The Pirate's Dilemma

The delightful Connie Crosby of Crosby Group Consulting gave me this book on her recent trip to Boston. Matt Mason traces the current web 2.0 movement back to the 1970's punk rock culture. He starts with focus on a quote from punk fanzine Sniffin' Glue with a diagram showing three finger positions on the neck of a guitar with the caption:

"Here's one chord, here's two more, now form your own band."

In a 2.0 world, doing-it-yourself does not seem that radical anymore. Anyone can be published author on the web. You can jump onto Blogger and in a few minutes have a powerful web publishing platform up and running in a few minutes.

Mason looks to some early punk bands who played for themselves and your buddies. Then maybe a few friends come along. If other people come then great, but it does not matter that much because you are doing for yourself and few people close to you. Mason focuses mostly on music, but in the background I was thinking more about blogging and enterprise 2.0. It does not make much sense to put together and a print a book that only a few hundred people will read. That is a big deployment of capital with an improbable return on investment. With web 2.0 the capital for distribution and publishing is minimal. A blog with only a few hundred readers is successful.

It goes back to my post on Why Blog? It is about me capturing my ideas and sharing them with myself and sharing them with some friends and colleagues.

"Here's one post, here's two more, now form your own blog."

I also see the pirates taking over knowledge management. Knowledge management was about capturing the best documents and the best practice, vetting them and packaging them for distribution. There is a big hierarchy of command and control over what information gets published and who gets to see it.

Enterprise 2.0 breaks down that hierarchy. Essentially, anyone can publish information, comment on information and link pieces of information together. The 2.0 movement goes a long way to one of the challenges of knowledge management by making it easier to turn tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge. Turn it over to the pirates. Let them find, collect and distribute information inside the enterprise in the way that works best for them.

The knowledge management 2.0 movement is about reducing the "management" and enlarging the knowledge base. KM professionals should look to ways to reduce the hierarchy and the barriers to contribution. Hand KM over to the pirates.

You can read more of my take on the book at DougCornelius.com - Book Review: The Pirate's Dilemma.

Weekend Book Review: A Few Seconds of Panic

A few years ago, Stefan Fatsis set out to become a Scrabble champion.  Now he is trying to be a player in the National Football League.  In A Few Seconds of Panic, Fatsis sets out to be an active participant in a National Football League training camp.  Given his physical size, athletic prowess and reconstructed knee, he sees the role of kicker as one that may work for him.  Fatsis quotes Jason Elam, the Denver Broncos incumbent kicker during that training camp, describing the role of kicker as "hours and hours of boredom surrounded by a few seconds of panic."  

The book is far from boring.  If you  enjoyed Wordfreak, Fatsis' book on Scrabble, you will also enjoy this book. Even if you are not a football fan. When Fatsis is not competing at Scrabble or football, Fatsis is a sports writer for the Wall Street Journal.

Fatsis convinces the National Football League to let him join a team in training camp as long as he can find a team willing to let him in. This is not an easy task in the very controlling NFL.  He finally convinces the Denver Broncos to let him participate in training camp.  Fatsis participates in training camp and even suits up for a pre-season game against the Detroit Lions. Although the NFL refuses to allow him to participate in the game.

Fatsis tries to make some comparisons between football and Scrabble:

Both great football players and great Scrabble players say that when they're in the proverbial zone, the game decelerates and the instantly see the answer. I, for one, think that's easier to accomplish without the continual threat of being steamrolled by a charging goliath, which is not a major concern in Scrabble.

A Few Seconds of Panic is full of insight to the psyche of a football and football players.  It is a great exploration of the psychology of competitive athletes.

Book Review: Long Way Down

Ewan and Charlie went back on the road again.  In The Long Way Down, they depart from the tip of Scotland and travel 15,000 miles on their motorcycles to the tip of South Africa.

This journey is a follow up to their 2004 trip The Long Way Round ,when they they rode their motorcycles from London, across Europe, Asia and the US to New York City.

The Wife and I really enjoyed watching The Long Way Round when it aired on television. So when she saw The Long Way Down in the bookstore she grabbed a copy.

