On interviews, blogging, and transparent collaboration

Some call it vanity, but  a little self promotion can’t hurt, right?

Today, I was honoured to have been the first in what will become a regular series of interviews with various people involved with my employer, IBM Rational Client Support. You can read the full text of my interview here: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/nfrsblog/entry/meet_jason_o_donnell4?lang=en

On a purely selfish note, I would love to hear your feedback about this interview:

• Did you like the questions asked? The answers?
• Is there something you thought may have been missing?
• Do you see any value in learning more about people within a company which you may be a client of?
• Does this help de-mystify the company and bring in a more personal feel to the face of an organization?
• Are there ways you think this could have been done better?

I’ll explain further why answer to these questions are important to me….

In the interest of full disclosure and transparency: I am a content contributor as well as directly involved with the just-launched interviews initiative on the Notes from Rational Support Blog. Additionally, I will likely be taking over driving these interviews and posting to the blog, hence my interest in your feedback about the structure, etc. My interview being the first to run was kind of a bit of a cheat since Kelly Smith (@kellypuffs) and I are collaborating on the initiative. In my defense, I tried to get someone else first, but work cycles just weren’t available to do so, as such Kelly fell back on me as an easy standby so we could start the weekly cadence of interviews sooner rather than later. That said, I am still proud to have been spotlighted! 🙂

What REALLY gets me excited about this series though? Not the fact that I was spotlighted, but rather the anticipation of how all the future respondents will answer the interview questions (we have about twice as many questions than what I answered, none being ‘required’). I am absolutely looking forward to the variety of insights into both the organization as well as the individuals presented. Being so new to the organization myself, I find amazing value in the stories presented by the old-hats as well as the new ones. Seeing the organization and experiences from so many different points of view has always helped me shape my own understanding of the business and learn from both past mistakes and successes. I see this series as another way to learn even more personally, while also helping our clients see the more personal side to what can often be a faceless organization.

Of course, being one who likes instant gratification, this is going to be a hard one for me to keep to only a weekly cadence, and I am hoping the demand from the readership tells me the same thing. But that is the key to good blogging: keep a steady cadence with content your readership wants, and will keep coming back looking for more!