Some notes on using the blog for feedback

The last round of feedback on Idealist 3.0 was really great--we had lots of different people posting and everyone seemed to stay focused on the topic. Hannah created a great document that included suggestions to consider as we continue to use the blog for feedback purposes, and I'm going to paraphrase some of the suggestions that might be relevant to the weekly reports feedback process.

• Remember that we are all real people! It's easy to feel anonymous on a blog, even a staff blog. If blogger.com would let us, we would have a picture accompany every post to remind everyone that the opinions come from people we know.

• Post in a timely fashion. We have a deadline of two weeks for this feedback process because we want to encourage people to start a vibrant conversation that's not too spaced out to follow easily.

• Keep your posts relevant to the current topic. I know it could be easy for a conversation about the weekly reports to turn into a conversation about staff communication in general, but it will be more productive if we stay focused.

• This one is my addition, but don't be afraid to leave a comment to posts. Some contributions don't need a separate blog post and might be better as a comment to someone else's post. That way we can have conversations about weekly reports as blogs, weekly report content, and weekly report crazy ideas all happening at the same time in the same place.

Okay, now get blogging!