Bill Baue at Socialfunds.com explored SRI blogs September 07, 2005, highlighting both Lloyd's team blog and SRI-Extra. Bill identified how blogs allow "candid comments" on developments in socially responsible investment as they happen.
Why blog SRI?
SRI-Extra serves 3 functions:
1. A place to put thoughts that are often independent and not immediately applicable to current tasks.
2. To create a window for others interested in the industry. I remember being in grad. school and really wanting to see what it is like from the inside out. Here I may be able to attract new and more talented people into the SRI industry to the benefit of all.
3. Have a bit of fun and connect with others in SRI.
I hope people reading SRI-Extra see the scope we cover. SRI touches so many parts of the investment business - to call it SRI is sometimes an injustice. I was cautioned early on by a reader to stay "on-topic" with my blog. But from the descriptor on, you can see the business of investing using values and value, touches so many places. I hope readers may see how complex SRI is.
I was interested to read Lloyd's thoughts
"SRI is in a strange position--it has been around in its present form for 20 years or more, and is gaining mainstream acceptance, but at the same time needs to evolve to keep up with client demands and ensure that it remains relevant going forward," said Mr. Kurtz. "And things are happening very quickly in this profession, on several continents."
SRI-Extra aims to speak candidly, something I think more easily achieved with less embedding in the SRI movement and being more internatiuonal in perspective. I hope SRI-Extra provides for people interested in SRI move opportunities to window on the SRI mission, and especially across borders.
Internal blogs
Early on I realized that if I would be unable to commit to a stream of daily submissions. I am still getting the balance right. I believe in blogging for thought workers, and encouraged both KLD and the senior analysts to write, but nothing has happened yet. Nevervousness about liability and news articles about fired employees probably did not help [see Employee fired for blogging and Delta employee fired for blogging sues airline].
Over this past summer I project managed for the first time in the KLD Product Group a cohort of 12 mostly MBA students and had each contribute to a team blog. Some were better than others: one blog had 160 postings, another just 1. We had a remote consulting work model, and the blog was an excellent way to connect between Boston, NYC, and Asia.
While the content may sometimes by proprietary to KLD, I am encouraging the interns to adapt the content and re-publish under their own blog, as a window to future interns and those interested in getting into the industry.
Blogs also allowed the interns to have fun "unofficially", like the entry "Excerpt from the forthcoming intern guide, subtitled: Sleep? What's That?"
No comments:
Post a Comment