Now with Cisco Systems official approval

So I recently noticed that my employer(Cisco Systems, Inc.) has policies I need to follow if I want to talk about Cisco's products and technologies in a blog. They had an older set of policies - if you were posting as a Cisco employee then  you had to formally state that you were giving your own opinions and that the post did not reflect official Cisco policy. Fair enough.

The new policy goes further, and required me to get approval from my manager for what I was doing. A little heavier process, I might whine about it a bit but I can understand why Cisco feels this is appropriate. So I added a little bit to my blog headline (see above) and sent a link to my boss. He approved shortly after reading it, so now I'm good to go.

He made an interesting comment about my note somewhere in a post that I found the automated enrollment process to be annoying when I was using the product I work on (Unity Connection) as an audio-blog engine. He noted that including negative observations about the product was reasonable, and made the whole blog seem more authentic - I wasn't just shilling for Cisco. I've since figured out how to turn off the auto-enrollment, but his point is a good one. Not that I'm above a little shilling for Cisco, but I don't mind pointing out things that are more work than I'd like. I'm all in favor of laziness efficiency.