Best Practice: healthy collaborative space

Creating a healthy collaborative space means setting up some best practices. I created this for our song sharing community area at Beat Kitchen, but I thought I’d share it with the community at large too. Hope you find it helpful.

Now that we have a collaborative space and a song sharing area, let’s set up some best practices for a healthy sharing and collaboration. Whether you’re giving or getting feedback, here are a couple things that I think you should keep in mind and probably make explicit. If you’re sharing work, please start off by making it clear what you’re asking people.

If you just made something, you’re proud of it and you want others to listen to it. That’s awesome. You should say so.

If you’re feeling stuck, tell us why. And if you want to know people’s honest opinion, you should ask. But help us out by making sure we know what you like, what you’re unsure about, and maybe who you think your intended listener is.

And for those of us who are giving feedback, it’s important to consider whether or not somebody is actually asking for it. Giving good feedback also means understanding what somebody’s going for. So ask questions and try and put yourself in the ears of that person’s listener, not just your own.

Most importantly, we’re all here to grow, to get better, to make friends. And so to that end, your job is really simple. is to be honest and it’s to be kind.

Now let’s make some great collaborations.