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Ask HN: How do you share/organize knowledge at work and life?

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111–120 of 304 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do you share/organize knowledge at work and life?

#111
At work we have Confluence and MoinMoin as internal documentation wikis, so sometimes I use MoinMoin for stuff not in Confluence I put it under my own MoinMoin homepage. If a project has a space on Confluence I go crazy on it. At home I mostly write things down or use the QuickNotes app on my LG G7.

I am debating writing my own little utility or setting one up on one of my Raspberry Pis at home. So I can have some sort of small wiki for internal use at home.

Re: Ask HN: How do you share/organize knowledge at work and life?

#112
Confluence for team sharing. Also copious comments in the code, documenting WHY something is written as it is.

I recently replaced org-mode with Joplin. My more visual notes are in OneNote, which supports the Apple Pencil for drawing and writing.

Re: Ask HN: How do you share/organize knowledge at work and life?

#114
post #9

Wikis built with org-mode is my magic bullet with everything under version control. The major problem was that everyone needed to know both git and Emacs to contribute but this is not the case since I made a proper web client https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash

Is there an org-mode editor besides Emacs that has a lower learning curve?

I've been using my own orgmode plugin for SublimeText [1] for a several years.

It doesn't have all the features emacs has, but I'm quite happy with it for personal notes and simple TODOs.

There is another plugin for SublimeText [2] but apparently I like it less :)

[1] https://github.com/dim-an/Zorgmode

[2] https://github.com/danielmagnussons/orgmode

Re: Ask HN: How do you share/organize knowledge at work and life?

#115
At Mobile Jazz (fully remote company) we've a weekly 1-hour video-conference call dedicated to sharing knowledge and experiences with each other. For that we share a Google Doc where everyone has a section to write down a few bullets, add links or images. Then in the call everyone gets 2-3 minutes to talk. Usually it takes less than a minute and we have the other 2 minutes to discuss.

For the actual organization of knowledge we use Slack (#team room for work related stuff, #coffee room for everything else) and then for the serious information and processes we use a Wiki (Google Sites) and Asana.

We've also written an extensive Company Handbook [PDF] which can be downloaded here for free: https://mobilejazz.com/company-handbook-pdf

Re: Ask HN: How do you share/organize knowledge at work and life?

#116
Well, here is the issue: “... to turn knowledge into actual learnings.”

As you know, the solution is not just about an electronic system to expose the data.

The problem is that it is up to your colleagues to read and absorb your “knowledge” so they become “learnings.”

Now, the solution is also not to force them to do this. There simply isn’t enough time to absorb the notes of 49 other people every day and still do a full days work including churning out notes for the others.

This is a bandwidth issue. Does it really make sense for everyone to know what everyone is doing?

I think they actual solution will be tailor made for you company. Who does what? Who needs to know what? You have to start with the details.

Re: Ask HN: How do you share/organize knowledge at work and life?

#117

I would suggest a single source of truth. In my marriage, it’s my wife’s google calendar. My personal projects are in a single google doc with tags I search for. I document my personal projects because sometimes I do stupid stuff and wipe out my work on accident. For work, We use confluence as the source. We have daily stand ups that go on there. For any screenshare 1v1s I create a quick doc to cover what we discusse…

> We use confluence as the source. We have daily stand ups that go on there.

You record your stand-ups on Confluence? I think retrospectives should probably be recorded (on something - Confluence I guess if you're using it) but stand-ups? Genuinely curious if you think you get any value from this? How often are they referred back to?

Re: Ask HN: How do you share/organize knowledge at work and life?

#118

I only run documentation for a small team (4 people), so can´t comment on scaling. But after a lot of failed attempts (word document, text files, wiki) for now we settled on MS OneNote... yeah I know... as team leader I was resistant to it. But after noticing my team members had each started their individual notebooks, I thought - what's the point on trying to force them to use something I think is better but that is…

Isn't Onenote only available on Onedrive (Microsoft's cloud) after Office 2016? So you won't be able to keep it on your Sharepoint in the future.

Re: Ask HN: How do you share/organize knowledge at work and life?

#119

I use Markdown documents in Git repositories whenever I can. Also try to evangelize for this at work. PRs then include relevant changes to both code and docs and it's beautiful. For personal project docs I use this exclusively. At work it depends on the team, some people don't like it, but most often it is because they don't like keeping docs at all, not because of an alternative preference. I avoid UI and WYSIWYG ba…

This is pretty much exactly what I do, too. The only difference is that my use of Apple Notes is mostly for quick, personal things ... I move material into Markdown documents within git repositories as soon as I can, because then it's easy to share it, trace changes, and organize contributions. Oh, and one more thing: my Markdown documents are normally R-Markdown documents, so I can incorporate calculations and graph…

I, too, am a fan of R-markdown for this purpose

Re: Ask HN: How do you share/organize knowledge at work and life?

#120

I only run documentation for a small team (4 people), so can´t comment on scaling. But after a lot of failed attempts (word document, text files, wiki) for now we settled on MS OneNote... yeah I know... as team leader I was resistant to it. But after noticing my team members had each started their individual notebooks, I thought - what's the point on trying to force them to use something I think is better but that is…

My team's got OneNote notebooks stored on shared network drives, which works very well with same the benefits you list.

To open the notebook and be able to start typing (or pasting in from email etc) is a very low barrier of entry, compared to say using a Confluence wiki page and having to login then click edit.

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