CTO Skip Angel recently shared on his blog Random Thoughts from a CTO his experiences with the adoption of open-source software in a corporate environment. I can attest to the superiority of open-source after working over the last year with phpBB (a bulletin-board), osCommerce (an e-commerce online store) and WordPress (a publishing platform, aka blog). All of them are free, endlessly customizable, with ample online support.

Here goes his list:

• “Lower costs…Open source has been practically free or at least lower initial cost, and you don’t have to pay addition money for major upgrades…
• More frequent updates…
• Larger developer base…
• Better response…Open source seems to almost encourage feedback, and you can find or get the answers you need quickly…
• More flexibility…Open source seems to thrive on providing lots of bells, whistles, and options…
• Better extensibility - With commercial software, you are pretty much stuck with the functionality you get until the next major release…Open source, on the other hand, seems to provide extensibility out of the box. You can find plenty of plug-ins.

Like a growing number of employees, Peter Whitney decided to launch a blog on the Internet to chronicle his life, his friends and his job at a division of Wells Fargo. Then he began taking jabs at a few people he worked with. His blog, gravityspike.blogspot.com, did find an audience: his bosses. In August 2004, the 27-year-old was fired from his job handling mail and the front desk, he says, after managers learned of his Web log, or blog. Read more of the story …

Just as a great website or blog can make you - as discussed in the previous post - writing the wrong stuff can get you in big trouble. The dilemma is this: your best writing is always on what you know best, and if that’s job-related, you’ve got a potential problem, interfering in corporate PR with your free-wheeling blog.

Although I occasionally write about stuff related to the pharmaceutical industry, I voluntarily refrain from any coverage on my employer (which isn’t even identified by name anywhere on this or affiliated sites). It’s a pragmatic approach taken by many of my colleagues, among them Derek Lowe at Corante’s In the Pipeline.

Here’s one of those movies that gets emailed around these days - taken from a comedy show a few years back. View movie…

When the staff at a Scholastic Corp. unit heard that Cindy Eng was being hired as their editorial head earlier this year, they did an online search of her name.

Fortunately for Eng, their searches led them right to her Web portfolio, a personal Web site that trumpeted her professional accomplishments, including the books she helped publish and the companies she’s worked for. “I think it set their minds at ease that their new boss knew what she was doing,” said the Fanwood, N.J., resident.

Eng’s story illustrates what some career consultants have been telling professionals for years: Having an online presence is an important part of managing your career. They are recommending that people build online identities through Web portfolios, blogs and other forms of online publishing. Read more …