David Wang (formerly of the IIS Team) resumes blogging at his new blog. His second post is revealing - it alludes to a tension between what a blogger wishes to write about, and what image their employer wishes to convey publicly. I mention this tension because Avanade (my employer) is about to launch its own corporate blogging site (similar to MSDN/TechNet blogs).

If your immediate management is supportive, your blog can be an independant voice direct to interested parties (customers, peers, clients etc). On the other hand, if management is not supportive, you blog may end up being no more than bland nothings and corporate approved marketing messages. Whilst that might keep the blog "on brand" it means that no one is going to read it - which defeats the purpose of having a corporate blog in the first place.

If the firm already has established bloggers (and I've noticed that Avanade has quite a few), then it will need to demonstrate that it's going to be able to manage the tension between the desire to project a corporate message, and the independant thoughts and interests of its bloggers. Otherwise I suspect those bloggers (and there's a number who have a lot more reach and influence than my little blog) will simply choose to remain outside the corporate fold. 

I wonder if any of those responsible for circulating our proposed policies are reading this? :-)