I just finished reading that article Bloggers Need Not Apply. It is an interesting writing of an employer’s view vis-à-vis blogging.

The reading leads me to ask myself a question: is blogging harmful to me when will come the time to seek for a job?

The question I have to ask is: why do I blog and what do I blog about?

I use my blog as a knowledge management tool. I mostly talk about my profession’s related subjects: computer sciences. The goals of this blog are simple:

• The first goal of that blog, one year ago, was to increase my English skills. Then it evolved to:
• To have a place to communicate some ideas I have about subjects in relation to my domain of interests, and to start discussions about them.
• To have a place where I can find discussions and ideas I had on particular subjects.
• To have a place to meet new people that shares the same ideas.
• To have a place where I can stimulate my creativity. The stimulation of my creativity will be done by writing and discussing with my peers.

It is a professional and social tool. In the past, people were communicating and developing social networks in person or by phone or mail. Now, it is possible to do it by the Internet via forums, emails and blogs.

Ivan said in his article:

“The pertinent question for bloggers is simply, Why? What is the purpose of broadcasting one’s unfiltered thoughts to the whole wired world? It’s not hard to imagine legitimate, constructive applications for such a forum. But it’s also not hard to find examples of the worst kinds of uses.”

This is a really personal question. I mean, some writers will write about their tormented minds and other will write about new ideas and observations they have. Blogging or not, the result will be the same. It is not a question of blogging, it is a question about what you are talking about, and how you talk about it.

This blog is composed of snippets of my knowledge and view of things. An employer cannot extrapolate from this knowledge to know who I am, as a human, and all the things I know. However, he could take a look at my abilities to communicate my ideas, to discuss with people I do not know, and how I work. He can see how I can connect with people and how I handle the different opinions of my readers.

If I take the IT industry, what is the most important and hardest thing to handle in project development?

Communication

Communication includes many things:

• The communication between the developers
• The communication between the developers and the other people of the company
• The communication of the advancement of their work
• The communication of their work (by writing comments in their code, by writing documents about the module they are developing, etc, etc, etc.)
• The communication with the external environment of the company. It includes suppliers, subcontractors, Medias, other division of the company, etc
• Etc.

And what is blogging? It is communicating. How can I become good at communicating? By practicing.

The problems that face most of the IT development projects are not technical, no, they are human.

It is how I see my blogging experience. Is my blogging experience harmful for my future? Personally, I do not think so, considering what I wrote above. Even if the employer does not agree, I think that they can easily see the difference between the worker and the person. It is really personal and I do not think that anyone can have the real answer to that question: could blogging can be harmful to your employment? It depends. After all Ivan finish his article by writing:

“And in truth, we did not disqualify any applicants based purely on their blogs. If the blog was a negative factor, it was one of many that killed a candidate’s chances.”

He could not be wrong by writing this article. This is his point of view of the situation, as an employer. Only he knows which candidate he needs for the job he has to do. However, I do not think that it is applicable for every employer.

Personally I love mans of opinions, ideas and creativity.

I have the same conclusion as Professor Daniel Lemire: Myself? I live dangerously.

You, what is your answer to that question: do you think that blogging will be harmful to you when will come the time to seek for a job?

PS: At the opposite, enterprises could even use the blogging philosophy and systems to manage their tacit knowledge.

Note: I found that article via Daniel Lemire’s blog.

Update: I just read my RSS and found that Scobles blogged about it. Also read the comments of his readers. If you need even more opinions, perform a search on Technorati.

Technorati: blogs | blogging | employment | career | communication | socialization | knowledge | future |

There is the first draft of my Blogging Card:

 

 

I will start using this card when I will go to India in 2 months. I will not have any permanent address or phone numbers. The only permanent thing I know that I will have is this domain name. This card will be good for years, as long as I pay 9$ per years to keep the domain name.

Why using that card? Nowadays, what is important is the development of our social and relation network. This card is a way to aggregate new nodes to my network. People to whom I will leave that “blogging card” will be able to know where I am, what I am working on and will be able to contact me anytime, independent of where I am in the world. These little informative cards can be seen as paper link to this website. I think that website can become the core node of my professional, social and relation network.

Why do I use the name “Blogging Cards”? For what “blogging” signify to me. This is not just a Business card, it is much more. If I give it to someone, it is because I hope to keep a contact with him, not only a business contact, but a social and professional one. It is why I call it a “Blogging Card”, because blogging is a social activity, an activity of socialization, of knowledge sharing and ideas exploration. If I give that card to someone, it is because I wish to redirect him into that place, to discuss and share that knowledge and these ideas.

Technorati: [social] [professional] [network] [business] [card] [blogging]

I have problems to access to the Ping-O-Matic website since some days. I have not been able to access to it today, so I created my own.

If I have problems accessing the service, it is probably the same thing for my readers. So I decided give access to the ping service to my readers to try to accommodate them. This is a test that I am doing, and it is currently under construction. I have implemented a list of 14 services to ping for the first version.

Here his where you can have access to the service:

http://fgiasson.com/pings/ping.php

How it works?

1. You enter the title of your blog in the title field
2. You enter the URL of your blog in the URL field
3. You check the services you want to ping
4. You press the “Ping” button and wait until the ping results page appear

Ease no? Yup, it is exactly the same thing as Ping-O-Matic.

I also added a cool little feature to bookmark your settings. So when you will need to re-ping the same services with the same blog title and URL, you will only have to click on your previously created bookmark, and then click “Ping”.

How it works?

1. When you finished setting your settings, click on the “star” where it is wrote “Generate the bookmark for these settings”
2. You will be redirected to a new page
3. Go at the bottom of that page and click on the “Bookmark these settings” link
4. Then you only have to click on this bookmark to have access to these settings

I hope you will enjoy using this service. If you find some bugs or have some suggestions to improve the service, send me an email. If you want to talk about the service, go on.

Technorati: [blogs] [ping] [service] [pingomatic]