The book alternates between Ewan and Charlie telling the story of their journey starting from John o' Groats at the northern tip of Scotland. Each hands the story off to the other to continue as they travel across Great Britain, France, Italy, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Namibia, Botswana and finally into South Africa. Their journey ended at Cape Agulhas but they were accompanied from there to Cape Town by a group of other bikers.

To be honest, Ewan and Charlie are better television personalities than authors.  But I really enjoy watching The Long Way Round and really enjoyed the first episode of The Long Way Down, so that is a fairly high bar.

I was hoping they would highlight some of the dangers and challenges of such a long journey.  One of the purposes of the journey was to highlight some great charitable organizations in Africa.  UNICEF was a big reason for the journey.

They also highlight the effort of Riders for Health. By ensuring health workers have access to vehicles that never break down Riders for Health is making sure millions of people across Africa receive regular reliable healthcare. Riders for Health sends riders out on motorcycles to provide healthcare across the countryside.

The Long Way Down is worth buying and reading.

Book Review: Black Wave

Black Wave is the story of a family from San Diego sailing around the world in their catamaran. The subtitle lets you in on the upcoming drama: A Family's Adventure at Sea and the Disaster that Saved Them. It only takes five pages into the book before the disaster strikes. The boat slams into a coral reef during the night, destroying the boat and seriously wounding members of the family.

I am generally not a big fan of stories that start with the climactic scene and then flashbacks to tell the story. It just seems to be kind of tired way of bringing people into the story.  In this case, I found it worked. Interweaving the family's background with disaster unfolding made you understand and empathize with the characters as they struggled to survive.

I really enjoyed Part I of the book which was this story told by Jean Silverwood. Part II of the book was written by John Silverwood and tells some of the history of the reef. He focuses on a similar disaster, when the Julia Ann crashed into the same reef in 1855.  Part II far less interesting and not as engaging as Part I.

In the interest of full disclosure, the publisher send me a free copy of this book to read, hoping I would  review it. I am big fan of human adventure stories.  Before the kids I had a few years of mountain climbing and adventure racing.  Now, with two kids, I am much more of an armchair adventurer.  Maybe it the family man in me that got so engaged in a family trapped in a desperate situation.

Whatever the reason, I thought the the book was a good read. But feel free to stop at the end of Part I.

Book Review: Groundswell

After starting to read Groundswell, I devoured it over the last few days. Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff write a good book. If you are involved in social media you should definitely read this book.

I admit that I jumped ahead to chapter 11 of the book: The Groundswell Inside Your Company. That chapter seemed the most interesting to me since I am mostly interested in the impact of social media within the enterprise. That chapter provided a great deal of insight, so I decided to jump back to page 1.

Charlene and Josh group consumers into six different categories of participation: Inactives, Spectators, Joiners, Collectors, Critics and Creators. They use a paradigm of a ladder to show the level of participation and call it the Social Technographics ladder.

When designing an online community or when reaching out to your customers with social media, you should look at where they stand on the ladder. Forrester's offers a basic tool for Building Your Customers' Social Technographics Profile on the Groundswell Website.

The focus of the book is not about technology, although technology has a role.  The book is about listening to your customers, your clients and your employees to improve your business.  The book shows that there are some new ways to do that listening and to interact with your constituencies. 

For full disclosure, Josh did send me a copy of the book gratis. But you should buy it. It is definitely worth adding to your bookshelf.

Weekend Book Review - Time Bandit

I just finished reading Time Bandit. I wish I had spent my time better. The book was written by Andy and Johnathan Hillstrand, with William MacPherson. The brothers Hillstrand are among the boat captains that star in the Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch. They are Alaskan king crab fisherman.

When I first got the book title, my first thought was about the movie Time Bandits. That movie is one of my favorites. The name of the book is the name of the authors' boat: Time Bandit. The authors' father named the boat after the movie.

