Blogging for a living
A while back, Business Week journalist, Stephen Baker, wrote an interesting piece over at Blogspotting an online addition to the magazine. Its title was, Knowledge workers: We’re on our own.
He wrote: “Face it, knowledge workers, if we’re not already freelancing, we’re heading in that direction. I’m typing this on a company-owned laptop, but Gartner predicts that within three years, one in 10 companies will be forcing employees to provide their own laptops. I’m surprised the number isn’t higher.”
He painted a grim picture : “Increasingly, we’ll be on our own.” Grim for some, at least. But I can see it would be tough for the gregarious types who are addicted to office politics and the water-cooler mafia.
He continued: “Why is this happening? Companies have the data and the intelligence now to cut the jobs they need done into tiny slices, each one going to the person best equipped to handle it anywhere on the globe. It’s a virtual assembly line.”
Now comes the juicy part of Baker’s idea. For those who write online more in hope than expectation, this is a Business Week endorsement:
“So what do we do? For starters, we blog. That way we build our individual brands, our knowledge, and our network of connections. These are going to be ever more vital assets in the years ahead. If we do a good enough job building them, companies may decide to bid for our services fulltime, even throwing in insurance and a 401K.”
Soon, in the “ecosystem that’s unfolding, one teeming with knowledge entrepreneurs, I’m betting that most of us, by choice or circumstance, are going to be running our own show.”
This is happening now and, as Stephen says, blogging is the centrepiece of that effort.



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As Gordon Brown, former British Chancellor, now Prime Minister, heads for Washington to try to convince the new adminstration to set up a “global regulatory system” the Americans should ask themselves why they should believe him when he failed so spectacularly for 12 years.
Deflation is now accepted as the biggest threat to Western economies, especially hugely indebted nations, like the U.S. and Britain. 