This blog is now a year old. What started as an experiment has turned into a key communications tool although there is clearly room for useful improvement and evolution. Today, I put forward some thoughts on what I’ve learned from the process. Tomorrow I’ll address where I’d like to go with the Krasnow Director’s Blog over the next 12 months.
My initial idea was that it would be a good idea to have a place on the web where Institute colleagues could go to gain insight into the decision processes of this office. The notion was that the blog would supplement an office open-door policy in terms of communicating with Krasnow Staff.
An additional initial goal, was to facilitate Krasnow staff participation in the various expansion and construction projects–essentially to serve as a virtual “town meeting” for concerns about the slated growth of the institute.
What turned out however, was that a fairly large percentage of the repeating visitors were from outside the Institute or even the University. These were often visitors from peer institutes and research facilities from around the world.
So then the purpose of this blog evolved–from one primarily focusing on internal communication, to its current role that very much includes content for external visitors. That content included blog entries about such general policy topics as mentoring, lines of institutional authority and scientific productivity that reflect my personal opinions on issues that are perhaps as relevant for Krasnow scientific staff as they are for the science community writ large.
But they are very much personal opinions and do not reflect the official position of my University. Even with that caveat, however, I’m always aware of the potential for the blog to give the inaccurate perception of official university positions, and hence I’ve tried very carefully to avoid partisan political content.
Towards the end of the year, the blog served as an vehicle for communicating my ideas about what the next five years at Krasnow should look like. Those blog entries, taken together serve as my current vision, for my second term as Krasnow Director–which begins July 1 of 2007.
Finally, one housekeeping reminder: to search this blog, use the query entry form at the upper left corner of this page.
Jim
Discoverers and Discoveries 