5v3n.com

Fast Forward

2012-03-11T00:00:00Z

During the last couple of years I developed a habit of two phases I alternate between: high input, high output. Weeks or months spent reading, going through photographs, absorbing ideas that resonate with my thoughts. And then all of a sudden change into hyper productivity which basically means making things happen as a result.

Last autumn I realized there were so many things made happening that there simply was no more time left for the contemplation of the input phase. Which is basically awesome, since we started so much awesome stuff that the momentum kept us going and kept us busy.

I realized that in my streamlined flow soaked work environment, the single most time consuming process was the way I earned my money.

I love consulting start-ups concerning how to make things happen and to actually build web apps with them. The employment in the agency I worked for was the aspect that needed a little correction. After my proposal of real autonomous 20% time was rejected, I decided to go into business for myself in order to have control over what’s worth pursuing besides the billable consulting hour.

The extra autonomy, mastery & purpose feel like a rush of liberation right now. I picked a client to consult concerning how to make his ideas happen. We orientate ourselves towards something I call the minimal viable process ™ where we basically do not use frameworks like SCRUM from day one but start with as little process as possible and decide what to add on the go. And I can tell you that it’s really amazing to see common sense figure out necessities instead of going by the book. Iterating not only the product idea but also the process seems so obvious now. Setting up a team of hand picked freelancers is a great experience, too.

Most important there’s the possibility to manage my time to drive side projects autonomously. As much as I love building web apps more often than never there’s a little room for improvement when it comes to the purpose department. I love to be inspired by people and the new points of view theses encounters sometimes bring. I love to build stuff, both software and hardware. I love to connect people and to pass my knowledge on to the curious. So we are currently working on a hub to do exactly that: Create, Connect and Teach. Writing about this would break my new 500 words per post limit but if there’s a demand for details I’m happy to take the time and write about this awesome subject.

The new situation feels so efficient and refreshing that it’s almost as if I would be running on fast forward right now. My next goal: slow down a little and finally get into the contemplation phase again. Ordered some books to read, there are volume of photographs waiting for attention. And what I’m looking forward the most is the adequate spare time for meeting all the inspiring people in my surrounding more often.

I’ll keep you posted how good I’ll manage to calm down a little ;–)

Sven

Actions speak louder than words.

2011-12-31T00:00:00Z

Quite interesting to see a rising interest in – I almost wrote “the media” – the part of the internet I’m aware of concerning reading vs. creating a.k.a. consuming vs. producing.

We are living in a time with massive information overload which is even gaining more speed “as we speak”. I agree that we have to decelerate, and we also have to educate. Both amongst the main hypotheses in Douglas Rushkoff’s “Program Or Be Programmed”.

But cutting of all distraction is not the way to go. It’s about reducing to the most inspiring ones, since there is a lot of positive distraction out there that is able to highly resonate & propel your ideas.

Over the last years I developed a habit of having times of strong output followed by more passive phases in which I more or less only read books to understand the problems I was trying to solve better.

Nowadays, too many awesome people in my surrounding made me start too many awesome projects. Chances are near zero that all of them slow down the same time, so the “passive input phase” has not been happening since about a year.

In order to be able to ship the ideas I am participating, I really have to be rigorous in my decisions where to participate. I do not have time to waste with technology, processes or people slowing the creationary process down. I did not reach a state of mastery here, there are still wrong decisions once in a while. But things start to work out quite good, and 2012 will see another important change in the way I help to make things happen.

So I would say actions do speak louder than words. But reading a blog post or book once in a while won’t hurt you, either. It’s about the right relation between consuming and producing. In my case, producing is always the goal. And I see consuming in a healthy manner is part of it.

You wonder why I used the term “as we speak” above? It’s because we’re starting a conversation here. What’s your experience concerning distraction & inspiration? Are you able to divide, to “reduce to the max®”? Is that idea important to you anyways?

It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to.

2011-12-28T00:00:00Z

From time to time, things start to bore us. Whether it’s the pair of shoes you fell in love with back then for reasons that appear more or less obscure to you now, or the look of your blog.

