Eye Surgery - Again

Dear friends, my apologies for the low amount of postings this week. This is just to share that posting will be light, as I am going for an eye surgery again.

It's this operation.

I'll be back online after a week.

Oh by the way, I was honored that Career Overview listed this blog as a top blog in the Top 50 Blogs for HR Wisdom !

Connecting with you

Hi, you there :-)

You  - the person who reads and sometimes agrees, and sometimes disagrees. I want to hear from you.

Leave a comment. Just to say "Hi" :-) Either on this blog post or on Facebook. Or on Twitter. Or on Google Buzz. Or connect with me on Linkedin. Or mail me.

In addition to the "Hi" you could tell me what you like/dislike in this blog - I would love to hear from you.

A look back at 2009

2009 was a nice year for this blog.

First of all - it got a name change - from "Gautam Ghosh on HR" to "Gautam on Organizations 2.0" - reflecting my changing focus and the content that would get featured here :-)

And secondly it got its own domain too - from gauteg.blogspot.com to www.gautamblogs.com :-)

There were two recognitions for the blog, first EvanCarmichael.com listed it in the 50 HR blogs to watch in 2009 - and ended the year with BusinessPundit listed it amongst the 75 Best Business Blogs of 2009 :-)

Disqus commenting system was added to the blog. Social tools like Addthis and Tweetmeme and the wibiya toolbar (the red bar at the bottom of this page) were also added to make the content interactive for you.

Some interesting statistics:

• Visitors to the site spent an average time of 1 min 10 seconds per visit. Considering that most people spent less than 10 seconds :-) that means some folks did spend an awful lot of time here :-)
• People visit an average of 1.35 pages
• Google sent the most amount of traffic to the blog (41%) followed by direct visits, and then followed by Yahoo, Twitter and HRworld.com
• The Google Friend Connect community of the blog has 243 members currently (you can see that by looking at the social bar at the top of this page) - and the Facebook page has 321 fans so far.
• The keyword searches that led people here were: gautam ghosh, gautam ghosh blog and best companies to work for in india :-)
• Specific posts that got most traffic were old posts 10 reasons why organizations are not able to retain employees and Should software engineers go for an MBA? Of 2009's posts the big hit was Critical Skills for HR people followed by Making Organizations Social and 2009's first Carnival of HR which I hosted.
• Most visitors through the year were from India (more than 50% of visits) followed by the US ( 27%) and then UK and Canada.

Thanks for your attention during the past year - hope I am worthy of holding your attention during 2010 too :-)

Have a great new year ahead!

Changing the name of the Blog

This is just an administrative post :-)

I realised that the focus of this blog has moved from purely HR to aspects in the new way of working within Organizations - that impact organizational design, structure, systems, tools, processes and development.

Hence thought that a name change was in order :-)

Hence my moniker for this New Way of Working is Organizations 2.0 - focussing on how people, communities and companies are integrating this new approach to working :-)

This Blog has moved to a new URL

Hi, I finally bit the bullet and bought a domain name http://www.gautamblogs.com and from immediate effect this blog would be available there.

So if you've added this blog to your link lists/blogrolls, please update the link :-)

Apart from that you have to not do anything else.

If you're reading this blog using the RSS feed then the new posts would be redirected (thanks Blogger/Feedburner) and even the old blogspot.com URLs should hopefully be working and be redirected :-)

This was done using Google/Blogger's custom domain service buying the domain through Blogger itself, and I got a free Google Apps account with it too :-)

Quite painless - specially for someone as technologically challenged as me.

Yes, I am a little scared about things like - will I build my PageRank back to 5 - and will the number of inbound links and Technorati authority - but I figured that sometimes you just have to let go of all the laurels of the past and chart a new course - and I am feeling excited for the future!

Different ways to get the blog's updates

This is just a reminder to those of you who read this blog on the net.

Did you know that you can get updates from the blog via a RSS reader like Google Reader, FeedDemon or even on your iGoogle page? To subscribe, go here and click on the service of your choice.

You can even subscribe to get email updates by entering your email here.

Currently 2600 people have signed up getting the updates via rss and email.

Alternately if you are on Facebook, you can follow the updates by becoming a fan of this blog's page. Good thing there is that you can post your views, pictures and videos and interact with other members of the community there too. Currently there are 200 fans of the page.

If you are on Twitter, you can follow this blog's twitter account @gautamblog (this is a different twitter account than my personal twitter account @gautamghosh)

Ok.

Now back to regular programming :-)

New sharing and commenting system on the blog

Well it is not just the template that has changed - if you see an individual post - like this - on the web, you can see a button saying "Tweet" on the top left hand corner of every post.

That means you can see the number of times it has been shared on twitter, and if you so desire, share it yourself.

Then at the end of a post you'll see a "share" button - which means you can bookmark and share each post by whichever method you like - from email to facebook to delicious.

Finally you'll see a commenting system by the folks at Disqus (I replaced InstenseDebate, based on feedback by some techie bloggers!) - which enables one to actually have conversations in the comments, and you can sign in using your twitter id, facebook id or OpenID. Of course you can sign in without them and leave a comment too!

A thank you to the folks there who probably monitor what people are saying about Disqus on Twitter and when I tweeted I was facing a problem they promptly tweeted to ask what it was and then tweeted me the solution to it too.

I like that!

Trying out a new Template

In case you're reading this post via a feed reader - you wouldn't have noticed that this blog has a new template.

It's a free blogger template and until now has not given me any issues. Sincere thanks are due to the folks behind the website OurBlogTemplates, and this template is their Professional Template.

