On writing: Why entrepreneurs should write
spencerfry.com
spencerfry.com
At a practical level, you can write your way into jobs (or investment), and if you do it right writing does not rot, so you can continue to reap benefits from things you've written long before. That lets you store time in a bottle, which has really nice implications for time-strapped entrepreneurs.
(This also implies that you'd probably be better doing public writing than writing which winds up in the email archives of BigCorp or behind a logistical and cultural wall almost nobody will pierce at your institution of higher learning.)
I try to make myself briefer -- my writing condensed -- in the hope that the shortness of the message will avoid invoking avoidance based purely on the volume of content. And I try to communicate less often, collecting observations into a few well-composed summaries rather than a rapid fire flurry of messages -- particularly when I know the recipient will not be addressing the topic immediately in any event.
But then I get accused, typically by some less technical manager, of "not communicating enough".
All by way of saying, I guess, that I find skill in writing very important. But there's a certain point where the problem becomes your audience's (or, depending on mood, leave off the apostrophe s ;-).
P.S. I note now your use also of the term "oral". There, too, there is the problem of the other half. Meetings that largely reiterate previous meetings, because the attendees apparently didn't make an effort to retain the information. This... syndrome can become self-perpetuating. People come to expect that anything important will be repeated at them, potentially ad infinitum. The repetition becomes expected and depended upon, making it in turn necessary.
People sometimes wonder why I take so many notes. But a month or two later, I can tell you what happened in that meeting. And if my work depends upon that information, I've executed accordingly.
Let's be fair. Different information is "meant" for different things. My email password is not meant to be free. And I think if Calacanis has decided that his writing is now meant for a different level of freedom, that's his call. If others aren't jumping ship with him, they probably just have different needs/goals (and these may change). Thoughtful and open writing really does have a great power for networking/community-building, but there are trade-offs.
A good essay on the whole, I just don't think we should appeal to the moral aspirations of raw information. The current state of the internet seems to show that the world wants (often demands) free information, but we're still reeling (economically and otherwise) from this movement, and waiting to see where it ultimately will lead.
It's common to hear stories that begin with "Sergey and Larry..." but I doubt those guys spent any time blogging and tweeting about how awesome Google was going to be. Just one more reason to be more like S&G, that's all :)
While I agree with the article at large, I disagree with this. There is definitely value in writing things between 140 characters and essay-length, if only to jot down complete ideas without grooming them into a lengthy piece of essay quality.