The story opens with Johnathan out fishing on another of his smaller boats. The engine dies and the battery dies, leaving him stranded on the Bering Sea with no way to call for help. The book then jumps back and forth from the stranded boat to past stories of the adventures and misadventures of the brothers. The obvious comparison is to Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm. I am not sure whether it is a fair comparison or not. Regardless, as I was reading the book I kept thinking about The Perfect Storm.

I have not watched the Deadliest Catch, so I was not familiar with king crab fishing or the brothers Hillstrand. Perhaps I would have enjoyed the book more if I had watched some of the show first. But I didn't. After reading the book, I am not any more inclined to watch the show.

Johnathan comes across as cliche. He drinks hard, works hard and lives hard. Johnathan portrays himself as indestructible. So it is no surprise that at the end of the book he is rescued just in the nick of time. I thought his brother Andy sounded more interesting as he tries to balance his time fishing in Alaska with his horse farm in Indiana.

You can better spend your time re-reading The Perfect Storm or Linda Greenlaw's The Hungry Ocean.

Book Review - The Toothpick

I just finished reading The Toothpick: Technology and Culture by Henry Petroski. Here is the New York Times Book Review that caught my attention to the book: Consider the Toothpick.

It was a good read, not as good at Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World or Salt: A World History, but it was good. This was one of the author's reasons for writing the book:

"For whatever reason, the usually forgotten toothpick came to my mind one day when I was searching for an engagingly simple device that would serve to illustrate some basic principles of engineering and design and that at the same time would help reveal the inevitable interrelationships between technology and culture."

There was some fascinating history and information. According to the book, in the mid-1980's toothpicks were in 97 percent of American homes and that Americans consumed over million toothpicks each day.

Up next is The Fall of Troy by Peter Ackroyd. Here is the review from the New York Times that caught my attention.

Book Review - Backyard Giants

I just finished reading Backyard Giants: The Passionate, Heartbreaking, and Glorious Quest to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever. It is a quirky subject, but very well written by Susan Warren (who is also the deputy bureau chief for Wall Street Journal in Dallas).

The book followers a group of growers in Rhode Island in their pursuit to grow enormous pumpkins to win pumpkin growing contests, to break the world record and to reach the 1500 pound benchmark.

[They] belong to a special breed of gardeners that compete to grow the largest flowers, fruits and vegetables they possibly can. At the end of every season, special events are held where the botanical marvels are weighed and measured and prizes handed out. Thus, the world has been gifted with its first 269-pound watermelon, a 124-pound cabbage, a 24-pound tomato and a carrot nearly 17 feet long. It is pumpkins, thought, that have taken center stage. No other vegetable or fruit grows that big, that fast.

This was a great story and was very enjoyable to read. Yes, it is on a quirky topic. But the story of hard work and sacrifice is as true for these competitors as it is for any others.

Next on my list is The Toothpick: Technology and Culture by Henry Petroski. Here is the New York Times Book Review that caught my attention to the book: Consider the Toothpick.

Book Review

I just finished reading The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde. Mr. Fforde is a literary jokester, spoofing both nursery rhymes and mystery fiction protocol, including anagrams, secret twins, and the butler who did it. I first started reading some of Fforde's books a few years ago with The Eyre Affair, followed by the other Thursday Next books.

The Big Over Easy centers around the murder of Humpty Dumpty. At first it looks like the alcoholic Dumpty just fell off the wall. Then it looks like he might have been pushed or shot. Fforde moves through the world of nursery rhymes and mystery cliches.

This book was not as good as The Eyre Affair. Bur it did make for good reading on the train. I was a science major, so I probably miss many of the literary references in his stories.

Up next on my reading list is Backyard Giants: The Passionate, Heartbreaking, and Glorious Quest to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever.

Book(s) I Am Reading

I use Shelfari to indicate what books I am currently reading.(As opposed to LibraryThing that tracks the books I own. I have not read all of the books in my library and do not own all the books I have read. )This is what I am currently reading:

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

This is what I am planning to read next:

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

Recent Additions to My Library

I have been using LibraryThing to develop a catalog of books in my library. Below of recent acquisitions (or recent entries of existing books). You can see my full catalog at LibraryThing/catalog/dougcornelius.