“Are Weblogs a Threat or Opportunity for Enterprises?” Panelists include Rick Bruner, Beth Goza, Michael O’Connor Clarke, Carin Warner, Jeff Mooney. They are PR folks, a journalist, and a Microsoft employee who took down her blog for corporate reasons.

“The only blogging strategy a marketing department should have is no blogging strategy,” says Beth Goza (of Microsoft) to applause: just let ’em blog. “Blogs personalize this big, monolithic corporations and expose the face that they’re really a bunch of passionate people…” It’s “marketing by default,” i.e., unintentional marketing.

Rick Bruner asks the eternal question: What is a blog? We shouldn’t assume, he says, that a blog has to be all rant-y. Michael O’Connor Clarke disagrees: you can’t take the personality out of blogs. Dan Bricklin from the audience says that a blog should have either personality or expertise and possibly both. The panel seems more focused on personality perhaps because the panelists are mainly PR and media people.

Beth, who began by saying she’s nervous, keeps banging out the quotable insights: “I think of blogs as the anti-popup” because blogs pull rather than push.

Michael advises CEOs: “If you believe that what your company is good and right, get the hell out of the way” and let people blog.

The panelists are excellent. And funny. (I’m a big fan of my old friend, Michael O’Connor Clarke.) Excellent. It might have been even better if it hadn’t been so pro-blog, to give some of the issues a heavier workover. (The only truth is bruised truth?)

Categories: Uncategorized dw