www.communications.not

Speaking of jobs, which I was yesterday, I had a really pleasant surprise yesterday. I downloaded a job application which DIDN'T want me to fill out some 20 page form about why I had left previous jobs and how I feel about health and safety in the workplace or why I felt I was the only person this side of the moon who could do the job. All they want is a copy of my CV and 750 words on two questions: one about using digital communications to promote the organization and a second one about how I felt about how hard it is to promote what this organization does. Disarmingly refreshing.

So I spent yesterday boning up on digital communications - an oddly anachronistic sounding phrase, especially considering what it is. Having done quite a lot of website development over the years (well the years since everyone got websites anyway), I assumed that there would have been quite a lot of new thinking since I last did any research into websites etc., which was probably six months ago. But googling away, it looks as though it is pretty much the same as it always was: IT gimps against old school managers and the related mismatch of technology versus - rather than working together with - organizational strategy. And lots of the same old discussions about thinking of your website as a selling tool rather than...well I don't know really. Something you can heat your soup up on? A means of meeting girls?

I'm going to do some more research, but it was oddly satisfying and also disappointing to read that things have not changed that much over the last six months. Maybe - and I think here is the real problem with people's perceptions and expectations and fears of websites etc. - I was being lulled into a false belief that technology has made websites so good now that they are a panacea to crap management and crap communications strategies. I've worked in offices with websites that cost as much as holiday homes, but where office communications would make Mao happy. And I've worked with brilliant communications people who get a bit sweaty when then have to copy an email to more than one person. So I guess we should be using digital communications as a means to an end rather than as a great promise or a threat or an excuse or a get out clause. And we should also really really try not to switch off whenever the ITers start talking about cookies and click throughs and meta tagging or their snowboarding holidays.

Not sure how much of this I will put into that application I was talking about, but we'll see. And I have just failed to send an email to a friend in Suffolk, so maybe I should not be feeling quite so laissez-faire about the digital revolution, which I assume will not only not be televised but not webcast either if we keep on not talking to each other about what we really want from it, or keep on thinking it will tell us what we want from it.

In other, rather more down to earth news, the wormery is thriving. Actually it is terrifying. mrs househusbandnot has decided that she is too scared of it, so I am in charge of feeding, which involves trying to lift off the lid and put the food in the wormery before any of them escape, which they are trying to do like crazy every time I go near them. I am hoping they will consider me a friend when they eventually colonise the whole flat.