Thread by @Conaw

I was surprised to see such a negative reaction to this exchange - but I think I see something pretty useful here, and it seems worth sharing while it is fresh - so at risk of further derailing my day...

Why I said "No" to Roadmaps
And why the right response was [[Yes and]]

https://twitter.com/Conaw/status/1383476707957493765

First - I assume that @Roamhacker did not realize they were retweeting a tweet from me pointing to a dead link

Here is the archive of the original page

As a stark reminder of the dangers of link-rot, it was a Roadmap of our design questions at the time

roamresearch.com/#/app/help-arc…

Throughout my life, I've had a lot of people tell me that they think I should have different priorities, or do different tasks (Go to college, get a job etc)

An important shifts in my life was realizing that it was almost never the right move to ARGUE with those folks

However..

I can see from the reaction that a few things happened there that probably didn't need to.

I read the thread as a demand to do something unreasonable

To either A) know things I did not know already, or B) Shift our priorities to things more legible

https://twitter.com/astralwave/status/1249136929825849347?s=20

Also read it as something of a veiled threat:

"Either shift your focus to problems that you can schedule a solution for or I will not invest (my time) in your product"

We were very selective in who we took $ from, explicitly avoided investors like that.

https://twitter.com/roamhacker/status/1383327649934626819?s=20

Anyway - notice I'm doing the thing I was seeking to avoid initially -- arguing the point, and spending time on here rather than collaborating with a guest

Real point

It does not matter that there were places @Roamhacker might have been wrong, just as many places they are right

I still think my original tweet (emphasizing that I care about the person, but think they are wrong about timing and walking way) is better than jumping into a hostile argument...

but it still was a confrontational NO, when a [[Yes And]] sent tomorrow would have been more useful

One thing @roamhacker probably doesn't realize is that I spend hours and hours every week working on trying to clearly articulate the maze of questions that go into some of our prioritization decisions - and that my number one, two and three goals for product is creating this map

This thread took time I didn't want to give now - and certainly can't give everytime someone asks why X is not done yet, or when Y is expected

Sometimes - answer is much much sooner than I thought - often, it takes longer than I hope.

Instead I could have said something like...

Creating a "Roadmap" into unknown territory is harder than you might think

agree it is important, but from my experience creating something that I actually think is useful and not just wild guesses would take weeks of my full time attention and right now I can only give 1/5 time

If you want to try writing out all the questions that YOU think Roam will need to answer (on design, engineering, and operational side) I would love to hear them - and I can tell you which ones we're already working on - which ones we're actively testing hypothesis on