If you haven’t checked out Sun’s recently released Corporate Social Responsibility Report, it’s worth a look.
In addition to shining the light on Sun’s involvement in Eco Responsibility, Global Citizenship, How we work, etc., it also mentions our Culture of Transparency via communication channels such as Sun Blogs:
“Our culture of transparency continued to grow in fiscal 2007 with the creation of new employee blogs. These blogs provide insights into Sun from numerous sources — our CEO, executives, engineers, marketeers, and many more. And while Sun does have a policy on blog content, our employees are not required to obtain approval for their blog content, even though Sun, as a company, may not agree with everything written. That fact alone clearly demonstrates how important maintaining transparency is to Sun.”
I couldn’t agree more with that last sentence. My favorite example of Sun blogs being “accessible to any Sun employee to write about anything” (the site’s tag line), is Kelly’s blog, “Transgender @ Sun“. I love that I work at a company where diversity and acceptance is not just talked about — it’s demonstrated through consistent action. The passion and behavior of Sun employees based on this trust is apparent.
I find it interesting that although trust is a two way street, the focus in the blogoshpere is often on companies going out on a limb by trusting employees to blog on a corporate sponsored site, but the fact is, employees also go out on a limb for companies when they contribute content to the company blog site (whether it’s personal or not).
To me, seeing Kelly’s blog highlighted in the report is a shining symbol of Sun acknowledging the mutual trust (and gain) involved in building a successful corporate blog site.
Linda Skrocki 
#1 by Walter Bays on October 4, 2007 - 10:35 pm
I was glad when I found Kelly’s blog because it let me know what had become of someone whose wit and insight I had always appreciated on internal email discussions, and who seemed to have disappeared. And yes, I still appreciate her wit and insight.
#2 by Allen on October 5, 2007 - 8:06 pm
very cool stuff indeed. glad to see the blogs are still going strong and a big "whoot!" for the progress on wikis.sun.com. cheers.
#3 by Karena on November 14, 2007 - 10:55 am
Hello! This is rather random, but I stumbled across your blog while researching company blogging policies, and was trying to find people who might be willing to talk about their satisfaction with their company’s blogging policies. Would you mind discussing your experience with Sun’s blogging policies via e-mail? I’m writing a paper for a class promoting the development of good blogging policies in conversations between employee-bloggers and the company, and am curious as to how successful current blogging policies have been. I hope to hear back from you!
– Karena