gor[b] Paul Gorbould: Words and Pictures

Inside, Outside, CBC

I guess I forgot to mention here that I've finished my stint as the CBC's official blogger.

Tod Maffin is back in action (hooray!), and took back the keys to Inside the CBC a little over a week ago. He came back with a vengeance, actually - he's posting as many as 10 items a day, which makes my 1-3 posts/day look pretty weak.

Still, it wasn't bad work for an hour or two a day. And I think our styles are a little different - Tod's an absolute monster for churning out stories faster than anyone else (which, after all, is one thing blogs excel at); I go for more contemplative pieces. Perhaps that's why I've always worked on documentaries and features rather than news.

I have to say I miss the gig - it's a great way to communicate with CBC producers, insiders and fans, and it was great being in the loop. But staying in the loop takes a lot of energy, which I can now devote to my day job, and my own blog, which had certainly been neglected. Tod and I have discussed creating an ongoing role for me, perhaps a weekly bit like Blake Crosby's excellent Under the Hood. I just need to find something I'm qualified to talk about...

Too much talk?

I was delighted to see tonight that Inside the CBC will be receiving some space on CBC's intranet. Funny, actually, because I've had six conversations on the subject this week. It's a bit of a sticky wicket, though: what's the relationship between the blog and the voice of the corp?

See, a year or two ago, CBC's internal communications got spanked on an employee survey - it turns out just about everyone felt out of the loop. The lockout didn't help, except insofar as the locked-out employees found plenty of new ways to talk to each other without using official tools. Management has been trying to keep up ever since.

We've come a long way to counter the lack of information - maybe too far. Now we've got:

• Inside the CBC (the official blog - whatever Tod thinks is interesting)
• The intranet (internal services, notices, policies, HR, archives, telephone directory, press releases, stats, etc.)
• "Net Pub Eng" (all-staff e-mails: hirings, retirements, new shows, obits, awards won)
• The Grapevine (weekly e-mail .pdf newsletter - staff events, awards, regional happenings)
• Other weekly e-mail lists (NT Review on technology, Prime Picks on CBC shows to watch, Audience Reaction reports, etc.)
• Press clippings about CBC (generally only managers get these, on paper)
• "Click" (I never did figure this one out - a CBC.ca intranet, with style guides and stuff)
• A new Drupal site under development for internal communications
• Several wikis built by shows and units to do their own communications and project management
• IRC/MSN/IM within certain groups (even though IT pooh-poohs such things)
• External stuff (personal blogs like this one, Teamakers, CBC Love, alt.tv.networks.cbc, CBC Watch, Our Public Airwaves, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, etc.)
• and so on...

And none of these really work - yet - as a tool to let employees talk to each other. There's overlap, but not so much that you can ignore any of them.

Not that it isn't tempting. In the past 24 hours, here are some headers from separate Net Pub Eng e-mails to all employees, in English and French:

• Important Follow-Up on Password Security
• Upcoming Security Projects at the Broadcasting Centre
• Meet the cast of Rumours
• Corporate Plan Summary Now Available
• Satisfaction Survey - Thank you!
• RCI viva: Radio Canada International’s New Web Service
• Compelling reasons for a robust Canadian English Television Service
• CBC TELEVISION EXCELS AT COLUMBUS, FREDDIES, GEMINIS AND OTHER FALL AWARDS

And these are actually interesting ones. Most days tend to include retirement announcements for people you've never met, self-congratulatory messages from departments that figure they've done something special, and so on.

Don't get me wrong, it's good to be informed. It's bad to learn about your job in the newspaper first. But at some point the signal-to-noise ratio becomes a problem - your inbox overflows, and you tune out. Before the internet, they didn't phone every employee to tell them each new piece of information as it became available. But we got by. E-mail and the web make the sharing of information easier, but they don't make it relevant.

None of the e-mail messages above are urgent - could they be collected on a one stop shop, such as the intranet? How about combining them into a daily e-mail roundup? Maybe an RSS feed of all of the above?

Oh, and about those e-mails... a colleague tells me other corporations don't have anywhere near this level of internal messaging flying around. She also says there's a suspicious amount of personalization in the messages, leaving the impression that some people enjoy seeing their name in print. (It has been suggested that unless it's the CEO, nobody should have their names attached to announcements. It's nice to know who's responsible for policies, but I don't need to see messages signed by the Executive Vice President of Snow Removal, Wellington Street Division.)

The good news is that there are some smart people looking into this very problem. They know we've got an overload, and I'm sure someone will figure out how to keep us informed yet sane.

In the meantime, I sincerely enjoyed writing for Inside The CBC, and now I enjoy reading it. In two places!