bitdepth

The Art of Project Management

The Art of Project Management Scott Berkun is my favourite writer of essays on managing people. Through the essays on his site and his essential PM Clinic mailing list, you can seek out, find and share advice on the best ways to manage people and successfully complete projects. He’s now written an amazing book, The Art of Project Management, that collects and distills years of experience and knowledge into an entertaining and comprehensive package. I feel as if I’ve taken a whole course in project management.
While I have some experience in managing projects, much how I do things is shaped by experience and trial and error. In reading the book much of what is said seems to be simple and common sense, but it’s amazing how often we don’t do the things that make the most sense. What is so valuable about the book is that it helps to understand why some things work and some things don’t. I recognized many of the situations in the book and wish that I’d had the insight that I gained from the book when I was dealing with those situations.
The book is divided into three major sections: “Plans”, “Skills”, and “Management” and within each section there are a series of examples and processes for dealing with all of the stages that a project goes through. Within my context I’m thinking of how this all can be applied to filmmaking, but the context of the book is software development. What strikes me about reading the book is how similar the processes are. I’ve done both software and film development, so I’ve seen it up close, but I didn’t realize that so many of the issues exist no matter what size the team is or what creative enterprise you are working on.
The philosophical core of the book is built around people and dealing with them. While some more manipulative techniques are described, there is always a warning about the short and long term risks of using those strategies. There is a refreshing candour and a lack of dogma in the methods described. I’ve read many books that excite me at first, but the ideas and philosophy are often more appealing than the practical application of the ideas. Berkun manages to strike a perfect balance between a management philosophy and a pragmatic approach. The book will definitely help you make things happen and get things done. You may also have more time to enjoy your work and your life.
While the book is well-written and structured, it feels like a nice long talk with someone who is being completely honest about the way things work. It’s the talk that you have with someone that shapes your whole professional life. The moment when you figure out that you can do a good job, treat people with respect, and not waste too much time and effort on things that won’t work. I’m going to keep the book close to my side and refer to it often.
technorati tags: book, review, artofpm, scottberkun, management, process

June 26, 2005 book, management, process, review, scottberkun

Blink

Blink How quickly can you figure something out? Apparently if you’re good at it, you can tell with very little information very quickly. Malcolm Gladwell explores rapid cognition and what you can figure out without really thinking about it in Blink. It’s remarkable how people can “thin slice” and look at minute (but significant) amounts of data and make decisions. Evolutionarily it makes sense that we have this ability to see small signs that could indicate danger and allow us to react, but generally most of us are not in life-threatening situations, but we still thin slice the data. One thing that I think that I’m good at thin slicing is a film. I’ll generally know if I’ll like a film within the first few minutes or even seconds. The title sequence and style of shooting or music will be enough. Why is that? For me I think that it is attention to detail. The story and feeling have to be just right with a film and if they get it right at the beginning, it almost always continues through. If they’re sloppy at the beginning of the film, they’ll probably not be careful with the rest of the film.
Thin slicing works with people as well. I usually can tell if I like someone right away (as I think most people can). How many times have you heard or thought “I don’t know what it is, but I don’t trust that person…” Some people can even tell if a couple will stay married based on a few minutes or even seconds of observation. Gladwell gives both positive and negative examples of when making a choice in the blink of an eye can save a life or end one. So many things in the world are tenuous, random and fragile and understanding how our brains work and how quickly we can know is a step toward making the world a better place. It’s fascinating to think about how just the right amount of data can enable us to know something without even consciously understanding why we have the feeling that we’re right.
technorati tags: book, review, blink, malcolmgladwell

March 15, 2005 blink, book, malcolmgladwell, review

The Tipping Point

I love Malcolm Gladwell‘s writing and while his best known and most influential book is The Tipping Point, I hadn’t read it until a few months ago. I picked it up because I knew that I was going to be reading Blink as soon as Carolyn finished reading it. The Tipping Point is a great exploration of the idea of rapid change and epidemics. It’s about people and ideas and how some things can rapidly change and other things don’t change at all. The way that Gladwell tells the story and explores the ideas is through fascinating people that he meets. What I love about the book is that it made me think about all sorts of things that I’ve been seeing develop lately from Moleskine notebooks to podcasting to RSS feeds to tagging. It’s fascinating to see how obscure films or web sites or ideas take hold and spread rapidly, even though they may have been dormant for a long time. Tracing this stuff is a lot of fun. I love it when you can apply ideas from a book to new things, which is probably an indication that the book is fairly solid and won’t seem to be dated as time goes by. I love the way the Gladwell thinks and now I’m reading Blink and loving that as well.
technorati tags: tippingpoint, malcolmgladwell, book, society

