Chuw on this.

I've been meaning to write down my notes from our "mini-launch" day. I'll get around to it, I'm sure, but I've put it off nearly 5 days already. 

But this Wednesday I was listening to the BBC Newspod, and they had a small bit about successful political diaries. Gyles Brandredth mentioned four (well, three really) brilliant points that he and Alan Clarke came up with:

The four I's:

Immediate - Write it the day of.

Indiscreet - Chips Chanon: There's nothing more dull than a discreet diary; you might as well have a discreet soul.

Intimate - Intimate details are very important

Indecipherable - If someone chances upon, make sure they can't quite understand what you said.

Immediate: I was struck by the relevancy to writing startup and business blogs. Immediacy is everything - a hindsight view offers a lot of well-selected, edited, abstracted lessons, but it's boring. Tell us how you felt, what you thought when you made decisions, when you faced challenges and lost, and when you succeeded. I suffer from always trying to appear rational in my actions, so I spend too much time trying to analyze the underlying motivations about why I did something when I should simply write about what I did and the short, simple thoughts that brought me there.

Indiscreet: I think over the past four to five years we've seen more large-scale companies dropping this veil of decency, and talking about their flaws. Amazon is amazing about this - they discuss and show exactly why something failed, how they're going to fix it, and they don't clean up the language in the slightest. There's no excessive sanitization. Nothing is more dull than a sanitized press-release that says nothing; you might as well have a sanitized product that does nothing. Adobe (just to pick one big offender off the top of my head) is amazingly bad at this. Refusal to openly discuss failings comes across as hubris and cold. And boring. 

Intimate: I like hearing about people and the systems they work on. I like feeling as though I'm part of the story I'm reading in some way, and personal details / minute observations help that. 

Indecipherable: This one I disagree with. I see the value for politicians in fuzzing the meaning, it gives them latitude to maneuver if opinions or actions seem unfavorable. But for startup blogs, if you're filling your writing with words instead of meaning, I'm going to leave very quickly with a bad taste in my mouth. I'll subconsciously catalogue you as a disingenuous writer, unlikely to ever return. Focus on contributing to the startup culture, and helping others along the way with their problems.

They mentioned one more aside: Don't take yourself too seriously. Most of the points listed above stem from not being able to relax, to have a good time and engage with people because you're too worried about appearing "proper". It's not proper for companies to talk about mistakes. It's not proper for employees to detail their personal experiences with the company.

And that may be true. But it's a hell of a lot more interesting.

What do you think? It's our first question: http://chuwe.com/questions/1

> Sean
Rockin' Code Monkey

Original Podcast (Diary section at 30:06)