Having left the investment banking IT world after 2002, I often wonder how “new” technology like blogging is being adopted, if at all.
MDavey points out that at least one investment bank is jumping onto blogs.
Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, the “other” German bank, has embraced blogging technology, if only internally.
From the Financial Times article on DrKW's internal blogs:
Some companies, uncomfortable with the openness of public blogs, use them as an internal communications tool. Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, the German investment bank, has set up about 120 internal blogs to promote discussion and distribute information, including some that encourage users to share ideas, requests and criticisms of in-house information technology systems. Traders use the medium to share information and research. "We think of it as the open-source marketplace for ideas," says JP Rangaswami, chief information officer. "It lets us expose concepts or issues to a wide audience and discuss them dispassionately."
[...]
All employees are free to contribute to the blogs, and Mr Rangaswami estimates that there are several thousand active users in the company. According to Sean Park, global head of debt syndicate and credit trading at Dresdner, the company plans to give all employees the opportunity to set up their own blog. "It's potentially a very interesting tool to tap into the social fabric of the company and better understand where knowledge lies," he says.
JP Rangaswami is indeed a very forward thinking man. So, it should be no surprise that he won CIO of the Year. If I had worked for Mr. Rangaswami, I wouldn't have left the investment banking world.