I’ve been in this field for a while now. I’ve been to a number of conferences over the years. I read lots of magazines and blogs. Over the years, I’ve seen lots of industry professionals commenting on the current state of our industry. From the quality of design, to the tools we use, to the data we collect… there are lots of experts sharing opinions with the community about things we as an industry are doing wrong. While expressing their concerns, they often will share examples of best practices, providing an example of the type of work we should be doing. If you’re one of the people who are participating in conversations like this – and there are a growing number of you out there – I have a simple request.
Please stop.
This may seem like a strange request. After all, I’m a huge advocate of sharing and connecting with peers to learn. We need these examples of high-quality practices to give us a benchmark against which to judge our performance. I applaud anyone who shares their work with peers, and I think our industry needs more of this.