I’ve been having a look at traditional blog designs, but many of theses historic layouts did not really fit. Blogging has changed, from micro-blogs to news aggregators there are many disruptive factors that have evolved during the last couple of years. At least judging from my behaviour, much of the must-have features of the common blog do not apply any longer.

That said plus being a big fan of Paul Arden’s books I decided to just steal the design from there. He himself assured me it’s all right to do so.

Remember what Jean-Luc Godard said:

‘It’s not where you take things from — It’s where you take them to.’

I stole this from Jim Jarmusch.

— Paul Arden, ‘Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite.’

Coming from print design, I had to enrich it with the minimal viable blog features. Namely a slick layout for the posts,

framed in an informative navigation area. And a footer explaining the license and linking to one of germanys most important inventions: the juridically prescribed imprint. I also stole an archive layout that lets you have a quick informative peek which of the past articles appear of the most interest to you:

Both completely stolen from the Arden books mentioned above. For keeping in touch, there’s an Atom feed. For spreading the word, there’s Twitter and Google+ share functionality. And of course the heart of the blog, comments by one of my most beloved services, disqus.

If you are missing some feature, just let me know. This blog is there for your delight.

Or implement them yourself, both the code and the templates are on github.

Redesigning a blog is easy – the next redesign on my agenda is probably a little tougher. It’s about changing what I call the “bread-and-butter”-to-“the-good-stuff”-ratio® using ideas postulated earlier. The articles “Anything You Want.” & “Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose.” are about these ideas. With the new slick layout, I’m confident to at least have the right platform to keep you posted.

Let me know if this is of any interest for you ;–).

Cheers

Sven

Anything you want.

2011-07-12T00:00:00Z

Did you ever meet these always-on type of online addicts? The type who can’t stand the thought of being offline for an hour or two? The type who’ll buy a new phone charger when faced with the fact that they left their’s at home when already having started a trip?

I’m not one of these kind of people. I lend a charging cable from our office’s hardware department after being scared to death by the thought I could be offline on the go during my weekend trip ;–). Said but true but the four hour train ride I’m currently undergoing through offline booneyland finally let me come to a rest. No E-Mails or IMs to reply to. OK I replied one or two mails which will be sent when I’m online again, but: I managed to read one of the books I ordered earlier this week, yeah! It was Derek Sivers’s “Anything You Want” where he described the ten years in which he built a company he loved and what drove them apart. Pretty inspiring read. While the title of the book “Anything you want” is intended to point at creating a company as your personal utopia shaped according to your ideas & virtues, there are also inspirational thoughts concerning personal development in it.

As the company grew, everyone was surprised that I still did all the programming myself. But for an Internet business, outsourcing the programming would be like a band outsourcing the songwriting. — Derek Sivers

Working as an IT Consultant I was writing the songs for other peoples' bands. Changed that recently and right now I assist teaching start-ups how to write their own songs until they are able to continue on their own. Which I learn a lot from, not only since I changed the instruments but also because there’s one or two gifted singer/songwriter type of guys in my surrounding.

I also keep writing songs for my own personal pleasure. Some of them even start to hit people’s nerve from time to time, which is quite an amazing feeling. It’s always about making things happen. Currently, there are one or two bands that also aim for some money, but that’s not the core motivation. It’s about making it a bit more easy for people to achieve their goals. Or even improving the quality of peoples' lifes. Or just having some fun. Like that twitter crawler – have a look at the chords & some gigs if you’re curious. I’m excited about the fact that it enabled some quite entertaining projects to prosper.

Just pay close attention to what excites you and what drains you. Pay close attention to when you’re being the real you and when you’re trying to impress an invisible jury. — Derek Sivers

My job. My life. My work. Earning my living. Bringing joy and meaning to me and my peers. And something in between.

I enjoy what Derek calls “the solitude of the craft” – but I also enjoy to participate in identifying the right decisions. Which confuses most people. And all of the employers I worked for so far. It’s either building things on the tech side. Or on the conceptual / business side. The side where the relation between people is in clear focus. Most employers react the same: “A programmer who’s able to network & deal with people? We’re in some serious trouble!”.

