Not blacking out today – instead, speaking up!

Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA (the House bill) and Protect Intellectual Property Act or PIPA (the Senate bill) seek to stamp out online piracy by imposing the burden of policing on site owners. That may seem reasonable on its face but the implications to a site owner could be staggering. And in the long run, it won’t hurt the major players, it’ll hurt the small businesses and the tiny startups. Traditional media is overloaded with big names and big brands, but online is where the little guy can get a foothold.

Much like in the Patriot Act, I fear that Congress plans to solve discrete problems with the largest possible brush stroke, ignoring the very real ramifications to our rights and liberties. I want small, local and startup companies to have a place on the WWW. And I want plenty of room for online citizens to be able to discuss, question, review and interact.

I urge you to educate yourself on these proposals and followup with your congressperson and senator.

Resources
SOPA text in pdf
PIPA text in pdf
Find Your Congressperson tool
Find Your Senator tool
Google Take Action Petition

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
– Benjamin Franklin

Friending the Office

Interesting recent article in Forbes – Social Media for the Enterprise: A CEO’s Best Friend. The post by Tom Kelly, CEO of Moxie Software. Kelly advises companies everywhere to invest in enterprise social software.

Kelly recounts a project to rename his company. He used social software to get everyone involved in the process, drawing ideas from the accounting and marketing staffs alike.

“As CEO, that’s what I most appreciate about enterprise social software: The way it bridges the gap between what’s personal and what’s business.”

Um, is that a good thing?

I like having a gap between my personal and my professional life. I find it helps keep both lives from running amuck. And crossing back and forth across that bridge too often can make you seem truly unprofessional.

Many stories have surfaced of real-life, offline consequences for employees who brag about goofing off or bad-mouthing their company online. And even though we are aware of the risks we sometimes will go ahead and post a joke that our college buddies would really enjoy, without thinking about what our boss would think when she sees it in her facebook feed.

Likewise, if you don’t shut the door on ‘professional you’ at some point during the day, your family and friends will view you as a work-obsessed nutter.

From experience, I can tell you that the questionable decisions that guide a facebook feed, will find their way onto even an internal social media feed. So, today’s advice: Forget about the bridge and remind yourself about that gap between personal and professional you and remind yourself what its for and why its good.