First, thanks to Don and the crew for giving me a chance to share my thoughts with the crowd here at IAOCblog. As I madly prepare for a big "industry" trade show next week, I'm struck by how little blogging has impacted the manufacturing and engineering spaces. Manufacturing has never had a reputation for adopting cutting edge technology--though that is changing as competitive pressures grow.

Engineering, on the other hand, has always had a technology-focused lead for obvious reasons. But with only a few exceptions, blog penetration isn't as strong as I'd think. A quick Google search comparison (using the discipline name plus the word "blog"--real sophisticated I know) reveals:

With the exception of software engineering, these are relatively paultry results for broad Google searches. Another trend I noticed: a huge chunk of the top 10 hits in a lot of these search terms were overseas (from the US perspective at least).

Hearkening back to the old adage (who said this anyway?) "you cannot not communicate," what does this say about the state of online industrial communication--and indeed about engineers as communicators? Or does it say more about blogs than engineers? Is the blog format too unidirectional, despite the democratic rhetoric? Is a blog communication model really all that different than the traditional broadcast communication model of Shannon and Weaver?

Yes, there's feedback--but blog feedback is usually in tinier type, and, with a few notable exceptions, missing from a vast majority of blogs (including my own much of the time). Perhaps engineers prefer the wiki model, a much more democratic (or is anarchic a better word?) model. I don't know.

I'd like to see more discussions on how to make online communication tools more effective for technical communicators. There are lots of discussions about "tone" and "voice," but engineers will be the first to tell you that content trumps tone. Without content, there is no context, and without context, there is no community.

Engineering has never been short on content. But there are additional factors that may affect the communication of engineering content. IP and "RL" trump content.

The IP concern: "Industrial" engineers (and a growing number of academic engineers tied to industry-sponsored projects) face pressure to keep proprietary information "under wing" until the marketers say it's time to launch.

The "RL" (real life) concern is of course much simpler: time.

Let's take some time and space (hey, it's nearly free, right?)online to discuss these issues, and how we can advance industrial communication through the tools at our disposal. Your input is welcome.

Meanwhile, I'm going to turn my attention to the discussion of new communication models launched last month, and will try to post some thoughts on that next.