
The Professional Side Effects of Social Media - laurex
https://www.dmagazine.com/commercial-real-estate/2020/02/the-professional-side-effects-of-social-media/
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Communitivity
While raising a daughter and also mentoring younger devs I've noticed their
communication patterns online tend toward short and less polished.

Short to me means 1-2 sentences, even on platforms such as Slack, which is not
limited to 140 characters (we have a family slack and slack bots). The
sentences also tend towards brevity.

By unpolished I don't mean raw stream of thought, though I see that too. What
I mean is that they may get one pass at polishing, but not the polish that's
usually in a well crafted email.

These trends are most noticeable when the writing is a report, or a proposal.

When I'm doing an editing/review pass I like to check two basic things, 8WH
[1][2][3] (variations have less questions, such as 5WH and 6WH) and the
Heilmeier Catechism [4]. Both improve the quality a lot by themselves if
present.

8WH is a mnemonic for a set of basic framing questions: Who? What? Where? Why?
When? Whose? Which? For Whom? How? These questions are too ambiguous without
contextualizing. For example if I was recommending a big equipment purchase:

* Who should the purchaser be?

* What needs to be purchased?

* Where will this equipment be used?

* Why does it need to be purchased? Why this make/model?

* When is it needed, and when does it need to be purchased by?

* Whose money will be used to pay for it?

* Which make and model is recommended?

* For Whom will the equipment be used?

* How will the purchase be confirmed, and tracked?

There's overlap, and sometimes some questions can be combined or eliminated,
but when writing myself I try to do all of them first before consolidating.

The Heilmeier Catechism also has some overlap with 8WH, but is a useful set of
questions on its own. The questions are geared to a pitch of some kind:

* What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.

* How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice?

* What is new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful?

* Who cares? If you are successful, what difference will it make?

* What are the risks?

* How much will it cost?

* How long will it take?

* What are the mid-term and final “exams” to check for success?

[1] [https://oneminuteenglish.org/en/wh-
questions/](https://oneminuteenglish.org/en/wh-questions/)

[2] [https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/a-simple-sure-fire-way-
to-c...](https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/a-simple-sure-fire-way-to-create-
great-content-the-5-w-the-h/)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws)

[4] [https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/heilmeier-
catechism](https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/heilmeier-catechism)

