Through this blog, my fellow blog authors and I hope to engage in an open, interactive yet informal dialogue with you and everyone else who has thoughts, questions, opinions, etc. on gas pricing and fuel efficiency. 

If you're interested in the back story, please read About this Blog. 

If you are interested in some of the 'behind-the-scenes' stuff, keep reading. 

Pump Talk is one of only a handful of corporate blogs in existence today.  And while we were able to borrow some best practices from other corporate bloggers both in Canada and around the world, a lot of it was created from scratch.  So consider what you see today as merely the starting point.  It will grow and get better.  Given that, I offer you some thoughts on how we got here.

1. As you can see in the bios, all blog authors are Petro-Canada employees in the communications department.  We understand that some will immediately cry "spin doctors!", but give us a chance.  We're interested in the topics and talk about them for a living.  If you see us slipping into 'corporate speak', just let us know.
2. We have a Comment Policy, Terms & Conditions and other legal stuff prominently displayed on the blog.  We have tried to balance being open and interactive, with the fact that we are blogging for Petro-Canada, a regulated and publicly-traded company.   Rather than make you guess, we wanted to state our approach up front.   
3. We'll be monitoring comments.  Not much science here.  Our YouTube experience last year was pleasant, but many comments came sprinkled with offensive language.  I'm no prude, but this site is for all ages.  We'll keep things moving as quickly as possible to encourage discussion.
4. We actually launched two blogs...one in English and the other in French and have posted a Language Policy.  We looked, but weren't able to find another Canadian corporation or media outlet that had already addressed some of the challenges of blogging in more than one language.  Our approach is therefore built out of respect for both official languages.  We hope others will get involved and increase the amount of French content we can link to.   

Any feedback on the various pieces I've discussed is welcome.  This is the starting point in an ever-changing online world.  Help us figure out how to evolve and improve.  Just post a comment, or e-mail us.

So that's it.  As this blog is probably one of 100 thousand that will be started today, we're glad you're here and hope you keep coming back.