Judith Meskill, who simultaneously runs two weblogs (Knowledge Notes and The Social Software Weblog),
recently ran a contest to write the Perfect Pitch for weblogs in
business. The idea was to write a very short speech (short enough to
deliver in a short elevator ride) that would persuade a senior
executive of a company to introduce blogs in their company. I was
honoured to have been asked to be one of the judges. The winners were Lee LeFever, Randal Moss, Jack Vinson and Michael Angeles. Lee's prize winning pitch was:
First,
think about the value of the Wall Street Journal to business leaders.
The value it provides is context — the Journal allows readers to see
themselves in the context of the financial world each day, which
enables more informed decision making. With this in mind, think about
your company as a microcosm of the financial world. Can your employees
see themselves in the context of the whole company? Would more informed
decisions be made if employees and leaders had access to internal news
sources? Weblogs serve this need. By
making internal websites simple to update, weblogs allow individuals
and teams to maintain online journals that chronicle projects inside
the company. These professional journals make it easy to produce and
access internal news, providing context to the company — context that
can profoundly affect decision making. In this way, weblogs allow
employees and leaders to make more informed decisions through
increasing their awareness of internal news and events.
Now the winners get to turn the tables on us judges. This time we (Dina
Mehta, Don Park, Flemming Funch,
Jim McGee, Lilia
Efimova, Martin Dugage, Phil Wolff,
Ross Mayfield,
Scott Allen,
Ton Zijlstra and yours truly) have to write a Perfect Pitchfor blogs in business,and the winners get to judge our
entries. Keep your fingers crossed for me. I can't tell you my entry
because Judith is going to keep the identity of each submission hidden,
so that no one is swayed by our awesome reputations in casting their
vote ;-)
Meet my neighbours, Raucous
(first and third pictures) and Stripe (second and fourth pictures).
They seem to hang around together, though I don't know whether they're
a couple (only other Blue Jays appear to be able to tell male and
female jays apart). Raucous is noisy, curious, rambunctious and quite
aggressive -- she(?) will come right up to me while I'm refilling the
feeder, or reading or eating lunch outside. She gets really annoyed
when our dog Chelsea lies down under the feeder, squawking until she
moves. In the top picture she's looking right at the camera. By
contrast, Stripe is quite aloof, staying at least twenty feet from me
and the feeder when I'm outside, eating the seeds windblown from the
feeder or dropped by the clumsy grackles. His markings make him look as
if he is permanently scowling, but he's very attentive, and loves
peanuts -- when there's none left in the feeder, he'll pick them out of
the suet ball, and leave the rest of the suet for other birds.
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
Judith Meskill, who simultaneously runs 
