Clayton Christensen – Capturing the Upside

Posted on August 13, 2005 by Ron Bieber

Yesterday during my commute I listened to a presentation that Clayton Christensen did at the 2004 Open Source Business Conference called Open Source: Capturing the Upside While Avoiding the Downside that was published at ITConversations. Its basically a two hour presentation on the theories published in his books The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution, which attempts to explain why at a certain point in a companies life, good management can tank the company and how managers can continue creating growth companies by using the theory of disruption to figure out their strategies.

The first book goes into great detail into explaining his theory of “disruption”, using the floppy disk drive industry, PC industry, and steel industry for concrete examples of disruptive technologies and the conditions in which these technologies are introduced so that they can begin to take a market while not being noticed or cared about by the incumbents in the market.

The books are fascinating, and the keynote mentioned above is an excellent 2 hour audio primer on the content of the books. I was riveted to the presentation in the car as Christensen presents, in very simple yet effective terms, his theory and provides examples of situations in which the theory has applied.

An added bonus in the two hour presentation, since it is at an open source convention, is the explanation of how open source fits into the model of disruption, with contributions from people such as Tim O’Reilly and one employee from MySQL.

The most interesting thing I got out of this presentation was the explanation of commodization and decommodization, as it is explained in terms that I finally get. I had a hard time with these areas in the book, which could be because I was attempting to read multiple books at the same time, or just that I didn’t get it in print. The explanation of these concepts made complete sense as they were explained verbally and I found this section quite enlightening, especially when applying them to things I am seeing in certain areas around my professional life.

I would highly recommend that those in management, especially those responsible for defining strategy for the organization, grab this podcast and give it a listen. The concepts involved are quite interesting and general enough that you can apply them to your professional life. This was probably the most beneficial two hours I’ve spent commuting to work. The content was good enough that I did not even mind the drive.

Sarzo’s Off The Rails Book Update

Posted on August 5, 2005 by Ron Bieber

I received an email from the Diary of an Axeman Club forum, referring to another forum in which the moderator posted this message:

GOOD NEWS!!!

Just heard back from Rudy and he says the book is only delayed.
He says Amazon made a poor choice in wording the emails.
He appreciates everyone’s interest and support here.

The full message thread can be found on the randyrhoads.tk board. This board, according to the info in its rules section, is also frequented by members of Randy’s family and others like Kevin Dubrow, Kelli Garni (former bassist for Quiet Riot and Randys childhood friend), and Rudy Sarzo, so the source seems credible.

This is good news for Randy fans. I know I’ve been looking forward to the book since it was announced.

Off the Rails now Off the Press?

Posted on August 4, 2005 by Ron Bieber

In May I reported that Rudy Sarzo had a book coming out called ” Off the Rails – My Adventures in the Land of Ozz”. It was due to be released in September and was available for preorder when I found it on Amazon. So I preordered it.

This morning, I received the following from Amazon:

We are sorry to report that the release of the following item has been
cancelled:

Rudy Sarzo “Off the Rails – My Adventures in the Land of Ozz”

Though we had expected to be able to send this item to you, we’ve
since found that it will not be released after all. Please accept
our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience we have caused you.

We have cancelled this item from your order.

Your credit card will NOT BE CHARGED for this item because you only
pay for items when we ship them to you.

Your order is now closed.

I’ve looked around for announcements as to why the book is not being published but can’t find any articles yet. There isn’t even an announcement on Rudy’s site. If you run into any, please send them over.

I’m sure there are a ton of Rhoads fans that were really looking forward to this one. This would have been the only book to chronicle Randy’s life, up to and including the night of his death.

Needless to say, for me, and I’m sure for all Rhoads fans around the world, this is pretty disappointing.

Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution

Posted on August 2, 2005 by Ron Bieber

I’ve finally whittled the reading list down to one book left, which is Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold, a recommendation by Tom the Architect.

I haven’t finished the book yet, but I am about 3/4 of the way through it and am finding it extremely interesting.

According to Wikipedia, “A smart mob is a group that, contrary to the usual connotations of a mob, behaves intelligently or efficiently because of its exponentially increasing network links. This network enables people to connect to information and others, allowing a form of social coordination”.

The author begins by talking about his experience witnessing the first of what he calls “smart mobs” in Japan, where the citizens were using text messaging in order to coordinate meeting places and activities, or just to be constantly “in touch” with friends and relatives, sending each other jokes, images, or small messages.

