Teaching Old(er Than Me) Dogs New Tricks

The other day, at my company's weekly meeting, I was trying convince everyone that we should add an RSS feed to a portion of our website. Very quickly, I realised that no one was familar with the term "RSS", they didn't know how to use an aggregator such as Google reader, and they didn't read blogs. Huh.

After taking time during the meeting to show them my own use, I sent out an email, hoping to encourage people to start reading blogs and using Google reader. Eventually, I'm hoping to sell them on the RSS feed of our site, and hopefully waaaay down the road, convince everyone that our company should have its own blog. Seriously, this feels like I'm trying to push veggies at a group of fat kids brought up on fast food burgers and fries.

Here's the basis of the email I sent:

What: Depending on the source, RSS either means “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary” and is indicated by a common logo: . An aggregator or online reader is used to accumulate the feed from various blogs and news sites and then display all of the information in one place.

Why: Once set up, you can take 5 minutes a day to browse through the information on the reader; I like to take a few minutes every morning to see what’s going on. It’s a quick way to stay up-to-date, and might provide an interesting tidbit of information to icebreak / share / discuss in your next meeting.

How: There are many online readers, but I find that Google Reader works quite well.   As you saw in this morning’s meeting, I have set up a company account. This is how you access it:   Go to www.google.com/reader and enter the password info I already sent out.   I’ve organized the feeds into folders. You can view content in a few different ways:

1. When you first log in, you are in the “home” view. This provides an overview of some of the newest content. I don’t usually bother with this view.
2. You can click on a folder (such as “IT Blog); now you can view all unread (i.e. new) content in the folder. I find this to be a great way to quickly see what’s new.
3. You can click on an individual feed (such as “Techvibes Global Events” located in the “IT Blog” folder). I use this option for blogs / feeds that I really like. I get to browse through the newest entries for the particular feed, and then scroll through older entries.

Who: You are more than welcome to use the company account. However, one of the helpful features of Google Reader is that it bolds the title of any blogs / feeds that have unread content and indicates the number of unread items. If everyone uses the same account, we will be unable to tell at a glance if there is new information. I encourage you to use the company account until you get the hang of it, and then create your own account.

Now what? If you’re interested in learning more, drop me an email. I can give you info about how to find and add new blogs to follow, share with you the wealth of information that can be found in the comments section (often the readers contribute more than the original author), and show you how to set up newsfeeds for specific keywords.

I thought it was a pretty well-explained email. But no one has looked through the blogs and news feeds that I set up on Google Reader. No one. It doesn't take much time. There's a lot of info there. Why wouldn't they at least check it out?

(Photo: dragonaria on www.sxc.hu)