Author: Scott Berkun

Wednesday linfest

Posted on in linkfestby Scott Berkun

Here are this week’s links:

What my office looks like right now

Posted on in personal, Writing Wellby Scott Berkun

In a desperate fit of end of year holiday boredom, as I’m self employed and don’t quite long for these weeks off as I used to, I decided it’s time to fix up my office.

If I’m actively writing a book, over time my research methods create piles of books all over the place. I did heavy research for Confessions, and there were papers, books, journals, and articles just about everywhere.

When a book is done, there are several weeks of promotion, and it’s only now, about 8 weeks in, that I finally get around to fixing up the disaster area that is my office.

In the photo below, I’m 30% of the way in to sorting things out, and things are complete chaos. Hopefully I’ll post another photo this week with everything nice and fixed up.

That’s my knee on the right, and my desk above it.

I dare you to post a picture of what your desk/office looks like right now.

Quote of the month

Posted on in quote of the xby Scott Berkun

I have a huge quote file I’ve been keeping since 1990, and it’s about 300 single spaced pages of quotes I’ve collected over the years. I think the practice of typing these things in is good for writing. Unable to sleep tonight I stumbled through the file, and found this one.

In the old testament and in the Jewish Interpretive and mystical texts, there is an emphasis on the importance of the spoken word. Speaking is the cause, not the antithesis, of an event or action. The words of the prophet are true because they are spoken, not the reverse. Prophecy is not witchcraft; it does not foretell the future but creates it. – Reesa Grushka

The curious thing about my affinity for this quote, and my last book, is I’m a big believer in the notion talk is cheap. It is. But talk can, at times, have great power. Saying things out loud, even if only to yourself, changes how you think and feel about whatever it is you choose to say. On the first day someone speaks the truth about something everyone else has been too afraid to say, or admit to themselves, the world changes forever. Telling someone you love them for the first time, or that they’ve hurt your feelings, or a thousand other scary things can take more courage than any amount of action.

Buy nothing for Christmas

Posted on in Culture, personal, Philosophyby Scott Berkun

‘I rarely follow it 100%, but I do believe what people want for Christmas, or as gifts in general, are not consumer objects, but experiences and acts that require the giving of our time, not our money.Here’s my post from last year about some rules I made up for gifts:

So this year I made two rules:

  1. To buy only experiences. Tickets to plays, events, massages, meals, things that they’ll experience and own as a memory instead of as a thing. Perhaps I can baby or pet sit for friends, gifts that really could be useful to them. This also has the benefit of low environmental impact if you’re into that sort of thing.
  2. To make things for people. If I make it with my own hands then it’s impossible to get at the GAP, or at their local mall and as ugly or fragile as it might be, it will be personal. It will will represent more of the the most precious thing i have, my time, than anything I could buy.

I’m actually thinking this year to write a letter – not an email, but a letter, to various folks I care about. Will be more personal than anything else I suspect they’ll get this year.

Full post on Buy nothing for Christmas .

The importance of what you say

Posted on in Public Speakingby Scott Berkun

My latest essay for Forbes.com is now up – it’s called the importance of what you say.

Many are surprised to learn that for centuries many of the great writers in history, from Emerson to Mark Twain to Peter Drucker, made much of their incomes not from their ideas alone, but from the interest people had in hearing them talk about those ideas in person. A different level of understanding comes from seeing someone explain his ideas to you, before your own eyes, in real time. You can’t shake hands or share some beers with an idea, but you can with its creator.

Read the full article here.

When visualizations go wrong

Posted on in designby Scott Berkun

Sometimes information visualization goes wrong. We quickly confuse whizzy fun visuals with using visuals to make explaining things easier. Here’s a recent example.

Michael VanDaniker used the open source data-viz toolkit Axiis, grabbed the data from w3schools.com for browsershare, and made the chart below. He explains in nice detail how he did it. To be fair, I suspect his goal was just to show off the toolkit, not necessarily to make a useful or usable chart. Much of his blog is well written posts about how to use various visualization tools, with code samples.

But the web & twitter has picked up this sample of his work, and has called it ‘wonderful’, ‘fascinating’ and ‘fantastic’ which in any sense of practical value, it isn’t.

If you want to play with the chart and decide for yourself first, go here.

Here’s a snap of the chart:

badg-1

So far so good. This definitely looks cool, no doubt. It even looks like the Firefox logo. But looking cool and being useful are very different things.

If you move your mouse over any block, you get a pop-up that explains what the hell you’re looking at.

badg-2

Which is also fun and cool, especially when you fly your mouse around really fast, and see each unit flash, bubble up, and highlight. But after five seconds, it’s hard to know how each unit of info relates to the ones near it. It’s quite disorienting to wander around in these circles. If you try to use this visualization for anything real, it falls apart quickly.

The first missing piece of design knowledge is that the primary axis in data is (often) time, and time is easiest to understand linearly. Showing time in spheres, cubes, or concentric circles, while novel, adds little value, and makes time hard to understand. If you don’t get the direction the data is moving in, it’s very hard to see patterns or ask good questions.

The second problem is curves distort our perception.

