If you see this post, it means you’re looking at the new, improved, ISP-upgraded scottberkun.com. There are a few kinks that will take a few days to sort out, but most things should be working fine.
The last few posts are in limbo, but will be transferred here shortly. Magically (Hi Jamie).
Please leave a comment if you notice anything amiss. Thanks.
One common criticism, often mild, I hear about my book Making Things happen is it’s a Microsoft flavored book. I plead guilty. But this wasn’t for philosophical reasons, which some people seem to assume. My goal wasn’t to spread to the world how Microsoft makes software (which had already been done by Microsoft Secrets). Instead it was to use what I’d learned shipping IE 1.0 to 5.0 and other products to illustrate concepts, tactics and tricks that can apply to any kind of project whether they use similar processes or not. I needed a spine and that was one I knew well and had the most stories working with. For better or worse, Microsoft is an excellent reference point for how software, or any product is made, for a variety of reasons. But that’s all I meant it for - a system to use as leverage to explore the important stuff, not the other way around.
One of my top gripes at the time was how most project management books seemed written by consultants, people who didn’t write as if they’d actually used what they are teaching themselves (Mythical man month, for all it’s charms, is guilty of this in parts), since they couldn’t point out the common traps of their advice. The best remedy seemed to be specific, be real, tell the truth, and thus, the book came out as it did. I was, and still am, a believer in the idea of program managers, or project managers as true team leaders, and I wanted to tell the story of project management from that point of view.
In fact, if ever I write another project management book I doubt I’d even mention some of the heavier duty process stuff that shows up, however briefly, in the book. MRDs, vision documents, etc. are, as some critics pointed out, artifacts of larger organizations and many wonât have to wrestle with them, which is probably a good thing.
I’m a big believer it’s the soft skills that matter much more, and when I look back at Making things happen I see what could have been two separate books. One about process-y stuff (chapters on vision, specs, etc.) , and another about the human elements of leading projects (leadership, communication, relationships, crisis, risk, politics). I suspect people who like the book have a strong preference for one or the other. In flipping through the book it does seem to hold up the promise in the preface, that you can skip boring chapters and get value from the next - perhaps I suspected there were two books in there when I wrote it.
Anyway, its been years now and I donâ’t think I ever posted about this, despite how often I’ve seen it surface in reviews or had it come up at lectures.
The new book, Confessions of a public speaker, is wrapping up and will be out late October / early November. As is tradition, I’ll be doing a book tour right when it’s out to help spread the word and give away lots of free copies.
The book, in two sentences: everything I’ve learned about public speaking and communication, written for anyone interested in speaking and thinking better. Or if you’re interested in what life is like for someone like me who writes and speaks for a living, the book is for you.
I need help finding venues. Here’s my criteria
If you’re interested in helping, here’s what you can do:
Typically I put together a list of candidates, prioritize and then try to schedule something with as many as I can in 2 or 3 days (often it’s 7-10 lectures).
Right now I’m focusing on Boston and possibly NYC. But Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Pittsburgh are a stretch but might be possible.
(update) Several days in San Francisco is probable for December.
The new book is on it’s last lap. Copyediting is mostly done. Photographs and layout are in the works. The cover is mostly done – some tweaks remain including the blurb that will get top billing on the top (see below)
The response so far to early reviewers has been super positive. Folks like Chris Anderson (Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine), Tom Standage (Six glasses around the world), Bob Sutton (Professor at Standford), and others have read the draft and had positive things to say.
Next up is ramping-up promotion, with a book tour scheduled for Boston/NYC first week of November, just after the book will be for sale everywhere.
Was traveling all week so Wednesday linkfest is now Friday linkfest. I’m sure you all could figure this out but I feel obligated to say something in the sentence that precedes the link:
Vonnegut
Ok – this is clever. He does a roundup on people’s responses to the recent NYT article on sentiment analysis, which I picked on in yesterday’s linkfest.
Nice bit of research on the spike in numbers of books with the word innovation in the title.
Based on some Lexis-Nexis research they found:
A small percentage of this is attributable to the general spike in book publishing, but that trend is nowhere near as sharp as the one suggested by the data above.
Which is again why I advocate people stop using the word, especially if they’re trying to achieve whatever it is they think it means.
Here are this week’s links:
In response to my recent debate inducing post, Why the Whole Foods boycott is stupid, where I offered that boycotting someone for having an opinion isn’t that bright (though is within our rights). In response I got an email from Steven Levingston at the Washington post.
