Eileen Yu of ZDNet Asia interviewed Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz at the company’s Menlo Park, CA campus recently. Here’s a snippet of the Q & A. Schwartz puts his finger on what may be the hardest thing about a corporate blog – finding a voice:
Q: Now that you’re blogging as a Fortune 500 CEO, has that changed the thought process you go through as you write?
A: I probably think a lot more carefully now about what I would write. The hardest blog (entry) to write is… the first. You haven’t found your voice, you don’t really know what the market cares about, you don’t really know your own comfort zone.
To me, I feel like I have found a voice that works for me and for the market to which I’m communicating. So I think it has changed quite a bit. And I also understand… how important what I say is to how the company is perceived…
Read the full Q & A here.
Eileen links to Schwartz’s first blog post, June 28, 2004, which I also reference in The Corporate Blogging Book.
“What should you expect in my blog? Relatively frequent updates. Less frequently when I’m on airplanes (which is sadly quite a lot – can’t wait for truly pervasive connections). You’ll see thoughts on the future (but absolutely no forward looking statements – for all insight into our business performance, please refer to our regularly scheduled filings at the SEC).
Thoughts on my favorite Web services. Even good reading. Maybe good eating. This is an evolving medium, time will tell.
I promise to listen – from all the constituencies we serve (customers, stockholders, developers, consumers, suppliers… all).
Hello, world.”
– Jonathan Schwartz’s first blog post