you radiate knowledge
I don’t know if you’ve felt that way too, but I certainly have hundreds of times: Looking at others around you who are really knowledgeable on specific topics and you wonder: How do they manage to learn so much about that and keep on top of everything? Or, looking at the standards in your field of work, wondering how you’ll possibly reach that level of competence.
I’m writing this during the lunch break of a data protection law conference I am attending this week, and it has made me appreciate how much knowledge is radiated, is trickling down. Industry experts and specialists of all areas and years of experience congregate at different places every other month to share about news, their experiences and more.
Through these events, you get to know more people and can keep up with them, you get access to more literature and magazines which again have more information inside. Hints to upcoming events and ongoing decisions, recommendations for books and websites. So many presentations and articles! So much of it is word of mouth.
“Hey, in case you missed it, there was this!” “This is my area of expertise, let me tell you about it” “I was interested in this problem and researched it, now I’m sharing what I found so you don’t have to”
You don’t need to know it all, especially not by heart. We manage all of this by each researching and advancing and sharing so no one has to reinvent the wheel by themselves. You just need to know where to find the documents, the presentations, the papers and articles of the people who do know, and you need to know who to ask, who’s fitting for this sort of topic.
And you too radiate knowledge! I got so much secondhand knowledge just from people sharing about their day - their hobby, their work, their special interest. Things I never would have looked for or cared to ask otherwise.
It doesn’t need to be in an educational setting, on some conference or class. Blog posts are great, a casual video is cool. Or just hanging out!
It’s something that’s reflected in the way I try to write about law on my blog: I want to write about it like I would explain to a friend on a walk or at a table, with the added benefit of being able to show my sources and prove my claims. I want to strike a balance between accuracy and talking about it in a way almost everyone could understand. And through that, knowledge trickles further down.
We are all knowledge filters and disseminators. You don’t need to know everything there is about data protection law, but I’ll let you know of things that might tangentially relate to your every day life. In turn, you’ll let me know about programming, gardening, architecture and more.
Reply via email
Published 30 Oct, 2025