The author of the book we’re talking about seems to have been in the same kind of situation. A guitarist who is also able to produce. Oh, and design & implement an online music store in a time without paypal and no long tail music store at all. Impressive!

Derek’s solution to my problem would probably have been the same he chose for his business plan. He would deny having a plan at all, but it all burns down to “proudly excluding people”:

You need to confidently exclude people, and proudly say what you’re not. By doing so, you will win the hearts of the people you want. — Derek Sivers

Working with the Ruby on Rails webapp framework, this rang a bell of course. One thing I love about that framework is the fact that it is opinionated. Which is on the other hand the reason people do not like it, too. It does not aim to offer every possible solution, but exactly the one its creators judged as the best way. So there’s a lot of people who aren’t too happy with it because you are bound to these decisions. The people who share these point of views are attracted by its concepts beyond any description.

Personally I proudly excluded some companies during the last couple of years. In one case someone critisized a lack of endurance. But my point of view always was: if one of the key skills you need to work for a company is the ability to endure painful situations: congrats for finding these kind of employees. But please understand that I do not aim for adrenaline rushes, I aim for autonomy, mastery & purpose. Which is quite painfull sometimes too. But I love it. And I do not have the time nor the interest in politics, lowered quality standards or carrots & sticks.

On the bottom line, the book made me think. It reassured me in some decisions I took lately. And points my attention to my personal utopia of the “perfect business”. I don’t think the concept of a company is suitable for sustaining these ideals. One way or the other you’ll always end up with horses pulling a chariot, skinners controlling the horses & people above the skinners who collect the profits. So I wouldn’t use the classical concept of a company at all. There should be equal shareholders with no obligation to stay. But a common understanding of how things should be done that keeps the group together. There could be groups enjoying their waterfall projects, other groups with agile concepts. The important thing is a common understanding and shared values that lets people stick together. Perhaps a group of people that gathers for projects. Adjusts slightly. Re-gathers when applicable. Some sort of freelancer network. A new form of collaboration.

Just brainstorming, how about you? Any thoughts provoked? Totally disagree? Have something completely different in mind? Go ahead & tell us.

Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose.

2011-06-18T00:00:00Z

Passion causes a lot of trouble. Ever heard that Oscar Wilde quote: “A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not have to love her.”? Same ist true for your job.

After spending half a decade with what could probably be called a classical career, I worked as Senior Consultant at a Digital Agency shaping the face of enterprise e-commerce systems.

Over the years, the more I progressed, the more my discomfit grew. I really wondered why. There were a lot of people willing to sell their own mums to even enter the companies & clients I worked for.

My problem: I’m passionate about the things I do. I raise a claim concerning the quality of my work’s result & the relationships that evolve during the process of making peoples' ideas happen.

Why was that a problem? Because all around me, people seemed to care more about their incentives & pleasing their superiors. By any means necessary.

A real enlightenment was Daniel Pink’s ‘Drive’ – where he elaborately pinned down almost all these crazy thoughts that I was pondering over for quite a while back then.

I knew I was not alone. Really reassuring.

After blogging about the subject, I realized there are a lot more people out there who shared my point of view than I thought. That was about a year ago. It took me some time to realize that I couldn’t change existing company cultures. Tried that in two companies. The first try: managed to put an “Analysis of Innovation supporting measures” on my incentive goals list. I dreamed about a Fed-Ex-Day in order to collect some evidence that 10 or 20% time will not cost the company money, but bring in new invaluable ideas. I left the company before finishing that task, since it just didn’t work out on the bottom line. I left some quite amazing guys behind and turned towards a new challenge in a seemingly shiny agency.

That’s where my second try on bringing some autonomy, mastery & purpose love to a motivation 2.0 company happened. I chose a different technique: I found some guys who all shared a certain mindset. A bright young guy had a brilliant concept in mind & we put up a team make things happen. Autonomous fun, heading towards mastery. I did it, yay!!!

