Ed Brill

In college, I was a proud member of the Indiana University Marching Hundred.  One thing was funny about that elite Big 10 group -- we had somewhere between 240-320 members.  Regardless of the numbers, being part of the band was definitely the highlight of my college experience.  And not just because this one time, at band camp.....

Anyway, last week, I brazenly asked my IBM colleagues who frequent this blog to identify themselves.  My goal was to showcase how blogging is impacting the corporation...not just by who is blogging, but who is reading.  Honestly, I had no idea what the outcome of my request would be.

The resulting responses are endlessly fascinating.  While I see familiar names of Lotus colleagues and fellow bloggers, there are also dozens of IBMers who "lurk" -- long-time readers who just haven't had a reason to comment before.  

Even more surprising is the breadth and depth of the types of jobs represented.  We have vice-presidents and lab researchers.  Cambridge and Bangalore.  Product, marketing, sales, support, research and development, and IT people.

One point to note is that many of the responses are from outside Lotus, or even outside IBM Software.  It feels, at times, that Lotus is standing alone on the pitch, fighting for market and technology leadership all by ourselves.  Knowing that so many IBMers outside Lotus are reading makes me feel a lot more confident of the power of being part of the bigger IBM machine.

Here we are, at the beginning of another week.  And I know a lot of IBMers were out last week, on vacation or attending conferences or otherwise might have missed the posting.  So, if you didn't comment last week, please surf on over now.  I don't care about the math -- but I'd sure like to be able to talk about the "hundreds" of IBMers who are making direct contact with our customers, partners, and competitors part of their regular information cycle.

Link: edbrill.com: What Scoble did for Microsoft, and a similar effect for IBM >

PS: Thank you to all the IBMers who commented that part of their reason for visiting was my writing.  That means a lot to me!