The conversation continues, with Jeremy discussing the benefits of knowledge sharing and how easy it can be…
… on sharing what you know
What I really, really like about working on the web, in web design and web development, is the amount of sharing that goes on. I don’t think you see that in so many other industries – partly because it’s in the nature of the web itself, it’s a medium for sharing and seems to be the default, it’s hard to make stuff hidden and secret on the web, so the default is that you have to be open and share stuff. But it seems like it’s always been that way, that ethos has been there from the start of the web. When I was learning how to make web sites there was the web design mailing list from Stephen Champion and you had Eric Meyer sharing his knowledge and Jeffrey Zeldman – these people were very happy to share their knowledge. That’s continued, and if anything it’s even better today because we have things like GitHub where you might have a half-baked idea, or some code, and just throw it up there and let someone take it and run with it. I think it’s a shame that more people don’t blog – blogging seems to have taken a bit of a hit as people use Twitter more – you don’t see as many of the long form posts, but something like GitHub is great because people share a lot. I don’t see that kind of sharing in so many other industries. Here in Brighton there’s a big geek community, there are lots of web people and we have events all the time, we have UX Brighton and the Skills Swap, the JavaScript meet up – all these things going on and it’s all about sharing, people sharing ideas, sharing skills. Brighton also has a huge games community, there are a lot of big gaming companies based in Brighton, but I don’t think they have the same community events, because I don’t think there’s that same ethos. In those companies, if you discover something cool, if you create some cool technique, your automatic reaction isn’t to share it, or put it out there on a blog or on GitHub, your reaction is to hold onto that as it’s your ‘unique selling point’, it’s how you differentiate yourself. I really like how in the web we don’t have that attitude, and the default attitude is to share. I’m happy that people do stuff just for pleasure, like ‘hey check out this cool thing’.
… on reconciling making money with sharing knowledge
I think people over-estimate the time it takes to share something. I think blogs have become too much like articles, in a magazine sense, in that people think they have to be crafted and edited and well written before you put them out there, whereas I tend to type straight into a text area and hit ‘submit’ and I don’t have drafts. Never have drafts because if you put it in draft it’ll probably never get published, it’ll just languish in drafts until it’s out of date and then you’ll just delete it. So I think the trick is just to put it out here. You will make typos and mistakes, but you can go back and edit it, right? So once you realise that and get into the habit of it – when you think of something cool, while it’s still fresh, while you’re still excited about it, take a few minutes to write it down. And no, it won’t be well crafted and polished, but that’s fine, it’ll be OK, and over time you can develop a way of polishing, so I think people overestimate the time it takes to share. We’re not talking about sending it off to a publisher and putting it a magazine and that old style thinking that putting something out there takes a lot of time. I think you can balance the two, I don’t think it needs to be one or the other, I think you can be working away and then stop, pause and share something cool.
