Communications Counterculture

Yesterday, the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) launched a new service for members - an online blogging and collaboration platform called eXchange. I tried setting up my own blog, to see how it went, and am very impressed with the implementation of the new system. It’s based on WordPress but everything behind the scenes is already set up for you, so you just have to sign in, click “create a blog” and away you go. Very cool, and it’s clear lots of work went into preparing for the launch of this service. Very impressive initiative.

Question is, do I need another blog? What would this one be for, if I did? (I blog on my synth-pop band Caffeine Sunday’s Blogger site and also did a specific limited-span blog on Vox, chronicling my successful National Novel Writing Month experience last November. Nothing at my day job yet, Communications Officer with Edmonton Public Library, but I’m working on it). What I came up with, off the top of my head, was something to raise the prospect of a counterculture within the communications world. This is because, of course, I’m in the communications profession, but I’m also currently reading Peter Block’s outstanding book The Answer to How is Yes, which is helping me rethink (rediscover, actually) how I view corporations, workplaces, careers and life. It makes me wonder if there are others out there in IABC land who feel like the conventional ways of doing things in our field - PR, staff communications, marketing, and so on - just don’t feel right.

It makes me wonder if anyone else out there thinks, like me, that there must be a better way. If there is, it would be a communications counterculture, and I want in.