“Wow”, I exclaimed at the Business of Software conference in Boston last week. And many others agreed with me. No, this wasn’t in response to the speakers, but to a much less wow-worthy* event – the length of the toilet queues. For the first time at a big event the ladies’ queue was shorter than the mens’ queue.
General Ramblings
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.