From these small simple examples starting in Tokyo, Helsinki and the Philippines, the author then moves into talking about wearable computing and the possibilities available when wireless access to the Internet is ubiquitous and and available to everyone. Some of the examples he uses are technologies in which one can, by merging wearable computing, GPS, and the Internet, attach virtual notes to physical places where they can later be picked up by friends or used by others as educational devices about the physical world. He uses the Virtual Helsinki project as an example of these exciting new technologies.

Reading this book, if nothing else, makes you think of the endless possibilities in making wireless Internet ubiquitous and available to everyone at any time.

I know that personally, I’ve found text messaging to be great when wanting to stay in touch with Kelsi when she has gone on school band trips, just to receive a quick message as to where she is, what she is doing and things like that. While the start was a little bumpy while learning to type on a cell phone, the ability to stay in touch with family via quick messages that do not necessarily warrant a full conversation has proven to be extremely useful.

My first text message was written to Kelsi after she started talking about how “cool” it was (the author calls the kids of today “Generation txt”). I sent her my first text message that took about 15 minutes to type — standing in the middle of the mall — and consisted of the phrase “this is my first text message on a cell phone. Typing on a phone sucks.”. I was all proud of myself that I actually got the damn message typed into the phone and sent to her. Three seconds later, I got a paragraph back from her talking about what she liked about text messaging. The speed in which she typed this showed me how much a part of life this technology is today. Typing on a phone, or creating private message spaces is as much a part of the young culture today as bike riding was for me when I was a kid. As another illustration of this, Jake didn’t think twice when I asked him to type our WEP key for the wireless network in his PSP when he received it. I was dreading it, but he was done in under a minute. It would have taken me forever.

In a nutshell, here is the thing that I like most about this book so far. The author points to things going on right now that signal a huge shift in the way the Internet and wireless hand held devices mean for social interaction in the coming years. The shift is already happening. He also talks about research that has been going on for a while that will contribute to this cultural shift. Finally, he points, very effectively, to what this could mean to society as a whole and the possibilities inherent when the Internet is finally available to everyone.

The future looks exciting in the pages of this book, as long as we can make these technologies available to everyone.

As Tom and I were talking about this yesterday, he mentioned there was a web site dedicated to this kind of stuff. Smartmobs.com is the slashdot of the smart mobs, tracking news about the things covered in the book. Check it out.

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Posted on July 24, 2005 by Ron Bieber

I’ve been in kind of a weird situation over the last few months, as I have started about five books at the same time, as they all seemed important for me to read now. The list consisted of The Innovator’s Dilemma, The Innovator’s Solution, The New Art of the Leader, Smart Mobs, and The Wisdom of Crowds. Once I finished the first three, someone recommended the book Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. I put Smart Mobs and Wisdom of Crowds aside (again) and grabbed this one.

What an easy and interesting read! Steven D. Levitt is what some people call a “Rogue Economist”. His knack is looking at questions that people fail to look at and finding some amazing answers in the data surrounding these questions. This book hits a ton of really interesting questions, and Mr. Levitt does a really good job of walking you through the data and explaining the answers he has found by looking at the data from a different perspective.

When this book was first recommended to me, I was reticent to pick it up. Economics always seemed boring to me, mainly because I didn’t actually know what it was. One look at the table of contents piqued my interest and convinced me that I had to pick up this book.

Mr. Levitt attempts to answer some pretty bizarre questions. Some of these questions include:

What Do School Teachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have In Common? – in which he explores the “beauty of incentives as well as their dark side” – in other words, cheating
How is the Ku Klux Klan like a Group of Real Estate Agents? – Talking about the power of information, or more specifically the power of hiding information.
Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms? – In which he explores the corporate like structures of the drug industry
Where Have All The Criminals Gone? – The effect of things like Roe vs. Wade on the drop in crime rate
What makes a Perfect Parent? – In which he discusses parenting and things like the effect of your name on your ecomomic future

The most interesting thing I got from reading this book is the value of data analysis and of what economics really is. The study of data and its effect on the social system. The subject matter is fascinating and another really good example of taking an academic area such as economics and bringing its value to people by articulating it in real world applications that make sense to the common man. The subjects he uses to illustrate basic concepts like incentives and cheating are something that every person can relate to, making the book a really quick and information packed read.

On a personal level, this book was extremely valuable as it showed me the practical benefit one can realize by looking at the data that is floating all around you. Finishing this book motivated me to spend a week digging for data to realize the effects of our conversion over five year period to an automated build process and open source tools to articulate the business value these decisions have made on the productivity of our development team, which was mentioned in the closing paragraph of a previous post I wrote this morning. Not only was I able to articulate the bottom line cost savings these decisions helped us realize in labor and licensing, but it also finally gave me a personal feeling of satisfaction over the amount of progress our teams have made over the past five years and gave me the tools I needed to interpret it and share it with the people who made it happen.

