The blog idea is not bad. Net admins are supposed to log any changes they make to the network, and an internal blog is as good a place as any. In fact, the blog format might strongly encourage the net admin to state not only that he or she made the change, but the why, wherefore and how of it. The feedback component of the blog could be used to register objections, or conditional and outright approvals plus signoffs on the action. When something blows up, the manager who signed off on the blog after all feedback has been given could hardly argue that he didn't do it - though I wouldn't put it past some of the management I worked for. In addition, the feedback component could be used to hammer out best practices and the conditions under which they are applicable.
Blogs would probably work best in a customer support trouble ticket situation where both the remote support personnel and the customer are running various diagnostics and trashing out various solutions to resolve a complex issue. Blogs are probably more valuable as a honest instrument of record than video confessions, because the video would not show what we did to the guy's legs and hands to prompt him to confess to anything and everything.
I agree that running a blog could involve a fair amount of effort, but running a disciplined networking operation always involves a fair amount of effort. For example, the bottom-up layer by layer approach to troubleshooting is not applicable if your cable plant is an unholy mess. The only issue that matters to me is: "is the desired result worth the effort?"
Personally, I'd choose a forum format such as slashdot.org where threads of discussion could be organized and organization and branch office-wide logs could be kept. One of the wonderful things about the forum format is that you could wipe out any threads relating to say Novell 4.11 (or 5 or 6) in one fell swoop, because your org just migrated every remaining Novell server to Windows or Linux.
I would definitely avoid e-mail as a medium for discussions unless the discussion group is small and the topic is specific. E-mail has the further disadvantage that we have to continually scrape the spam from our mailboxes, before we can get down to business.
Blogs would probably work best in a customer support trouble ticket situation where both the remote support personnel and the customer are running various diagnostics and trashing out various solutions to resolve a complex issue. Blogs are probably more valuable as a honest instrument of record than video confessions, because the video would not show what we did to the guy's legs and hands to prompt him to confess to anything and everything.
I agree that running a blog could involve a fair amount of effort, but running a disciplined networking operation always involves a fair amount of effort. For example, the bottom-up layer by layer approach to troubleshooting is not applicable if your cable plant is an unholy mess. The only issue that matters to me is: "is the desired result worth the effort?"
Personally, I'd choose a forum format such as slashdot.org where threads of discussion could be organized and organization and branch office-wide logs could be kept. One of the wonderful things about the forum format is that you could wipe out any threads relating to say Novell 4.11 (or 5 or 6) in one fell swoop, because your org just migrated every remaining Novell server to Windows or Linux.
I would definitely avoid e-mail as a medium for discussions unless the discussion group is small and the topic is specific. E-mail has the further disadvantage that we have to continually scrape the spam from our mailboxes, before we can get down to business.
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