Category: Books

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OLPC: new laptop/ebook for kids has touch screen

Olpcbook
One Laptop Per Child just announced a new version. It will be half the size of the first version and look like an e-book. However, turn it sideways and one of the touch screen will become a keyboard. The new device will cost $79 and will be marketed as a text book replacement.

You can see a whole photo gallery on Gizmodo or read more about the device.

This device is really exciting and I hope that OLPC:

  • continues to use open source software,
  • learns how to effectively work with the large group of volunteers that would love to help them in their mission,
  • gets their supply chain issues worked out.

They’ve got an awesome vision and a great product and I hope they succeed!

(This is also starting to look a lot like Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. How cool is that?)

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Book Review: Career Distinction

Personal branding is very important in today’s web 2.0 world. In a world where anyone can google you and people change jobs multiple times in a decade, your reputation and brand are essential to your career. If you’ve never thought about personal branding or you’ve wondered how to go about it, then you should read Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand. It offers some concrete advise and metrics for setting up your personal brand and measuring how well you are doing. For example, they recommend you google your name and check the number of accurate results you have.  They make recommendations like you should have 5,000-50,000 if you are "a vice president, acknowledged thought leader, highly regarded consultant or subject-matter expert." (I did well on that one, a search for "Stormy Peters" returns 161,000 results where 98 of the first 100 are me.) Their suggestions ranged from creating home pages to public speaking to what type of clothes to wear.

All that said, if you are already an expert in career branding, you might be disappointed. The book is only 192 pages and it’s full of white space and quotes. (24 of the pages are either blank or title pages.) And in a lot of places where more detail would have been helpful, they refer you to a workbook that’s not included with the book.

In summary, Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand is a great introduction and overview of personal career branding but should be combined with the workbook or they should come out with a Career Distinctions 201.

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Book Review: The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need

I enjoyed Dan Pink’s new book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need. I was even more impressed with Garr Reynold’s slide presentation of the concepts in the book. Garr is the author of Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter) – a style I’m trying to master. Here’s Garr’s presentation:

The six tips in Dan Pink’s comic style book are:

  1. There is no plan.
  2. Think strengths not weaknesses.
  3. It’s not about you.
  4. Persistence trumps talent.
  5. Make excellent mistakes.
  6. Leave an imprint.
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Book review: All God’s Children. A great book on street kids.

In college, I volunteered at the Covenant House. Every Thursday from 7-10pm we would drive around the worst parts of Houston handing out sandwiches and juice packs to the homeless and letting them know that any homeless kids were welcome back at the Covenant House.

What impressed me the most was how different the homeless adults were from the teenagers. The adults were what you would expect homeless to be like. Some depressed, some hungry, some listless, some drunk, some too embarrassed to tell their kids they were living on the streets, usually grateful for a sandwich or a clean pair of socks. The kids on the other hand were on an adventure. None of them ever came back to the Covenant House with us. They always had someone to stay with, or a car to ride in to Las Vegas, … places to go, things to see. And they never seemed hungry. Full of hope. And then I would listen to them talk and be just horrified. I will always remember the conversation between two fifteen year old girls, with babies in their laps, talking about the job they had the night before at a strip club. The way they had been treated was inhumane. (I tried  – unsuccessfully – to get all my friends to avoid strip clubs in Houston forever.) Yet these girls just took it in stride. At the time, I thought it was because they were kids and kids had more hope and maybe more strength and flexibility. After reading Rene Denfeld’s book All God’s Children: Inside the Dark and Violent World of Street Families, I now think it’s because they live in an alternate reality, a completely different culture, than the rest of us. Rene Denfeld describes the completely alien culture of street kids in a way that not only made sense but completely matched what I saw. It was fascinating and terrifying.

As a side note, Rene blames many of the agencies that help street kids for promoting the street kid culture. By providing them food and resources they enable the street life – large groups of kids with nothing to do except hang out and create their own rules. Very harsh and violent rules.