I highly recommend that everyone read this book. I realized a lot of personal value out of reading it and I’m sure you will too. This one was definitely worth the anxiety I felt putting off the completion of my reading queue to read.

Now I have to finish the last two books so that I can actually talk meaningfully about them with Tom the Architect.

The New Art of the Leader by William A. Cohen

Posted on July 24, 2005 by Ron Bieber

I am currently enrolled in an executive development program for future IT leaders, which runs for a few months with sessions designed to help future IT leaders network with each other and learn about leadership. One of the requirements of the course is to read the book New Art of the Leader by William A. Cohen.

New Art of the Leader is extremely well written and keeps you engaged throughout with its numerous examples taken from history going all the way back to Winston Churchill, Eisenhower, Grant, and Napoleon. The examples are perfect for the subject matter the author is trying to address and gives you real life illustrations of the principles he is talking about in action, in a way you can relate to them.

The book begins by outlining and explaining the eight universal laws of leadership that the author defines in describing the “combat model of leadership”. Military leadership is used as the primary illustration of these principles because warfare is the “worst case scenario” in which these principles and laws are practiced.

These laws consist of the following:

Maintain Absolute Integrity
Know Your Stuff
Declare Your Expectations
Show Uncommon Commitment
Expect Positive Results
Take Care of Your People
Put Duty Before Self
Get Out In Front

Once the eight laws are defined, the book goes through a number of interesting topics, with many illustrations of them from both business and military scenarios. The topics covered include (lifted straight from the table of contents):

How To Attract Followship
The Four Direct Influence Tactics
The Four Indirect Influence Tactics
Developing Self-Confidence as a Leader
Building An Organization Like A Winning Football Team
Building High Morale and Esprit de Corps
How to Coach Your Winning Team
Secrets of Motivation
Seven Steps To Taking Charge in Crisis Situations
Seven Actions To Develop Your Charisma
Leadership Problem Solving and Decision Making

Here’s the most interesting thing about this book. As you are reading through it, most of it seems like common sense. I spent a lot of time ruminating over how completely obvious these principles are as I walked through my experiences in leadership situations. Unfortunately, I also spent a lot of time noticing how hard these principles are to practice and how many times I had failed to do what, as I read the book, “seemed obvious”.

These are hard principles to live by. Many times you find yourself reacting contrary to the way a leader should react in order to ensure a successful team. If nothing else, this book calls your attention to where your shortfalls are as a leader and lifts these principles as a priority in your mind, making you more conscious of what your role is in regards to the people and organizations you are responsible for. It calls your attention to the fact, if nothing else, that your primary job is to value your people, build them up, and most importantly, go first. People follow those who lead by example – not those who lead by positional authority alone.

This book is extremely enlightening and a must read for those in leadership positions. For some, it could change your whole perspective on your job, calling your attention to things you may not have thought was a part of leading a team to success. For me, it called attention to things that I had already known intellectually, but many times fail to practice in every day life.

Both scenarios are an advantage to increasing your effectiveness as a leader. The illustrations from history and real life experiences of the author help in bringing these principles into something “real” that the reader can relate to, rather than a bunch of theory that seems either impossible or impractical to practice in real life. One can tell by the book that the author has done his research.

If your looking for a book that describes leadership in its base form, with real life examples to illustrate each point, this is the book for you. Grab it, read it, and take what the author has to say to heart. It very well could change your life and the lives of the people who work for you or with you at a peer level.

Ship It! A Practical Guide to Successful Software Projects Reviewed

Posted on July 20, 2005 by Ron Bieber

The guy at Musings of a Software Development Manager talks about a recent book he’s reading called Ship It! A Practical Guide to Successful Software Projects. Its interesting how Scrum can be related to both The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.

The book sounds interesting. I’ll have to pick it up.

Podcasting: Do It Yourself Guide

Posted on July 12, 2005 by Ron Bieber

On Sunday before creating the podcast, I grabbed the book Podcasting: Do It Yourself Guide by Todd Cochrane. In it, he gives a pretty detailed view of what you need to do in order to get started creating your own podcasts.

In the book, he includes information on things like:

Getting Started
The RIAA and playing music in your podcast
Recording Software
Microphones
Advanced Studios (Mixers, Noise Gates / Compressors, Phone Patches)
Recording your podcast
Post Production (including noise reduction, something I consciously skipped in the first podcast)
Editing Techniques
Identifying a hosting provider to host your podcast
Figuring out what bandwidth you’ll need
Promotion
… and a lot more

I found the book really informative and an easy to read primer on what you needed to do in order to get started. My goal was to put together one podcast and see if I liked the process. It was a lot more fun than I had originally thought it would be and I think it was worth the time spent. This book pointed me to software like Audacity, that allowed me to do it for the cost of a cheap, $20.00 microphone.

