Oct 07 2008
Juggling
Why agonising? @simond summed it up well in a tweet yesterday evening:
@jamesbarbour One blog not enough for you? :) Intrigued to see if/how you can manage them, especially when one is explicitly gov.uk
I’m not entirely sure myself, Simon, but I’m going to try.
I’ve been following the emerging debate on civil servants blogging for some time, contributing on occasion. But there’s still a fairly hefty unresolved grey area surrounding those of us who blog in a ‘private capacity’. So, as I’ve said a couple of times, I don’t talk about work on this blog. I talk about comms, tech, politics (carefully) on occasion – whatever floats my boat outside of the office, but I steer clear of goings-on at the Embassy.
Thing is, though, I want to blog about work. I have a great job which raises all sorts of issues I’d love to share. And blogs.fco.gov.uk is the logical place to share them.
Second thing is, I’m genuinely excited by the FCO’s moves to engage online. First steps, yes, but all the more important for that. And I want to be part of it.
That’s two pretty good reasons, I think. And, provided I can find the time, I hope there’s still room for jamesbarbour.org – I don’t want to clutter the FCO blog with random thoughts unconnected to my work. I reckon I can still be a civil service blogger and a civil servant who blogs.
We’ll see how it evolves.
Good luck – obviously. ;)
Out of interest, did FCO HQ invite you to start the work blog, or did you ask them?
If you can maintain a gap, I’ll be very impressed. The one lesson I take from my own blogging has been how the separation between my work and (most of) my personal life has disappeared. I don’t think it’s a bad thing: I’ve made a lot of friends / work contacts / both through the stuff I’ve written. But I reserve the right to revisit that judgement in due course.
[...] the way, apologies for the long silence. I wish I could put my hand up and say yes, Simon was right, two blogs is too difficult. But it’s not even that – I’ve just been too crazy busy [...]