How to decide what to write about

Open working is a lovely idea, but when that cursor is blinking at you on an empty screen, it can be very difficult to pick something that feels worth sharing with the rest of the world.

What that something is will of course depend on many things — what your cause is, what type of organisation you are, your role within it, why you are working in the open, who may read it — but below are some ideas to get you started whatever the answer to the above.

Pick a funder report question and answer it

One of the main reasons that working in the open is a good idea, is that it helps you to do reporting in real time.

Rather than having to write a full report to your funder about what you did and how you did it at the end of a project, you spread the work over the duration and collate at the end (if you need to).

Let those funding conditions guide your writing!

Is there a requirement for inclusion? Write about how you are addressing that. What are the challenges, what are your assumptions, what don’t you know? The same goes for community outreach. Or specific outcomes, like matching funders values with your work, or return on investment.

Grant giving conditions are not just a burden, they can help shape your work, your learning and your open working. Use them.

An event you are organising 🎪

Why are you organising an event? Is it in person or virtual or both? What are the challenges? What are the benefits? If the event has happened, how did it go? What went well and what could have gone better?

A new process you are embedding

What is your new process? Is it internal or external? Why are you implementing it? What do you hope it will do for its users? Who will be running it? When will it launch?

Focus on the 6 ws (why, where, when, what, who, how).

Give us answers to all of those or just one.
You can answer the same questions for:

• A new service you are offering 🌱
• An existing service you’re running

A service user story 💬

Have you had some feedback from a service user? Or has someone shared their story with you? Share the story (with permission!) and share what it means for your organisation.

Will it influence decisions to change things or does it confirm what you’re doing works?

Explain what your organisation does to a lay person and focus on where you are 📍

Easy peasy — especially good if you are not one of the big third sector organisations that everyone knows about already.

Don’t start from the beginning — that’s what websites and wikipedia entries are for.

Share how long you have been operating for and use that as a jumping off point for where you are now. This can help guide your thoughts to current challenges and successes.

Your response to current events or one particular news story 🗞️

There is no end of current events. Some of the time, some of those events will overlap your cause. Is there a report that illustrates why what you do is needed? Has there been a policy change that impacts how you operate? Has a tweet got the wrong end of the stick?

Respond to the real world in real time and start a conversation.

What you don’t know (I wonder if…) 💭

This one may sound tricky because how you are supposed to know what you don’t know, right? Another way to think about this is to fill in the blank in the sentence ‘I wonder if…’

If x happened, it may allow for y.

If x assumption about our approach is proven untrue, what would that mean for us?

Speculate about real and concrete questions, or go conceptual. Sometimes thought experiments can start interesting conversation or line of reasoning.

Others working in the same field - how you are the same and how you are different

Rarely, if ever, are we the only ones working for the same cause, or in the same field. There will be other organisations working towards the same goals. Consider ho you are different, and how you are the same.

Tag the organisations you’re writing about. They may learn from you. They may share information with you. You may even end up collaborating.

It never hurts to take a constructive look at this question, even though it can also be very challenging!

Finally

I’d like to add a reminder that open working is about

sharing little, sharing often.

If you feel like you can only answer part of a point suggested above, do that. If it is not related to last week’s post, still publish it. It may become relevant in two months time and you can link back to it. Publishing something incomplete is allowed.

Allow your body of open work to grow over time.

Even if you are unsure that anyone will read your writing at the time of publishing, still publish it. One day it will be relevant as part of a larger whole. You will show your process, your reasoning, build credibility and demonstrate openness and engagement.

It’s not about this week’s weeknote. It’s about the body of work you can look back on one year from now, built one tiny piece at a time.