Todd currently runs Geek News Central, a web site dedicated to”create a quality site for people of all ages and backgrounds”. I just downloaded the latest podcast from this site to see what he is all about.

Bottom line, I enjoyed the book and found it really useful. Pick it up if you are looking to see what is involved in podcasting. The book is perfect for beginners, but also has a lot of advanced information. As I learn more, I keep referring to the book to find answers to questions and, to my surprise, I’m finding the answers in this book. So this isn’t just a one read book. The more you learn, the more you’ll pick up using this book as a reference.

Star Wars and Philosophy

Posted on May 30, 2005 by Ron Bieber

As I was browsing through Borders on Saturday I ran across a book called Star Wars And Philosophy: More Powerful Than You Can Possibly Imagine. This book attempts to explain philosophy using the Star Wars movies as a metaphor.

I used to read a lot on philosophy – mostly Zen and Taoism. At one point in time, Kelsi bought me a book called The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D’oh! of Homer which I really enjoyed. I have also read The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet, which attempts to explain eastern philosophy through the Winnie the Pooh characters.

From the titles, one would think that I am just a moron that cannot relate to deep thoughts unless it is illustrated by some childhood cartoon character. However, these books are not for 6 year olds. They really go into quite a bit of depth, while making the concepts more accessible by relating them to characters and situations that are known by everyone. They take what usually is extremely dry reading and make it accessible.

This latest book is extremely interesting, with essays ranging from the discussion as to whether Yoda is a Zen Master or a great warrior, to a discussion over whether cloning is morally wrong, to the discussion of free will vs. predestination.

A sampling of the chapters include:

“You Cannot Escape Your Destiny” (Or Can You?): Freedom and Predestination in the Skywalker Family
Stoicism – Yoda, the Emperor, and the Force
Moral Abiguity in a Black and White Universe
The Far East of Star Wars
The Aspring Jedi’s Handbook of Virtue
Star Wars and the Problem of Evil
Send in the Clones: The Ethics of Future Wars
Star Wars and the Hegelian Struggle for Recognition
By Any Means Necessary: Tyranny, Democracy, Republic, and Empire

This book is a pretty interesting read. The book also makes you realize just how much thought went into the stories as you see the characters and concepts such as “The Force” related to eastern philosophy and ideas. If you see it at the store (or Amazon) and have a couple of days to kill, pick it up.

Web Designer’s Reference – An Integrated Approach to Web Design with XHTML and CSS

Posted on May 27, 2005 by Ron Bieber

I recently picked up Web Designer’s Reference : An Integrated Approach to Web Design with XHTML and CSS by Craig Grannell after seeing a reference to it on Slashdot. I have realized since starting to work with WordPress that I am a little behind on things like CSS and XHTML and had to get up to date, since most of the themes and styles looked like greek to me and I had a hard time modifying them – because I didn’t know what they meant.

The book is really well written. It takes you through not only the mechanics of CSS but takes you through step by step examples that you can walk through to get some hands on experience, something I really need when learning something new.

Now that I know a little more about CSS, I don’t think I’ll ever look at web page design the same way again. I’m one of those people whose markup abilities were kind of stuck in the 90’s because of the lack of consistent CSS support across browsers when CSS was first coming out. I figured if it didn’t work consistently everywhere, I might as well wait until it does. It just so happened I waited for what now seems like forever. I had no idea that CSS had gotten so powerful.

Some of the areas Craig covers in his book include:

An Introduction to Web Design
Web Page Essentials
Working with Text
Working with Images
Creating Navigation
Introduction to Layout
Tables: How Nature (and the W3C) Intended
Layouts with CSS
Working with Frames
Getting User Feedback (I found some really interesting stuff in here)
Adding Multimedia
Testing, Tweaking and Uploading

Craig also includes an XHTML reference, a web color reference, an entities reference, and a CSS reference towards the end of the book.

From an XHTML perspective, Craig covers a lot of the features related to accessibility, which wound up really interesting to me as well. I learned a lot from these sections.

If you are like me, and blew off even looking at CSS until now, this is definitely the book for you. It’s an easy read for those of us who haven’t been paying attention to this aspect of software development and includes great examples to walk you through the power of decoupling display from your mark up.

I now have enough detail to know where I need to head next and some practical experience with the examples to understand the basic concepts. Sometimes that’s all you need.

Bieber Labs

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