blog, ask the blogger how s/he did it. More often than not, bloggers are accomodating and will not hesitate giving you advice and pointing out useful resources you might not have heard of.
1. Blogmarking someone is the highest compliment you can give to a blogger.
Note: This entry will remain on top of my blog as a reminder to everyone about InWeDay. Keep on blogging everyone!
Update: Join 587 blogs in 43 countries worldwide celebrate International Weblogger’s Day. Go to www.chronicled.org/intlblogday and post a comment today.
As part of the celebration of International Weblogger’s Day (June 14), I’ve decided to republish this post from Rain, a fellow Filipino blogger who attended the First Philippine Blog Summit held last May 7, 2005 at the NISMED, UP Diliman. I wanted to attend this event as well but this was the day of my friend’s wedding so I wasn’t able to go. This event just shows that with the initiative of such groups like The U.P. Law Internet and Society Program, the Philippines is making steps to institutionalize the blogging phenomenon affecting the country today.
The morning part of the summit entailed the basic, more technical stuff. There was Abe, my webhost admin/owner, giving a primer on making a Blogger and Wordpress-powered blog, and there was Gail dela Cruz,
a designer who was big on Flash sites (I’d leave it out on the open: I
don’t advocate Flash sites, but it does have its audience, its
applications) . Pretty informative and concise, though terms like PHP,
CMS, CSS, XML, RSS, and probably half a dozen more acronyms were lashed
out, which I guess alienated a good number of the audience. If this was
a local Wordpress meetup -where
I’d imagine people swapping copies of plugins using each one’s USB
flash drives- deep-tech talk would be more than appropriate, but this
wasn’t anything that close.
Speakers for the afternoon were more focused on the creation fo relevant, creative content. CICT Commissioner Dondi Mapa
discussed the promise of utilizing weblogs in the dissemination of
information for his sector in government, while Palanca Awardee Dean Alfar
animatedly presented advice on how blogs can be a writer’s, or possibly
just any literati’s, alternative medium for expression. Third in line
was about the PCIJ group tackling Blogging and Journalism,
which I was intent on giving all-ears, since I do long for a heightened
relevance-level in weblogs, and was curious to see how this much
commended, independent media entity would go about it.
Lastly, we had a good serving of Connie Veneracion aka SassyLawyer/Pinoycook, who was a lot more spunkier than I expected. She was to discuss How to Build a Bookmark-Worthy Blog,
though I’d assume the audience was a little more enamored by her
stories, and frankness. This was actually the only period where I was
tempted to stand up and ask a question (about blog advertising, which
was just mentioned in passing by the earlier speakers). It was past 5
already though, and questions from then audience had to be cut short.
In light of the growing enthusiasm for blogging, there is a need to curb this practice especially when your job is at stake. There has been plenty of incidents when the freedom of expression of a blogger is overlooked in favor of maintaining a company’s image and corporate integrity. Don’t be another statistic by following these precautions when blogging about the workplace.
Can You Be Fired for Blogging?
By Kate Lorenz, CareerBuilder.com
It was Merriam-Webster Online’s No. 1 word of 2004, and Fortune magazine named it the No. 1 tech trend for 2005. Two surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in November 2004 found that 8 million people say they have created one and almost one-third of Internet users say they read one. But it’s still a mystery: Six-of-ten
Internet users say they don’t know what "blog" means.
A blog, according to Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, is "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks provided by the writer."
Bloggers write about their lives to keep friends and family up-to-date, talk about their industry, discuss hobbies or rant about their favorite reality TV show. But posting pictures of you at work, disclosing confidential information about your employer, or bad-mouthing your co-workers could get you in hot water for committing
inappropriate behavior.
Whether or not it’s intentional, divulging dirt about your job can spell trouble at work. Ellen Simonetti, a flight attendant for Delta, learned this the hard way.
Simonetti started a blog as a way to cope with her mother’s death because she found it easier to write about her feelings than talk about them. She described it as an anonymous, semi-fictitious account of life as a flight attendant — and she lost her job because of it.
Simonetti claims her termination resulted from pictures posted on her Web site, which show her in uniform aboard a Delta airplane. "The only reason I was given was the very vague phrase: `inappropriate pictures in uniform.’ Delta will not define what `inappropriate’ means, nor tell me which pictures they found `inappropriate’," she says. When
asked about the issue, a Delta representative said the company does not discuss internal employee-related issues with the media.
Whatever bloggers are writing about work, employers don’t like it. Employees have reportedly been fired for blogging at a number of companies, including Starbucks, Delta, Wells Fargo, Friendster and Kmart.
In a January 2005 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), only 3 percent of human resource professionals report disciplining an employee for blogging and none reported dismissing an employee for such behavior. Despite this, ejected bloggers stand by
their claims.
What could be grounds for termination? If you are disclosing trade secrets or proprietary or confidential information on your blog or using excessive amounts of time when you should be working, it’s possible you will reap the consequences, says Rosemary Haefner, vice
president for human resources at CareerBuilder.com.
"Companies need to do their best to not only protect their interests, but protect their employees," says Jeremy Wright, fired blogger and founder of InsideBlogging, a blog consulting company. "Most firings are due to individual bosses taking drastic measures; it is rarely a
higher company decision. When a blogger is going to be fired, the HR team needs to be sure it is for the right reason and that reactive measures simply aren’t being taken due to fear or personal issues."
If you’re thinking of starting your own blog or already have one, here’s some advice to make sure your online diary isn’t reason for your employer to let you go:
1. Know where your company stands.
Ask about the company blogging policy before you start, even if you are doing it anonymously, Simonetti advises. Does your company establish boundaries? Is blogging acceptable? Is it OK to mention your employer? Are there topics that are off-limits? What are the consequences?
2. Blog on your own time.
If you are using company hardware, a company network or doing it on company time, you are likely bound by company policy and could be reprimanded or terminated for wrongful use, Haefner says.
3. Practice safe blogs.
"Employees who go around sharing negative or confidential information about their company, product, or service — either internal or external — to the company would and should get fired," says Pete Quintas, CTO of SilkRoad Technology, creator of an enterprise blogging
application called Silkblogs. "You need to be honest and not secretive about what you are writing unless you are willing to deal with the consequences."
4. Don’t hide it from your boss.
Quintas says you should be honest about your blogging, and ask your employer if it is OK to do. "I would consider it analogous to asking your employer: ‘I have been invited to speak on a panel at this industry conference; can I participate?’"
5. Use good judgment.
If you consider blogs and the Internet an extension of your voice, what you say on your blog about your company, product or service should be kept within the guidelines of what you would verbally say in public, according to Quintas. "Treat it with the same restraint of how you talk in person about your company, remembering that more people have access to what you say." he suggests. "Don’t say anything different than what you would say at a happy hour, or at a company holiday party, or at an industry trade show, or in front of a customer."
6. Others will disagree with you.
You can’t please all people all of the time. As with any
communications medium, the best advice is to be aware of the repercussions your decisions may have, Wright warns. "Anytime you post, you are effectively making a choice between being safe, and having something worthwhile to say. It’s a rare occasion where you can both please everyone and come up with a new and engaging line of thought. Sometimes things you say will offend people, no matter where you’re saying them."