Thursday linkfest

Posted on in linkfestby Scott Berkun

Here are this week’s excellent links and the only stuff I managed to read this week while on the road:

  • On press reporting: MSFT and black screen of death –  Anyone who has an article written about them, or their work, and discovers the gap between what they are and how they are portrayed, never reads the news the same way again. Here’s an interesting tale of reporting gone wrong.
  • InnovationParkour – Great presentation (slides only) comparing innovation with the street sport of Parkour. Wish the actual presentation was somewhere.
  • Top 10 Conferences – My favorite events are ones that hit cross discipline. That’s where the big leaps and connections come from. Here’s a solid list of ten conferences that will give you want more bang for your training/event dollar. (I’ve written about GEL before)
  • How a web design goes to hell – Very funny for any creative who works with clients. (But does beg the question, perhaps you should pick better clients to have).
  • McNeil/Leher rules for news – Didn’t get all the way through this, but made me wonder what other shows would say their rules are, and how wide the gap is between their ‘rules’ and their actual practices.

Should I become a project manager? (Mailbag)

Posted on in mailbag, Managementby Scott Berkun

A recent email from the mailbag echoes other email collecting dust in the mailbag, so I figured I’d beat the rush and answer here.

Hello I will be graduating college in two weeks and want to more about certain careers.  Project management is one of them and thought you might have some insight, based on your blog.  I have a few questions that I hoped you could answer.

Signed – Mr. Student who wants a job

Here are his questions, with answers.

Q: As a graduate how do I get on the path towards project management?

For most of the industries in the world you never start out as a project manager. That’d be like getting off a bus in L.A. and becoming the director of a $200 million Hollywood film. You have to earn responsibility through experience, which makes sense. Often people who eventually become project managers start out in more junior roles and after earning credibility move into project management. Without front line experience it’s easy for the project manager to have no clue as to what she’s doing, or have no idea how insulting or destructive their decisions are to folks in specialized roles. MBA graduates who enter the workforce with little other experience beyond MBA-structured internships have similar challenges.

There are exceptions. Some schools have programs that focus on management, or even project management, and likely know of corporations that have entry level project manager roles. Microsoft does – it’s called program manager. You start with very small slice of a project and if you do well, that area of responsibility grows. If you don’t do so well, you hit the streets.

2. Are there entry-level type project management positions?

See above. They do exist, but they’re industry specific as they should be. You might need to do an internship, or work for less than you’d like, to get in the door.

3. What skills should I develop to market myself as a project manager?

This is easy: WORK ON A PROJECT. Go make something. Grab a friend, build a website, or a blog, or something. Anything. Build a house. Build a couch. Make a movie. Volunteer your PM skills wherever you can in return for a reference. The best way to market yourself is to get experience, as there is nothing more dangerous for the world than someone who wants to be a project manager but has never managed a project in their life.

If you’re already at work in a non-PM role, tell your boss about your interest to have a more leadership role, and suggest small projects you can manage that are related to your current work. If you’re willing to do it on a volunteer basis, and sell it right, often you can get PM experience without having to risk your current job at all. Then you’ll know if you like it or are good at it, before taking a bigger leap.

4. Any other advice?

If you’re still in college invest heavy in finding other people who want the same kind of work you do. The network you make in school is incredibly valuable. A year or two from now you might be looking for a new job, or still trying to find a PM role, and the number of people you know in the field will help tremendously. One of the best things I got from going to CMU was a circle of friends who went to work in the same industry as me, and could provide advice, job leads or connections I couldn’t make otherwise.

SF: Wed at Adaptive Path, open to public

Posted on in On Tourby Scott Berkun

I’m here in the San Francisco bay area all week, talking about the book. But my last stop on the tour, and my last speaking gig of the entire year is this Wednesday at Adaptive Path.

It’s a fitting place to wind things up as these guys have been big supporters of my work – I’m grateful and looking forward to putting on a great show.

It’s free, it’s open to the public and there will be some snacks and stuff.

When: Wednesday, Dec 9th, 6-8pm

Where:

Confessions /Amazon shipping issues – explained

Posted on in Booksby Scott Berkun

Some of you have noticed Confessions is currently listed on Amazon as shipping in 1 to 2 MONTHS. And you’ve complained to me.

The problem here is the book has sold well, so Amazon, as smart as they are, are a little behind.

I’m told from the powers at O’Reilly that restocking should be taking place today, and things will return to normal (24hr shipping) on amazon.com early next week.

Thursday linkfest

Posted on in linkfestby Scott Berkun

Here’s a slightly late Wednesday linkfest, now extra fresh for Thursday:

As a side note, sorry there’s been so much stuff on the blog about public speaking this and that. Need to pay the bills (e.g. book sales) and just trying to help the new book into the world. Diversity will return.

Q&A from webcast on public speaking

Posted on in Public Speakingby Scott Berkun

We had about 500 people in the webcast today about the new book, Confessions of a Public Speaker – as promised here are all of the questions asked in the chat room during the talk, with answers and some snarky commentary.

Slides from the talk here (3MB PDF). Actual webcast here (youtube).

Here are all the questions I pulled from the chat room transcript.

Q: When you started out, did you enjoy speaking in public?

A: Definitely No. Don’t know many who would say yes. I did it because I had ideas, and worked as a leader on projects, and speaking was essential to helping those ideas and projects survive. I started to enjoy it only once I realized how much I sucked at it – then I worked to get better at it, and learned how little it took to do better than most people, and to find the challenge of it interesting. As I said in the webcast, and the book, the bar is quite low. Most people are really bad at doing this. Putting effort in shows easily.

Q: (Mary Treseler) what is your next book about?

A: That’s easy, how not to answer questions from your editor while doing a webcast :)

Q: Do you think there are big differences between face to face public speaking and online public speaking (like today’s)?

A: The core things of rhythm, being interesting, and practice are the same.