The title speaks for itself, but why blog about this?  Especially to a group as tech savy as we are?  Well to share an experience I have been going though at work lately.  At the company I work for we have a pretty wide range of age groups, well actually we have a huge age gap to say it bluntly.  I have heard statements that the average employee at my company is 49, I have also heard higher numbers... (wow)  The company I work for has been hiring new employees in a effort to bring in new blood and to secure its future.  Afterall there is a ton of knowledge that the majority of the employees have that must be passed on to the new employee generation.  Thats a whole different topic that I wont get into here. 

So what does this have to do with Blogs and RSS you might ask?  Well its simple really.  Now since we have been bringing in new blood, that new blood is pushing new ideas, new ways to communicate across the company.  You guessed it internal Blogs, Wikis and Forums oh my! Since the average age group is so high at my company many of the employees simply do not know what a Blog is, much less what RSS is and how it can help them sift through all the information on the blogging web.  This poses a big problem if we are using them internally to share information and communicate.

Now its not their fault, many of the new employees grew up playing with NES, Cell Phones, PCs, SMS texting, the Web, Blogs, Social Networks, etc... the previous generation at my company simply did not.  So it is our job (the younger generation) to help them get up to speed.  I was tasked to help a couple groups get up to speed on what Blogs are and how RSS works.  I originally tried to just tell them... that wasn't a good idea.  The reaction was like looking at a bunch of deer stairing into high beams.. frozen in place.  I decided on a new route instead of trying to explain what a Blog is and the problem with trying to keep up with the information on them I went with the "Pictures are worth a thousand words" approach,  afterall sometimes pictures (or videos in this case) are simply easier for everyone to relate to.  This is when Google really comes in handy, I googled what my question was in front of everyone and on the fly I got a pretty good selection of hits.

I found two great videos that are titled: "Blogs in Plain English" & "RSS in Plain English" both are from the company CommonCraft.   Hopefully they will be of use to if you find yourself in a position similiar to mine.  The group I was talking to after watching these two short videos, understood completely and had all sorts of ideas on what they could blog about and how it could help their department/team/organization.