Contentions: Publish, don’t send

I previously wrote about the idea of your email inbox as a place to find good writing (this post started as an email).

“Publish, don’t send,” is one of the mantras of the UK’s government digital strategy, which Matt Jukes discussed in an interview with InfoQ:

There was a real benefit removing the thinking and decisions a team makes from people’s inboxes and onto a blog where it could be accessed by all, findable in the future and referenceable by everyone. Related to this is another huge advantage to blogging – agile teams are often horrible at knowledge transfer and documentation. I always like to talk about blogumentation – encouraging teams to blog with no pressure, on topics they care about leads to a narrative that explains the history of projects that provide context to the code.

This idea resonates deeply with me; I previously wrote about how restaurants like Din Tai Fung open up the kitchen (a metaphor I recently saw Aeon’s editorial director also use!), and choosing a place where you can click Publish instead of Send is a great prompt to start with.

If you’re part of a team or organization that’s only starting to get comfortable with the idea of openness, setting up an internal blog is one way to do this; you’ll come to appreciate the decreased level of management overhead, or meetings just for knowledge transfer, and the time savings will compound.

This is also great for drawing in new candidates (and customers!). It increases the likelihood that everybody knows things they should know about your organization.

https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/208607212594147328

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