Tom Kyte

Our Professor Melander had a guest Tom Kyte from Oracle visit our class to discuss blogging. Tom was kind enough to take a picture of us:





Interestingly I had been researching blogging, lawsuits, and credit unions several weeks before Tom's arrival. This led to an interesting discussion on law suits.

An interesting podcast I had found on blogging: http://www.ciicu.com/ Tue, 29 August 2006 Current Issues in Credit Unions Episode 5 Topic:Google bombing and internet libel: how should a credit union handle these attacks from a marketing and legal perspective. This episode had guest speaker Trey Reeme from Trabian and the Open Source CU blog (http://www.opensourcecu.com/).

Mr. Reeme had outlined several key points in how to deal with a "Google Bomb" which is when a blogger makes a post and links and relinks their post to trick Google into pushing the negative post to the top of a Google search. The following is a list of what was suggested on the broadcast as to how a credit union should handle such a post:

"1) Respond to their blog as if you were leveling the complaints of a customer venting in your lobby.

2) Acknowledge that your credit union can stand up to their criticisms and look really good by responding.

3) Don’t ignore the blogger as they may be technically savvy and a non-response would lead to further attacks to a wider audience.

4) Avoid filing a law suit which would create more widespread negative public relations.

5) Have a blogging policy in place."

What most interested me about Tom's visit was our interesting discussion about point 4 on law suits. Having been through the court process myself (isn't divorce fun?) I can only imagine the stupidity and negative publicity that this sort of behavior perpetuates along with the costly expense that benefits no one.

It was great to have a meaningful discussion to better illistrate the importance of keeping a cool head when dealing with blogs.

Thank you again Tom for visiting our class! Thank you Professor Melander for the lively discussion!