The other day we talked in our Senior Management Team meeting about trying to “proceduralize” the idea that staff who attend events like conferences, workshops or training sessions ought to have a way to report back to the rest of the staff—sharing what they learned, experienced or “took away” from the event.
We talked about a couple of options (e.g., brown bag events, presentations, etc.) and one we’ve decided to try is a “Trip Notes” weblog. I’m hoping it will prove to be a useful idea and think it’s probably just the right technology for this sort of task. Not everything a staff member attends is worthy of a group meeting and a newsletter with this sort of information is too static and (by the time it sees print) too dated to draw much interest. Setting up a website is overkill and despite all the hype surrounding wikis, I think that approach is better for constantly updated/modified content. For this particular need, I think a weblog hits the sweet spot:
– web-based (available from anywhere)
– can be set up to allow multiple posters so it pretty much runs itself
– it will allow posters to link to the event’s site when one exists
– over time it will offer a searchable archive of professional development activity
– it will give staff a bit of practice with weblog technology
Thanks to the design work that’s gone into making it a simple process, I had a new WordPress blog up and running in about 15 minutes. I seeded it with a short report on my attendance at Apple’s WWDC 2005 last June. Not really a very interesting report but I hope it will show prospective posters how you can link to things from within a “trip report” to enable the interested reader to dig a little deeper into the topic you’re reporting on.
Will report back in a few weeks on whether this proved to be a successful “intranet” experiment.