A fair number of people who aren’t my students or colleagues ask me for advice about digital history projects or what have you. I want to be helpful, but those conversations rarely seem to go anywhere and take up a lot of time. So I’ve started asking people to either send me something they’ve written or write up one page gathering their current thoughts before we talk. Most people I never hear from again. For those people who do it, our conversations are much more productive and don’t waste either party’s time. Not sure if this is a prickly old man thing to do or not, but I’m sticking with it.