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The book that changed my life the day I read it

I had just finished reading the The Art of Possibility when I ran into a work acquaintance in the lobby of the hotel I was staying at. He introduced me to someone and said "and Stormy’s on maternity leave." Surprised, I said "no I’m not!" (Why would I be at a conference if I was??) He went on to tell me that so-and-so had said that I wasn’t really truly back to work, that I worked from home a lot and didn’t work full time. I was furious. I thought I knew what was up and it made me mad. I work from home a couple of days a week – and I’m not sure everyone is happy with that – and I don’t officially work Fridays. (I do some work on Fridays but I don’t get paid for them so that I don’t have to work them.)

My first response was to call so-and-so and demand an explanation. However, just having read the The Art of Possibility and thinking the authors had made a lot of good points, I felt like if I called in anger, I would not have learned anything from the book. So I thought about it and tried to apply the ideas from the book to my situation. (Well, first I griped to someone I trusted to handle it well, and twittered about it, then I thought about it.) I tried to think about the interactions between the three of us as a game. I wasn’t just a player – I was the one deciding what game I was playing. I realized that I didn’t know what so-and-so’s motivations were. What I did know was that:

  • So-and-so had said something about my work hours or habits to at least one person. For unknown reasons. (Idle conversation, jealousy, excuses, as a good example, … I had no idea.)
  • It was likely that so-and-so would continue to talk about my work hours to people. Confronting him was likely to make him talk about the confrontation and my work hours even more. Not to mention that if his intentions were good I would look petty.
  • I work 80% for 80% of my full time salary – I don’t on Fridays.
  • I don’t (or didn’t) tell people I don’t work Fridays because I was afraid it might hurt my career.
  • I had no proof that it would hurt my career.
  • My career is going really well in spite of the fact that I don’t work Fridays.

So I changed the rules of my own game (part time might hurt my career, keep part time a secret, etc.) and blogged about it. On my work blog. Now everyone knows that I don’t work Fridays (most of the time), they know how I feel about it and why. So even if so-and-so continues to talk about my hours in ways that are misinterpreted, my version is out there and has been read by a lot of people. People that I care about and people that are interested in my career and what I have to say. (At least I assume that’s why they subscribe to my work blog!)

I think the The Art of Possibility is one of those books you could read again and again and still get new things out of it, so I’m keeping it on my book shelf. It’s a short read and I recommend taking the time to read it.

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Book Review: Cast in Shadow

Fifty pages into Cast in Shadow by Michelle Sagara, I almost quit reading. I’m glad I didn’t as I did enjoy the book. The main character is human but she lives in a world of aliens in the style of C. J. Cherryh. Like C. J. Cherryh’s books, the characters seem really alien and it takes a while to figure out their culture. (Which is part of the fun of reading.) Unlike C. J. Cherryh, the alien characters end up feeling human.

I’m not sure if it’s because she makes you feel their society so well, that they no longer feel alien or if it’s because she shows that even though they have a different culture, they aren’t so different from us. I think it’s the latter.

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Bad leaders need unquestioning obedience

Bad leaders need unquestioning obedience. They don’t just want obedience – they actually need unquestioning obedience in order to maintain their power. From A Just Determination:

A good leader doesn’t need unquestioning obedience. People follow that leader because they choose to, because that leader has their trust. A poor leader requires unquestioning obedience, because without that, a poor leader will lose all meaningful ability to exercise command.

Think about that the next time you feel yourself becoming defensive.

The same passage (it’s a fiction book, BTW) talks about how poor leaders need better followers.

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Book Review: The Company

If you ever worked for or with a big company, you’ll find this book Company hilarious.  Things like these will actually make you laugh:

  • Endless voicemail forwards: "This is Greg Smith, Gretchen, can you please forward this to my staff.  <beep> This is Mike Jones, Mary, can you please forward this to my direct reports. <beep> This is …"
  • Nobody really knows what the company does or wants to have to explain it to someone else.
  • All your "customers" are internal customers.  (I remember a big campaign … nobody was allowed to call a company team a customer even though we made tools for other teams.)

Company is a funny book and a fast read.  Good entertainment.