He informed me they asked an expert on boycotts to give an opinion on the Whole Foods issue, particularly the merits of boycotts: Whole Foods Boycott: The Long View
Unlike my post, it’s grounded and informative. It’s definitely worth a read – the author is a professor of history at the University of South Carolina and unlike myself, has more than just opinions and rants to offer.
He provides some nice context to the history of American boycotts, and why they work and often don’t, and how they can have an impact long term even when they fail in the short.
Sloppy logic is fun to throw around and there are certain popular patterns of slop thrown around when talking about innovation.
A journalist for BNET, part of CBS Interactive, is looking for a great short story on dealing with things going wrong on projects.
She wants:
First person stories about how you recently saved a project by tackling a deadline problem, scope bloat, budget issues, key person quitting, etc.
Since she seems cool I offered to throw it out to you guys and see what good tales you might offer about how you overcame a really tough situation.
Leave ’em in the comments. I suspect you should keep it to a few paragraphs max :)
For the fifth time I managed to get invited to O’Reilly’s FOO (Friends Of O’Reilly) camp, an unconference weekend event held at O’Reilly’s headquarters in Sebatapol, CA. ~250 people are invited to camp out on the lawn and spend a long weekend discussing anything anyone wants to talk about. Big schedule boards are put up Friday night, with room for 8 or 10 to happen concurrently, and anyone can organize a session on anything. No restrictions. It’s that simple.
I’ve written up notes from past years and here’s what I wrote in my little Moleskine this year:
Going to FOO is a creative and inspirational highlight for me every year. Thanks to Tim, Sara, Marsee and everyone for preserving an amazing tradition and having me along for the ride.
From awhile back here’s a video of an experiment in public speaking – instead of doing the same song and dance, I offered to the crowd of ~100 people that we just do a big extended Q&A session. It worked out well as the crowd was lively and asked good questions.
Since it was at at the Waterloo UX meeting, topics ranged from innovation, what makes for the best project managers/leaders, UX advocacy, fuck-you clauses in work contracts, politics and more.
Scott Berkun Talks to Waterloo UX Group about Innovation (click for full-page video) from henry chen on Vimeo.
A book that changed my life in 2002 is Living, Loving and Learning, by Leo Buscaglia, which taught my hard-ass, repressed tough guy soul that I was doing things that made me, and those around me, unhappy. My big crime was being more comfortable hating than loving.
Any time you hate something there is a choice. You can focus on the hate, and outrage, and self-righteousness, or you can find the opposite of the thing you hate, and focus on loving that more.
If you betray me as a friend, I can fixate on my anger at you, or I can think about all the friends I have who have never betrayed me, and go thank and honor them. Why focus on how much you hate a book, when you can just as easily go back and remember and share other books that you love? If the friend or book disappointed you so much, why are aren’t using that as fuel to go back and appreciate the good you now realize you’re lucky to have? (An authorial gripe is it’s fine if you hate my books and write negative reviews, but please at least mention a better one so people can get what they were looking for?).
Hate is easy. Destroying things takes much less work than making them, always has and always will. Hate is also less fulfilling and isolating than love, since all it says is what someone or something is not, instead of what it is or could be. Boycotting and banning are attempts to stop something, and stopping bad things is good – but these activities always make me think why not use that energy to go support and promote something good that deserves move love?
In many cultures hate and judgement are safer to express than love (e.g. American men prove we’re close friends by finding funny/mean insults for each other, rarely ever saying out loud how much we care about each other). It’s common in repressed, dysfunctional families or organizations for anger and criticism to be confused with love when it’s the only thing that the parents or leaders provide – anger is still a kind of attention. Kids are genetically programmed to believe their parents love them, so if all they get is negative attention when young, they equate that with what should have been love (and often wander through life confused about what a healthy relationship is like). In some workplaces the dynamics are not that different. If all you know are negative kinds of expression, that’s all you’ll express even when you’re trying to love, and on it goes.
What I got from Buscaglia’s book, which I’d never believed before, was that people who can love more openly, especially in the face of those quick with sarcasm like myself, are the bravest and most positive forces our species probably has (I foolishly assumed they were weak, but yet why did I have so much fear about resistance do doing what they did?). You’ll always find many people happy to hate in the open, but you can’t negate hate with hate. But every now and then you can turn it around, or slow hate down, with the genuine positive expression of love. Only when hate is out of the way can progress start to happen.
