The Web Can Make You a Star!

Today OLAF is a rich collection of resources for the online ad business. Unlike The Velvet Rope, OLAF avoids gossip. It's a part of the industry's infrastructure. It offers links to the best sources of news and technical information, discussion forums, and job postings. It's also a vehicle for the creator's own views. Hespos's column, The Rant, offers strong opinions on hot issues.

Fan Club: One sign of OLAF's clout is the increasing number of business pitches that Hespos is receiving. In fact, he recently removed the site from GeoCities -- in large part because he wants to take advantage of those opportunities. "I get up to a hundred emails a day," he says, "everything from pats on the back to 'Please list my site' to sponsorship offers."

Road to Fame: OLAF has become a big part of Hespos's professional life. Although he still works at K2, he spends 15 to 20 hours per week on the site. It's worth every minute. OLAF "has changed my life," he says. "I'm in constant touch with people in my business from around the world. It's helping me to expand my professional reach. And it's given me a lot of personal brand recognition."

The Stage: Visit OLAF on the Web http://www.olaf.net or contact Tom Hespos by email thespos@k2design.com .

The Insider

Star: Robert Hughes, 57, retired public affairs executive at Kaiser Permanente and the creator-moderator of Rumor Check, an employees-only bulletin board.

In any big organization, change generates resistance -- and rumors. Kaiser, the giant California-based HMO, learned that lesson soon after it began a major restructuring in 1993. Bob Hughes was associate director of public affairs at the time, with special responsibility for employee communications. The more rumors he picked up, the more convinced he became that Kaiser needed a way to answer them. His proposed solution: an electronic bulletin board where people could post hearsay and let the company address it.

Top management endorsed the proposal -- until everyone recognized how much time it might consume. "So we dropped the idea," Hughes says, "but we dropped it after the bulletin board had been set up." Slowly but surely, Kaiser employees discovered the site and started using it, even though no one at the company was publicizing it. "It became an underground forum," Hughes says. "When the IS people brought it to my attention, there was a raging battle going on between smokers and nonsmokers. Things were getting pretty ugly. IS told me, 'Either you moderate this or it gets deleted.'"

Hughes understood that a grassroots forum would reject a heavy hand. So he set up simple guidelines: "Be civil. No anonymous posts. If a joke isn't appropriate for Fox Television, it has no place on this board. I also decided that my moderation would be after-the-fact. All messages appear on the board as soon as they're sent. Then we deal with offensive ones. The success of the board is based on spontaneity and candor."

Fan Club: Hughes can't say how many of Kaiser's 34,000 employees and physicians in the region post to or read his bulletin board. But he can say that the role of Rumor Check now extends beyond its original mission. "One feature of email is that you don't know anyone's status," he says. "This is probably the only communication forum in this organization that doesn't include 'MD' after doctors' names or 'RN' ' after nurses' names. There have been heated discussions between doctors that would never have occurred in other forums."

Road to Fame: Hughes had been planning his retirement long before he launched Rumor Check, and he made it official on Thanksgiving Day 1994. But it was hard for him to break away from his bubbling electronic water cooler. So he made Kaiser an offer: give me an Internet connection at home, and I'll continue serving as Rumor Check's moderator. The offer made sense for the company: "I had 30 years of history; I could answer lots of questions off the top of my head." It also made sense for Hughes, who spends about five hours a week on the board: "It gives me a window into what's happening at Kaiser."

Hughes has some hands-on advice for aspiring moderators. "You really have to believe in candor and open communication," he says. "You have to think about where people might be coming from -- to hear the question behind the question. And the bulletin board needs to become part of you. I contribute my personal experiences; they make me seem real. People feel that they know me."

The Stage: Rumor Check is limited to employees of Kaiser Permanente. Contact Robert Hughes by email robert.hughes@ncal.kaiperm.org .

Gina Imperato gimperato@fastcompany.com is a member of the Fast Company editorial staff.