by Claes-Fredrik Mannby

In starting up our external blogging activity again, I think it’s fitting to give a big, warm thanks to Hugh for finding such interesting related developments in the world to write about, and especially for the courage to implement Naked Conversations here at Exbiblio.

Our ambition is to be a truly open company in many ways, upholding truth, honesty, and transparency in every aspect of our business, be it corporate communications, reporting, software code or hardware layouts.

Internally, I think we do a great job of giving members of the team (I personally feel “employee” is a poor term for what we are) the space, means and encouragement to develop and express their own voice. Each of us has their own internal blog, their “lab book,” where we post progress, stumbling blocks, questions, insights, and personal commentary and links to articles and upcoming community events.

I captured some thoughts on the subject in August of last year, and I’ve since found out that Martin, a vocal proponent of openness and individual voice, hadn’t even read The 8th Habit, in which Steven Covey argues that the most important habit is to “find your own voice, and inspire others find theirs.” I hope that the coincidence of terminology and passion is a sign of a cultural change toward greater emphasis on virtues, character, quality of life, and individually meaningful lives.

Moving forward, we’d also like to push more of this individual activity onto the World Wide Web. I know there are already some great internal blog entries that we need to get published, as soon as we introduce our new team members who wrote them.

I’m sure I speak for all of us in wishing Hugh the best of luck with Blog Relations and Storynory. I always carry around Bertie-the-Frog’s stories, as told by Natasha, and they make for great listening in the car on the way to swimming class for my kids.

It’s also very fitting to have Natasha’s audio rendition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland coming along as I scan text from the book using our hardware prototypes.