We’re building yet another recipe site (with a few twists). Clearly madness, I can hear you thinking. How many people do you think will use this? Well, so far we’ve got exactly 1 user (one of us) – however this is 1 more user, who really wants and cares about this product, than many other corporate software applications I’ve worked on.
August, 2008
20
Aug 08
Lazy Documents
I have seen my fair share of templates. For each document a business systems analyst is expected to produce, there is a pre-made formula. At first, I thought it was like colouring in – you get an outline, you colour in between the lines and at the end, you have a masterpiece. It quickly became apparent that this approach wouldn’t turn me into the next Picasso.
The problem with the way most templates are used is that a single template is designed to encompass a humungously broad range of vaguely related scenarios. Matching this vast, vague template beast to any specific focused software development project I have ever worked on is a painful exercise both for the writer and the reader (on the off-chance your audience tries to read it). Software projects vary substantially: one project may be process focused; another may revolve around the UI; and, yet another may involve purely back-end processing. Sometimes people forget that templates are intended as a starting point, a guide or cue and should never become a rigid exercise of filling-in a form without regard for the purpose of the writing in the first place.
20
Aug 08
Collective Blogging
Blogging is a broadcast, just like the old newspaper and less old television. I blog, you read. Sure, you may comment, but once a post is up there, it’s not often refined or refactored further.
There are some advantages to this unilateral approach. Firstly, it’s much quicker to write on your own – no waiting for a glacially slow editor. Secondly, for a contentious topic (or even a seemingly uncontentious topic), a coherent argument makes much better reading than a schizophrenic arguing from every viewpoint. Thirdly, a personal voice can be lost in the noise of differing writing styles when there are too many contributors.
The flip side? In this era of increasingly cheap collaboration, co-writing can help you flesh out and improve your ideas before you release them into the wild. When I’m ranting about “software and process patent insanity” or “why an imperfect wiki is better requirements than a perfect document”, I might notice that my co-author has fallen asleep – in turn saving you from a great deal of pain. Having a peer means the old-fashioned benefits of a newspaper editor, relevance, accuracy and hilarity, are gained. And (not that there are any), but any weaknesses and quirks are identified and ruthlessly squashed.
So this is it, right here – one blog, two writers.
6
Aug 08
Tagging Reflections
The golden ideas
I love ideas that make you think – those classic light bulb moments. Not ideas which slip out the backdoor of your head before you’ve even finished reading. But the the ones that ring a little bell of clarity, that seem so obvious you can’t believe you didn’t say it yourself.
The Internet is a gold mine of these ideas. Information is supposed to be instant, at your fingertips. You don’t need to physically gather a group of like-minded friends together, invest hours in a book or a movie, to feel inspired. But that accessibility is also the problem. Unlike in book publishing and the movie business, the barrier of entry is so minimal, that it’s easy for people (like me) to put up a post and add to the growing debris mountain. I joined a secret group recently and was so overwhelmed by the amount of activity on the site that I didn’t know where to begin contributing, for fear of repeating thoughts voiced 30 pages (or years) ago.