Looking for feedback on an article I wrote. | Hacker News Reader

Looking for feedback on an article I wrote.

6 pointsjedberg8 comments

Hey everyone. I wrote an article for InformationWeek and I was hoping to get some feedback from y'all. The target audience is CIOs, Technology VPs, etc., so a little bit less savvy than the HN audience.

I am looking for feedback specifically on high level topics I might have missed that I should cover next time, things that I didn't explain well, or any other feedback you might have to make this better.

Basically, I'm looking for the answer to, "If you worked in a big company, would you use this article to explain to your CIO what Big Data is? Why or why not?"

Thanks!

Here is the article: http://informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/232301236

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The higher up the food chain, the more concise you want to be and your article feels verbose to me. The line:

"Since I'm a big proponent of public clouds, my definition also includes the use of virtualization, but yours doesn't have to."

is a prime example of being verbose and has the added consequence of detracting the reader from your actual point.

Also, you say you'll cover the technologies more in depth in later columns so why bother beginning to go into depth about NoSQL now? More fat you can trim.

If I'm not mistaken the the point of this article is two pronged. First to introduce them to the idea that Big Deal is a set of tools and techniques. Second to get them to appreciate the fact that "This data screams to be mined for valuable insights." You introduced and developed the first idea enough but it feels like you only brushed over the 2nd idea. The google example was good, you just need to drive home the idea of valuable insight from large sets of data in as close to real time as possible.

Your opening is a little rough too. You essentially have two separate opening paragraphs.

Good points about trimming the fat. The main reason about going into depth was as a teaser for the next article.

You're right, I didn't spend enough time driving home the point about mining the data. I think more examples (as mentioned elsewhere) would have improved that.

Thanks for your feedback!

I've always been a big fan of demonstrating practical utility/applications when trying to explain a (new) concept.

From this perspective, the article shines via the Google-flu-prediction-capability sub-story.

I'd say more such citations would grab more attention and drive your point home. A good piece and a good read on the whole.

Great, thanks! I'll try to include more citations of practical examples for the next article.

I'm new to HN but have a lot of experience writing and editing for non-technical audiences. It's a short piece, so if you're still looking for readability feedback we can google doc it, I can give it a blow-by-blow, and you're welcome to take whatever's helpful. Best.

Clickable: http://informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/232301...

Thanks. Is there any way to make it clickable in the text above? Markdown doesn't seem to work.

AFIK, there's no way to do that.

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