By the way, we’re planning on having launch parties in both Medina, WA (right next door to Jeff Bezos’ house and on the same street as Bill Gates’ house) and in Silicon Valley at TechCrunch’s headquarters (aka Mike Arrington’s house) for our book. If you’d like an invite to one of those, please do contact me. No promises (we have VERY limited space) but we will try to get you in. Those launch parties will probably not be publicized publicly due to the limited space, but they will be pretty nice events. Just email me at rscoble@microsoft.com.
Category: Brendan Eich
Amazon hooks in Naked Conversations?
When we started our Naked Conversations book blog (the book starts shipping next week, by the way) I never imagined that booksellers would change their practices to include book blogs. Amazon just announced its Connect program that does just that. Here’s the details on Memeorandum and on ClickZ.
This is going to kick off a trend, by the way, of combining walled garden approaches like the one Amazon has with the wide-open hinterlands of the blogs. I’m getting demos of other companies who are similarly looking to make the blog the center of the world. Even at Microsoft we’re starting to think this way. The CES crew asked me yesterday whether I could blog from CES with a special CES tag that they’d use to suck my content in and redistribute it.
Update: TDavid says that Amazon’s new program isn’t a true blog pointing program, but rather something else. He gives details on his blog (no comments and no RSS feeds are allowed, for instance, sigh).
Resonant Leadership
Being away from the computer for 16 hours means I can do some thinking about my life. At the airport I bought a book just on a whim. I like reading business books, so grabbed Resonant Leadership by Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee.
It spoke to me, cause I see myself making many of the same mistakes that the executives are making. Not spending enough energy on relationships. Or on myself (lack of exercise is one of the warning signs they point out).
One thing I picked up on in the book is how many times they used the words relationship and listening. Listening is a hard thing to do. I find that lately I’m having a tougher time listening and just being there for my friends and family. They call this the “sacrifice syndrome” and they say that many leaders fall into this kind of rut.
The book overall won’t appeal to everyone. It’s a bit mushy and gets into the spiritual side of life a bit more than your average business book. But, that’s especially what a lot of managers need in this “all tech, all the time” world.
They have tons of deep work with executives at recognizable companies and detail where they derailed their careers and how they got them back on track.
How do you renew yourself? What business books have you gotten value out of? I’ll republish this over on our book blog too.
#46: Blogging does not integrate, Shel says
Shel is writing up a storm over on our book blog, Naked Conversations.
He and I met the other day and he told me that he is hearing lots of companies thinking about integrating blogging into their marketing plans. You know, treating it as yet another marketing “chore” that teams need to do to be able to ship. He thought that idea is lame and will end in failure for those who approach blogs that way. I agree.
Anyway, here’s the three part rant titled “Why Blogging Doesn’t Integrate:”
He makes an interesting point for entrepreneurs in his “Launch Small” post. If you don’t know who Shel is he’s helped lots of small companies launch. The latest? He was doing PR for Riya, which is rumored to have been sold even before it could totally launch (I’ll be attending the launch party tomorrow night, albeit I’ll be there toward the tail end of the party).
Oh, and we’ll soon have our own launch party. Shel and I are talking with Michael Arrington about doing a TechCrunch/Naked Conversations launch event in January (our book is available on store shelves January 9). If you haven’t heard about our book, we interviewed dozens of businesses about how they are using blogs to improve the relationship they are having with their customers.
Other book stuff?
Marc E. Babej has an interview he did with Shel.
Nicole Simon has a “not so naked conversation” with Shel and me in preparation for the Les Blogs conference in Paris, France, where Shel and I are speaking.
Robin Stavinsky has a review of three great new books for the Entprepreneur (we’re one of the three books she recommends). Funny enough, I really like the other two books on her list and highly recommend those.
We’d love you to review our book on Amazon, here’s how.
We’ve gotten to know our editor, Jim Minatel pretty well, and would recommend him to other aspiring authors in a minute. His little trip to help New Orleans demonstrates what kind of guy he is.
The company that hosts our book blog, Six Apart, got a customer service award from Shel.
Jeff Clavier, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, reviews our book.
Neville Hobson says Naked Conversations is a “cracking read.”
Keep the reviews and mail coming! Oh, and order our book darn it!
#36: Beyond Code
I’m sitting with a couple of interesting people. Dave Rosenberg, principle analyst of OSDL (the open source guys, he works with Linus Torvalds) and Rajesh Setty, author of Beyond Code. We’re sitting in the cafeteria inside the borg. Now you understand why I sit in the cafeteria.
He says that his work has hugely helped developers careers. He’s studied a lot of developers and what they do to sink their careers.
“For developers the technical skills are only part of the story,” he says. “They need to build what I call the long term skills.”
Developers need to do things that will set them apart from the crowd, he says. Public speaking for instance. He pointed out how Chandu Thota set himself apart from the rest of his team by building the Feedmap over on the right side of my blog. Quick, can you name anyone else who works with Chandu? Does that turn into rewards, money, opportunities? You bet it does.
He talks about ROII - Return on Investment for Interaction. What we have less and less of is time, he says. People forget that time is the biggest investment that people can make. He looks at blogs as having ROII. But even blogs can set themselves apart from other blogs. How many blogs get return visitors? Why? Because the Return on Investment for Interaction for those readers is too small.
He’s identified nine simple things that developers can do to build their brands and move ahead in their careers.
Does this stuff matter? Yes. Even on a business level. Over and over I hear about business decisions made on relationships. Just this week I learned about a deal worth tens of millions of dollars closed on the strength of relationships.