Category Archives: books

Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Review

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Since John Battelle’s “The Search,” I haven’t had such a good read about people that make web technologies happen. But his book was very focused on a single technology, while Sarah Lacy has chosen to deal with a whole period in Silicon Valley’s history: the emergence and glory days of Web 2.0 (arguably those days are not over yet).

Sarah has a provocative style, she knows what she is talking about and she knows the folks that play the game. Her writing flows like the words in her columns, which she has been writing for nearly ten years now. In the course of the book, she carefully weaves a tale that lets the reader see where all the pieces fall: where each Web 2.0 entrepreneur (or “nontrepreneur” as she refers to Blogger’s and Twitter’s Evan Williams) connects with the next one and where did he get the inspiration (or the funding) from to pursue the next big thing.

Throughout the book’s eleven chapters, I found myself referring back to a very useful diagram that she included in the beginning, which shows at a very top level companies and people, showing who was founder, investor and employee of which.

You do not need to be a geek to enjoy the book, but you will if you are. You certainly do not have to live in Silicon Valley to know what she is talking about, but you will get a kick out of local references if you live or work in the stretch of 101 between San Francisco and San Jose. You do not need to be a web entrepreneur to want to devour the book, but if you are, you will find yourself flipping through the pages in search of yet more interesting and passionate anecdotes from the people that made Web 2.0 what it is today.

Sarah Lacy’s book is a must read for anyone using the social web today: in case you didn’t realize it, that means every one of us! Get your copy of “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good” quick.

How to Reach out to the Networked Public

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Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web2.0 Technologies to Recruit, Organize and Engage Youth

There are books you enjoy because they are entertaining and there are books you enjoy because they make you think. This title is a part of the latter group. Ben Rigby clearly knows Web 2.0 and he also knows nonprofits. This combination make him excellent to convey to others in the nonprofit space how to better take advantage of social media tools to raise awareness, do fundraising and become more effective change agents.

All the chapters are structured similarly, with an opening section devoted to the understanding of the different technologies (blogging, social networking, video/photo sharing, mobile phones, etc.) and how they are being used by nonprofits and the public sector. Following comes a part that walks the reader through the basics of getting setup and running. Strategic considerations and possible challenges wrap up the chapter’s core. As a prologue to each chapter there are two outside authors offering their “big picture” view to complement the topic.

Granted that the book goes well beyond Web 2.0, covering mobile technology and Second Life, one should not get too hung up on this subtlety. Mobilizing Generation 2.0 is a must-read for anyone working in a nonprofit or the public sector, wanting to connect to that ironically elusive “networked public,” as described by Danah Boyd in one of the “big picture” essays.

The Last Lecture: a great read!

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“The Last Lecture” is largely based off the video by the same name that you can catch on YouTube and many other websites. However, that is only part of the story.

The book (a few hours to read), unlike the video (under an hour in duration), lets you become one with Randy and his process of preparation for what appears as a certain death as he goes from diagnosis, through treatment and determination to accept his fate of being a pancreatic cancer patient.

My dad died of liver cancer, so Randy’s story resonated very strongly with me. However, my dad did not have the chance to prepare himself (or his family) for his passing. Randy has chosen to live the rest of his life on earth preparing things so that his young children will know what his dad was like… this is a father who loves his kids, no doubt.

Instead of rolling on the bed or complaining about his fate, he embraces it fully (with humor, often) and gets as much out of him as he can, so that his children will have a vast testimonial from which to learn, even though his father won’t be around.

As he paves the road for their future, we benefit from his effort and, if we open up enough, we are bound to learn from Randy like we learned from Morrie in the now-classic “Tuesdays With Morrie.”

Why User Experience Rules!

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As I was reading the “Ten principles that contribute to a Googley user experience“, I thought I’d share a fantastic book that I read during the trip to Boston last week. It was the result of the effort of four members of the Adaptive Path crew in SF and it’s titled “Subject To Change“.

If you are into user experience design at all you MUST read this book. They do a phenomenal job at establishing a framework for the creation of products and services that are resilient in the midst of today’s changing and uncertain world. Get a copy so you can see for yourself.

Social Entrepreneurship: The Next Wave in the Non-Profit World

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I was just reading a great article from Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge newsletter, titled “Putting Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector” and thought how much what we’re doing in TuDiabetes.com is indeed social entrepreneurship:

One of the authors of the book Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector defines:

“… social entrepreneurship as innovative, social value-creating activity that can occur within or across the nonprofit, government, or business sectors.”

We took the tools to create a social network for anything that Ning offered and put them to the service of people touched diabetes, resulting in a social network that continues to grow virally at about 5% per week.

We are now taking things to the next level: more news coming up soon!

New TItle by Author of Designing The Obvious

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I just noticed Robert Hoekman has a new book coming out, titled Designing the Moment: Web Interface Design Concepts in Action

Robert is the same author of Designing The Obvious, one of the best titles on the topic on GREAT web design to come out in 2007.

I can’t wait for my review copy to arrive so I can devour it like I did with his previous book! You can pre-order it through Amazon. It comes out April 10, 2008.

Made to Stick: Sticky Concepts, From Cover to Cover!

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The Heath brothers present us with an amazing title that automatically becomes an essential part of the toolkit of any marketer or anyone seeking to influence others. Complementing very nicely the concepts introduced a while back by Gladwell in “The Tipping Point”, this title offers the reader a very easy-to-follow framework to help in the creation of sticky ideas.

Each chapter focuses on one of the six dimensions of the framework (SIMPLE, UNEXPECTED, CONCRETE, CREDIBLE, EMOTIONAL and STORIES) which you can easily remember through the acronym SUCCESs. They spice up each element with examples to illustrate the points they make, building up on the concepts covered earlier on and periodically inserting what they call clinics, which are great stopping points to see the new material put in practice.

The end-result is a sticky book that you will devour in no time (as powerful of a methodology they present, they don’t take too long to do it -thus applying their own method, making the content CONCRETE). It will also be a book that you will find yourself applying instantly to whatever idea you want to influence others about, whether you are presenting in person to an audience of investors or to over the TV in the form of a commercial.

Make sure to get your copy of “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” -you will thank me for it!

And if you already read the book and you want more stuff from “Made To Stick”, make sure to visit the authors’ blog at http://www.madetostick.com/blog/.

Web Design for ROI: Great Book!

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A few days ago I finished reading Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leads, a great book by Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus, from Closed Loop Marketing.

I had seen Lance talk at SES 2004 in Chicago and was super-impressed with his command of the topic, so I was super-happy to learn he had compiled his knowledge about the topic of ROI and Web Design into a book.

The guidelines offered by the book are intelligently broken down into: Landing Pages, Home Pages, Category Pages, Detail Pages, Forms and Checkout Process. The ordering is not casual as it is tied to the importance they have in the process of converting visitors.

Each chapter is analyzed from the standpoint of the goals for that particular section of the web site, the goals and questions a typical visitor has when visiting it, the metrics that should be tied to the section along with its unique issues and a few guidelines and examples to wrap it all up.

No matter your role: if you are involved in the decision making process surrounding a web site, you need to get a copy of this book.