(1) BE YOUR OWN MODERATOR. Come on, folks! No need for moderation. We're
scholars and professionals here. The list is a service provided *by*
Charlie, not a job *for* Charlie.
(2) BE CAREFUL WHEN YOU REPLY. Birds gotta sing. Fish gotta swim. People
gotta learn to use Internet email protocols. This is a simple one. This is
not programming we're talking about. Take out the prior stuff rather than
passing on 237 lines of repost to offer a 5-line comment.
(3) BE CAREFUL WHEN YOU WRITE. When I was a boy, my granddad used to tell
me about email when he was a kid in a little fishing village in Ireland.
"Ken," he'd say, "when my Uncle Seamus taught me to use email, he explained
that the best way to write a reply is to restate the relevant issues and
respond to them. He always used a word processor. It's just like writing a
regular letter, my boy."
Well, no, my granddad didn't really use his coal-fueled computer to answer
email. That's because there was no Internet when he was a kid in Ireland.
To achieve computer-to-computer communication, granddad had to tie a floppy
disk to the tail of a mule and send it down the road to the neighbor's
farm. Those were the old 36-inch wax floppies. Remember them?
Granddad's Edison floppies aside, the normal rules of letter writing will
serve well here. A listserv discussion group has some of the qualities of
scholarly communication in the early days of learned journals. Back in the
1600s and 1700s, you wrote a communication carefully, you edited it and
polished it, and you sent it off. You were obliged to be careful in your
communication because there were neither reviewers, nor even editors, as we
understand them today.
Internet brings part of the scholarly communication full cycle. I invite
our scholarly fellows to consider this a form of academic communication. If
it isn't, why bother?
This is also a list for professional communication. Our practitioner
colleagues communicate for a living. If you dump a load of bad prose on a
potential client stapled together with a load of irrelevant documents, you
won't be in practice for long. That's what a sloppy reply with an attached
series of prior posts amounts to. The point that was made here about our
posts as a form of communication to a large market was well taken.
The suggestion that this thread offers opportunities to reflect on Internet
communication and management practice made good sense to me. I've been
enjoying the exchange, especially the posts that reflect a clear desire to
communicate valuable ideas in well-structured form.
Strunk and White said it all.
Except, of course, for these words on Internet communication from Job
(19:23-24),
"Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were printed in a book!
That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever!"
Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Knowledge Management
Norwegian School of Management
Box 4676 Sofienberg, N-0506 Oslo
Norway
+47 22.98.51.07 Direct line
+47 22.98.51.11 Telefax
email:
ken.friedman@bi.no
Home and home office:
Ken Friedman
Byvagen 13
S-24012 Torna Hallestad
Sweden
+46 (46) 53.245 Telephone
+46 (46) 53.345 Telefax
email:
ken.friedman@bi.no