The public health commissioning network and two other groups will serve as a test group for Greenhalgh. He hopes to make them advocates who will encourage other physicians to get on board. "I'm giving them a platform that's more dedicated to their needs," he says. "We need to then bring people into these communities so they can gain momentum."

Bell Canada's Roman also successfully used pilot groups for his blogging platform and other Web 2.0 technologies. "The test group is very critical," he says. "You need a friendly test group. You want them to give you the critique, but they also become the champion and say, Wow, this is cool, and tell their colleagues."

This blog effort, dubbed "ID-ah" by Bell Canada, was first used by a few hundred employees in 2006, with a full rollout companywide in early 2007. The "jam sessions" started in 2007 as well.

To date, more than 1000 ideas have been submitted by employees, 3000 comments shared about the ideas, and 15,000 employees (out of 40,000 Bell Canada employees) have voted, Roman says. Of the 1,000 ideas, 27 of the top voted ideas have been "harvested" for review in the past six months and 12 have been implemented, he adds.

Curing the E-mail Addicts

For all the hype about Web-based technologies permeating the enterprise, not all employees love consumer IT. Some people clutch to their corporate e-mail boxes as if they were cigarettes: They're hopelessly addicted. "The primary communication medium is still e-mail," says Jonathan Edwards, a Yankee Group analyst. "We're all so accustomed to it. You can't change the way people work overnight."

One way to wean employees from e-mail communications: Don't fight it entirely. The sister technology to a blog, Real Simple Syndication (RSS), can help. At Bell Canada, when a manager decides to start a blog jam, he or she uses an RSS feed to push an invite message to the desired participants' e-mail inboxes. In the e-mail, employees can click on a link that leads them to the jam session. The message also says they have 48 hours to comment on the topic, making it harder for them to throw the invite aside.

Roman also has very specific guidelines for how people conduct themselves. One of the drawbacks to online communication formats like blogs is that they encourage passive-aggressive behaviour and other kinds of what's now commonly called Web rage. People might feel emboldened to say something to another colleague that they'd never say in a face-to-face meeting or on the phone. "There won't be any slamming on our blogs," Roman says. "We make that very clear when people log on for the first time."