This article got me really excited Metablogging - by Yancey Strickler - The Ideaspace
Feels like this practice could alleviate a lot of potential painpoints. Also in some ways feels like Slack essays are not too far from this. Would love to hear everyone’s thoughts!
Questions
I lean to share them internally in regards to being able to express yourself fully without the barrier of social niceties. Yes to sharing them with the whole team.
Maybe metablogs to pay homage. Maybe just Thoughts
The idea of onboarding new teammates with a selected version of these entries would save more time+funds than I can realize in this moment.
I think the largest benefit in my eyes is the reduction of meetings. Face time will be more productive and thoughtful. That means introducing the habit of spending time reading entries vs. having more meetings-- but I think we’re in that practice after Sprint 1
Also group consensus happening async, like it was in our notion notes during Sprint 1.
first off crazy that the metalabel team (at time of that post) was exactly 7 ppl too. article was so good i think we could run our own version with this and would drastically help with keeping everyone informed + reaching consensus on things in async fashion
in response to the original q:
i think we can maybe set up a channel thats gated for just sprint team 1 that we can use as our “metablog.” i think it should be an internal thing to be able to speak fully free (circle of trust). but we should try to make a habit of sharing things publicly as much as possible obvi
idk thinking of something
other quotes that stood out as great points:
Metablogs have also become a way to announce work that’s already underway without explicitly needing or asking for approval based on assumed consensus.
I’d be interested in utilizing notion for the metablogs in regards to creating an organized repository, being able to save drafts, other editing capabilities, and also having a mobile app. Also organizing the entries to create a similar structure to Metalabel’s where they pulled out certain entries to serve as roadmap planning or onboarding for new teammates. Think discourse misses on a few key abilities unless I haven’t found those abilities yet.
in regards to ur notes about missing functionality:
I do agree that maybe keeping stritcly metablog stuff in notion could be good for separating context, but the gated #mindshare category seems to be perfect for this use case if we keep that strictly reserved for our metablog. what do u think? I would love for us to have one platform for context/discussion in PA but ik that might not be reasonable
also what do ppl think about “Mindshare” as the name for the metablog? was just an idea, “metablog” felt a bit weird but down for that too
the # of entries in regards to onboarding could be confusing/overwhelming, vs. a curated view of what is important to focus on. The alternative would be making a list with links or something.
In regards to the internal team seeing which entries are the most relevant for future goals, not sure how to tackle that on discourse- there could be a way.
I think I am looking ahead, long term. The question may be more— is Discourse going to be used for long term planning, keeping roadmap and deliverables, to do lists, daily notes- or will be utilizing notion for those things?
I think an important thing to remember is that we are setting up the norms for how us 7 specifically want to communicate. These norms will be different than how we communicate externally
So with that being said I actually think ur right about keeping notion in our workflow. Trying to map everything out (again, just for how us 7 communciate), maybe it’s like:
Notion
Discourse
GitHub/Figma
Twitch
My initial reaction is to use Notion for metablogging as it feels like a more conducive platform for actual writing. I’m also just unfamiliar with navigating Discourse atm so that might be why I’m shying away from it.
I like the idea of paying homage to metalabel by calling it metablogging.
I do feel you about reducing communication channels though. I know this is a bit of an aside but we’re all in agreement with phasing out Slack correct? So we’ll have Twitter, Notion, and Discourse? This can be a separate issue…
Yeahhh that’s the vibe. Kinda like- ‘fast’ work on Discourse and ‘slow’ work on Notion.
Think we did talk ab getting rid of Slack, down for it. This stack sounds nice.
The Notion tables/kanban boards changed my whole perspective on Notion
Also I haven’t heard the Twitch argument yet, but feel like it seems low priority considering Twitter spaces. As long as we’d be able to pull down those conversations to save.
video is the argument
The argument is actually twitch or youtube, might be useful to start uploading old meetings somewhere? too soon?
I would also argue that discourse is slow and fast depending on which channel. In this makerDAO forum you can see how they use the forum for essays. I’ll stick to mirror.xyz personally but the people love long form
feel u on the Notion being better for writing, but would also point out that u can expand the writing console on replies and then it actually is pretty nice. gives u instant feedback on what ur writing will actually look like, see screenshot below (shows previews of what embedded media will render as too)