March 5, 2005 book, malcolmgladwell, review, tippingpoint

The Coma

“If we wait long enough, something strange will happen.”

I’ve only read one novel by Alex Garland and seen one film where he wrote the script. I loved the film (28 Days Later) and I also loved the book (The Coma). The Coma is the story of a man in a coma. It’s a small, beautiful book that is filled with woodcuts by Nicholas Garland (Alex’s father). I read it very quickly over three nights just before I went to bed. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea since I had a hard time sleeping over those three nights. My sleep was… strange. The novel is subtle and it wasn’t until I was about a third of the way into it that I started to realize what was going on (which I’m not going to tell you). It’s not a big secret, but, like a dream it’s hard to explain and maybe that’s the point. Garland explores what it means to be awake and be asleep and make us wonder about ourselves, how we think and what we are. How much of us is us? What can we lose and still be who we are? How do we define ourselves? Is it how we look, how we feel or how we think? Garland writes very well and I loved the condensed prose that slowly unfolded in front of me. It made me think a lot and sometimes made it hard to sleep. It’s good when something does that.

August 23, 2004 28dayslater, alexgarland, book, review, thecoma

Conversations

Doc Searls points to a great bit of writing on Britt Blaser’s blog Escapable Logic. He writes about blogs as conversations (which is not new) and puts things in a great way. The theme he explores is: “Memorable conversation is the foundation of civilization.” That quote hit me and it’s one of those moments where the time and place and state of mind where I am all click.
Right now I’m in Truro taking a course with another amazing group of NSCC people. We talk a lot and share experiences of teaching and the rewards of working together to change the world through changing people’s lives. It’s important that we talk with each other and maybe the popularity of blogs and blogging is due to this inherent need to speak and be heard. Blaser hits the nail on the head in saying that blogs “contain a huge body of thoughtful conversations” and then he connects the conversations with actions to make the world a better place with the Spirit of America project. It’s amazing how quickly things can happen when people work together and engage in conversation which leads to action. People are working to make the world a better place. It reminds me of the amazing outpouring of support and random flowers to same-sex couples who were getting married in San Francisco in February that was made possible through conversations on the Web.

June 23, 2004 blog, book, brittblaser, conversation, docsearls, escapablelogic, nscc

Free Culture

Lawrence Lessig is Stanford Law Professor who founded the Center for Internet Law and Society. He’s a cogent writer on the intersection between intellectual property law and creativity. I first noticed him (although I now realize that I’d read him earlier) when he represented Eric Eldred in the U.S. Supreme Court case to overturn the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. He’s also chair of the Creative Commons project which is how this very blog is licensed. His most recent book is Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity and in a great example of putting your money (or book) where your mouth is he’s licenced the book (and made a freely downloadable version of Free Culture) under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. You can also buy Free Culture in an old-style paper version with the pages all bound together. Derivative versions have started appearing already with one of the neatest ones that developed was AKMA’s idea to have people read and record chapters, which is almost completely done after a couple of days. I’ve downloaded the PDF version and I’m reading it now. It’s great and I’m going to buy the print version to finish reading it. I have to admit that I’m a bit of a policy wonk and I love the argument that he’s making in contextualizing the development of law, culture and public policy. Maybe it’s a Canadian trait with so much of our national identity wrapped up with communication technologies and being the birthplace of Marshall McLuhan and Harold Innis (who linked “Empire and Communications“). I’ll end with a quotation from Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig:
“A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don

March 30, 2004 akma, book, copyfight, copyright, creativecommons, ericeldred, freeculture, haroldinnis, lawrencelessig, marshallmcluhan

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