My previous post was about brevity in communication by choosing models over narrative requirements. That's not necessarily an endorsement of writing/drawing over talking.Most writing is a unidirectional activity, with varying latency. Responses to IM messages can take seconds or minutes, responses to emails can take minutes or hours, and responses to published documentation can take hours to days...and what is the meaning of no response at all? Was my brilliant writing not seen? Ignored? Acknowledged and put aside? Conversations can unlock the mystery of what others think, and more important, collaboration allows good ideas to blossom into great ideas.
I ran across a well written post that emphasizes this point: http://edgehopper.com/did-we-forget-how-to-talk-to-each-other/
Now having said (written) all that, an intuitive colleague at Improving, Jef, pointed out the sheer irony of commenting on this very subject via blog. Touche'
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I'm not sure it's as ironic as it seems. From the advent of blogging, the best of breed has been about conversation, though in a written, digital format. Someone would post something, someone else would link approvingly and someone else would rant a disagreement. A conversation does not have to be spoken and for those of us poor folks who are chronically bad at spoken conversation, written conversation serves rather well I think.
ReplyDeleteAll that said, I agree that much of writing is unidirectional and most blogs are not terribly different in that regard.
I think it might have been more ironic if Jef had posted his response to HIS blog. Though it might have been ironic in that Alanis Morissette kind of way.