A question of style

Here's one of those little consultant-secrets:  clients come to you with what they believe to be problems unique to their companies, but, in fact, they're often one of a remarkably small set of things you hear about time after time.  

The one on my mind has to do with questions of style.  In this case, the styles of writing that seem to engender *more* writing, *more* interaction. (which is, after all, what you want ... isn't it?)

A story.  

Years ago I was responsible for steering the creation of an online conversational space at a big company -- big as in global in reach and, oh, 40-some thousand people.  There's no need to pick on the company by name, but, let it be known this was a culturally conservative place.  Having said that, they still invited me to join their ranks to help develop this conversational forum.  

All the mechanicals were in place, and after what people would now refer to as a 'soft launch' - people started visiting 'our' site.  And they started introducing themselves.  I remember one in particular:  "My name is Martin J., I've been with this company for 5 years.  During that time I've moved through the following areas. (a long list followed).  At those groups, reporting to A, B, C, D (he named the VPs he'd reported to), we accomplished x, y, and z.  Currently , I m working out of the Albany office, on the M project."

Now .. it just so happens I knew this guy pretty well.  He was a friend of a friend, and we'd chatted at a couple of company 'events,' and he'd been in groups of people I'd had dinner with.  Good guy.  And - anything but button-down. 

I phoned him and said "hey, M, what's the story here.  NO-one really cares which project you worked on - what they DO want to know is stuff about you  -- about your swim team, about the fact that you just bought a greystone in the city, about you Italian grandmother's incredible basil garden.  You know .... STUFF."  He laughed, said that was very *un-company-like* but that he'd re-do it.  

The style caught on.  People started introducing themselves in ways that often broke down stuffy boundaries.  We got to see each other as people with smart ideas (or, at least, passionate about certain ideas) and, over time, the entire forum benefited from that informality.

At one point the conversational space was described in a way that I'll forever be proud of.  It was described as "rabble-y and irreverent -- but NEVER irrelevant."

Our social computing spaces could do worse.