I’m not saying not to express hate. I’m still angry now and then. It’s therapeutic, it’s fun and can be a way to bond with someone for the first time – but I’m careful not to let myself end with anger alone. If I hate something, once I’m done tearing tearing it to shreds even if just in my own mind, I force myself to look for something with the opposite traits of the thing I hated and show it some love. I can’t express how profoundly this has changed my life for the better.
[This is one of the 30 essays on philosophy and life found in Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds]
Flipping through old essays I found this one from 2005 – it’s one my favorite but most overlooked essays.
Good, evil and technology: A fun philosophical inquiry
Much of my recent ranting on social media is tied to this sort of philosophical questioning, as the making of good tools shouldn’t be confused with doing good in the world.
If you like my stuff, and are interested in tech, I think you’ll like this:
Here are this week’s (health care free) links:
I’m not trying to be a healthcare reform clearing house, but a few articles I’ve found are much more useful than boycotting. They inform, or at least pretend to inform. Of course you can boycott and inform, but as best I can tell that’s not what these guys have been doing.
First up is this article, What’s wrong with Whole Foods, which presents a much clearer argument against Whole Foods, beyond just the behavior of the CE0 (It’s a crazy looking website, but the article is well written and somewhat referenced, minus the typos). Interestingly, the author of this article doesn’t recommend a boycott either.
But more important is this one, Five myths about health care around the world (Washington Post).
I’m not an expert and can’t verify these claims. But among other good stuff in here:
2. Overseas, care is rationed through limited choices or long lines.
Generally, no. Germans can sign up for any of the nation’s 200 private health insurance plans — a broader choice than any American has. If a German doesn’t like her insurance company, she can switch to another, with no increase in premium. The Swiss, too, can choose any insurance plan in the country.
In France and Japan, you don’t get a choice of insurance provider; you have to use the one designated for your company or your industry. But patients can go to any doctor, any hospital, any traditional healer. There are no U.S.-style limits such as “in-network” lists of doctors or “pre-authorization” for surgery. You pick any doctor, you get treatment — and insurance has to pay.
Which in all is a nice set of informed counterarguments to claims made by Mackey. Which is what I’d have loved to see boycotters passing out, attached to a copy of the WSJ article.
This article also hits on some things I mentioned in HealthCare as an innovation problem, namely informing us about alternatives so we can better see what we have and don’t have in our current system compared with what’s possible.
And lastly is this one from the NYT, which takes a look at the statistics for the uninsured in America: The Uninsured. It’s an editorial, but has references for most of the numbers they quote.
I’ve been forwarded a few emails about the Whole Foods Boycott, a movement in response to Whole Food’s CEO John Mackey’s Wall Street Journal article.
I’m tempted to find the nearest boycott and ask everyone who is so enraged if they actually read his short article. I doubt they have. It’s well written, expresses a clear opinion, and even if you disagree with him he does have some interesting ideas. (Even if those ideas read as callous, self-interested or misrepresentative of the data – note added 8/26).
Why is it in this country when someone expresses an opinion we don’t like, the answer is a boycott? A boycott is a ban and bans on other people’s opinions are can be stupid and childish. It’d be one thing if he was breaking laws, treating people cruelly, or doing something evil. But Mackey having an opinion you don’t like is not a crime. Honestly, adults banning anything from other adults can not come off as all that smart. If you want to protest, or voice an opinion, great, but you don’t need to boycott an organization to do that.
Instead of a boycott, I want passionate respectful disagreement. I want to see people treating other people’s ideas with respect in exchange for our right to do the same. I hope to see people offer superior arguments, and use intelligent persuasion,
Here are this week’s links:
With a new book on the way it’s time to redesign this website, a site still working the same basic layout its had since 2003 (!). I’ve gotten many miles out of the current incarnation and uber-simple layout, but there’s enough content and traffic, over 850 posts, 50+ essays, 5400+ comments and 20,000 RSS subscribers, to merit some smart improvements.
I’m working with Architexture, a great little Canadian firm on my side on the continent, to bring things around into 2009.
Things are already plugging along, but I wanted to open the floor and see if there are things that have always bugged you, or wished I had, and see if I can make it happen.
The primary goals are:
But the floor is open. Any feedback, complaints, or suggestions are welcome. Or if the above sounds good to you, please leave a short comment so we know we’re on the right track.
Thanks for all the support over the years – in return we’re working to make this site suck less :)