Have also turned to IntenseDebate to fuel the comments on this blog, and you can post using your twitter username as well.

Hope that works fine too!

Looking back for your feedback on both these new changes.

Care to Subscribe?

If you’re viewing this via a web browser why not subscribe and get it as you want?

Want to get the posts sent via email? Just enter your email address here

Bloglines users: this one’s for YOU:


Or do you read blogs via Google Reader?


Or, how about pick any RSS reader of your choice?
 Subscribe in a reader

I’d love it if you’d consider subscribing.

Thank you so much!
ChrisBrogan.com >

Getting this blog to you

If you are reading this blog on the web you might want to check out

1. Reading it on a web based RSS reader (like Google Reader . You can share interesting posts with your friends too, like I share mine here)
2. Read it on a desktop RSS aggregator like FeedDemon.
3. Some email programs like Yahoo! Mail, Outlook 2007, Thunderbird also enable you to get the RSS feed along with your mails.

To do so add this URL to your feed reader http://feedproxy.google.com/GautamGhosh

You can also read this blog via an email subscription by signing up your email here:
http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=GautamGhosh&loc=en_US

Am thankful that you choose to read this blog!

Links in the Feed

Hi, if you subscribe to the feed of this blog you'll also get an update of the URLs I am adding in the social bookmarking tool Delicious.

If you don't know what social bookmarking is read about Delicious here

You can subscribe to the feed via email using this form

Introducing White Spaces

Good news folks!

The new name of this blog is "White Spaces"

White Space, in an organizational context, in my view, is the space outside the boxes in the organizational chart. The focus is on recognizing that we need not be 'boxed' in by our roles, but that we can be much more than that.

Wikipedia also tells me of there are many meanings of White Space

• White space (visual arts), or negative space, the portions of a page left unmarked
  

• Whitespace (computer science), characters used to represent white space in text
  

• Whitespace (programming language), an esoteric programming language whose syntax consists only of spaces, tabs and newlines
  

• White space (education), term used since 2007 in the Singapore Education System to denote time reserved for teachers' personal reflection and planning.
  

• White Spaces Coalition, a group of technology companies aiming to deliver broadband internet access via unused analog television frequencies
  

• White Space (business), the part of a market or segment that is available to a business or entity for new sales or customers
  

• White Space (Process improvement and management), the area between the boxes in an organizational map, often an area where no one is responsible.
  

• In telecommunications, white space refers to unused frequencies in the radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
  

So there folks, as I reflect this blog is also the White Space in my life. It doesn't fit into my other roles, traditionally of being a Consultant/Father/Spouse/Son - but something my passion for organizational theory, HR and writing has created.

Tell me how you like it :-)

Need a new blog name

Ok, I grew tired of the name "Gautam Ghosh - Management Consultant" and I want you to suggest me a good catchy name for the blog.

Until that time the placeholder would be "Individual and Organizational Performance" (as someone said, descriptive but hardly exciting :) )

Trial on Google's SMS channel

Hi, if you're based in India, and don't have the time to visit this blog on the net, or to read the posts on the email newsletter, then you can now subscribe to it via SMS, using Google's SMS channels in India.

Click here to subscribe.

Yeah, I am a sucker for these new fangled things that are still in "Labs" stage!

Making the Ads Go...

Maybe it's the slowdown and the lack of regular posting from my end... 

Whatever it is, there's been a steady fall in my AdSense revenue.

So to stop forcing myself to blog, I have realised that I will blog when I feel like conversing - and that means AdSense will not be a factor on my blog. So today I've taken out a big ad unit from the top of the page. 

Maybe slowly I'll take off all the Ad units. Haven't really planned anything definitely. 

The Delhi Twitter Meetup was a great event. Here's more on my other blog. 

And I'm looking forward to meeting Rashmi when she comes to Gurgaon for her book release function!

Add to your iGoogle page

Now it's easy. Click on the button below


By the way the MyBlogLog Community of this blog now has 124 members. And the Feedburner subscriber count has crossed 1800.

Cool!

By the way, I updated my About page here to add this bit :-)

Gautam has given talks on “Blogging for Business” at organizations. He’s frequently quoted in the press as an authority on business blogging. If you want to interview him or invite him to speak at a conference, e-mail him or call at +91-98665-11236.

So do you wanna?

Getting my own domain name

In case you are wondering why I haven't been blogging too much, there are two reasons.

Twitter has been taking up my time for me to connect with social networks and other bloggers and social media enthusiasts, thanks to the absolutely cool Twitterfox - an extension for Firefox.

The other thing has been my own domain, GautamGhosh.net to which I have currently mapped my wordpress.com blog. Have to figure out if and how I'll integrate this blog on to that domain.

Gifting me logo for my blog

Without even asking, a reader of this blog, Prem Saran P, decided to gift me a logo he made for it. His gift really blew me away.

Wow!

Thanks Prem!

So what do you think, should I remove my "eyes" header image and replace it with this logo that Prem made so well?

Off the net for sometime

For people who are wondering what's up at this blog, I'd just like to update that my dad is admitted in a hospital in Lucknow and I'm in the city being with my parents. Don't know how long I'll be here, but I just wanted to share with all of you who take the time and effort to read this blog.
You might instead take a look at the comments in this post instead, some very interesting perspectives.

New Blogroll

From the Blogger in draft, I've got the new blogroll updated on the right hand sidebar.

It has the logo of the blog and the last post headline along with the date when it was updated. Cool, right?

Hat-tip Amit