After getting attention from the highest ranks, people from the incentives & ego department started trying to get their pieces of the pie. What happened next was a complete reversal from our lean & self-propelling project back into corporate madness, including free carrots & sticks for everybody. Broke my heart. And I wasn’t the only one to leave the company after that experience. It wasn’t the one and only reason, but the perfect icing on the cake. The “extra hours are cool”-attitude happening there was the worst part I guess. Never want to hear sentences on a friday night after 8 hours of work like “You may leave early – but that will only add pressure to our project in it’s final phase.”

Today, I’m quite happy to have turned my back to all that big business & enterprisy culture. I finally found a place to work where my values are shared, where I do not have to waste my energy in turning the tide. The tide rolls fast & steady into a direction I can agree on already.

You could call it Lifestyle Business, Motivation 3.0 or any buzzword of your choice. It basically all boils down to this:

I don’t want to live to work, but rather, work to live. (kind of an European cliché sentence)

It’s not about the job title.

It’s not about the pay check.

It’s not about how glamourous an industry is.

What matters is :

the company culture.

the passion coming from the leaders.

the company’s ambitions.

how the company rewards and respects its employees.

the autonomy/trust given to the employees.

the purpose of the company and its potential to disrupt a market/change the world.

personal growth within the company.

— Matt Aimonetti

After reading Matt’s thoughts on the subject & the fact that he quit his job at a major global player – I’m feeling quite more reassured that I’m on the right track too ;–).

The segregation between my job & my work became marginal. Not only because I’m legally bound to contribute to open source projects by my labor contract. It’s more about a workplace culture where you find colleagues to work with and mates to play with equal-handedly. The best way to get in trouble is to work long hours without compensating them with flextime. Which is partly based on the fact that we only do agile projects with time & material contracts, and partly on the fact that we share a common mindset. Fed-Ex day doesn’t seem appropriate any more since there is 20% time. Not totally autonomous time, you still have to check if the project you choose fuels the company – but there’s room to let your crazy ideas grow outside your free time. Since I’m really addicted to check out new things, hack software, hardware & the world itself. Which sometimes carries me away time consumingly I have to confess. So that’s a great improvement for my social live.

The thing I wonder nonetheless is: why is there a felt majority of people who seem to steer willingly towards the mediocrity that is claimed by enterprise culture? Is it because people are afraid to challenge the status quo or because they totally content with this situation?

Am I living in a ghetto of hackers & designers that share a certain mindset – and are we part of an elite upper crust that’s able to claim such high quality working conditions? Are others not lucky enough to stipulate terms like that?

What’s your point of view?

Cheers

Sven Kräuter | 5v3n

You're not a nerd

2011-05-20T00:00:00Z

HELLO BLOGOSPHERE how are you??? Long time no see! 7 months without a post. OK I confess – I’ve been trapped by the below 140 virus the last couple of months.

But it were 140 characters & some reactions that brought me here again. Finally.

So what’s the matter?

During the last year, I realized a lot of people claiming to be nerds. It seems to have became quite fashionable. Which is great! Erm… ok I should be feeling this is great, but – why am I feeling more & more grumpy about it?

It’s strange. It weird. It happened before. There are even songs about it. You just have to put the word ‘nerd’ in the lyrics & replace ‘skateboard’ with… wait I’ll just show you:

You’re not a nerd, so just stop tryin',

Your clothes are good but your brain is dyin'.

You’re an embarrassment to what we believe,

So take your ray bans and – leave.

That much for some heros of my youth. On to the present.

I recently stated a little rule in a tweet.

Please realize my eyes a-twinkle – but there’s some truth about it. It’s the old game – some subculture gets hip. Then the hipsters start their cruel jobs.

What’s really fascinating are the thoughts that evolved when I started to judge maliciously in my surrounding. True Nerd/Geek vs original Hipster.

First remarkable insight: that’s not a binary decision.

There are all kinds of truly nerdy people. That geek out big time. That do not code.

Second remarkable insight: managers, we all hate them.

No, that wasn’t the insight. What’s astonishing: there are two types of leading management people. The ones you as a nerd respect & like. And the ones that are just plain sucky annoying.

I call the former ‘meta nerd’. An expression I stole from my mate Hendric Rüsch. He isn’t a coder, but a business developer. He called his job “Metagelöt” – with ‘gelöt’ being a derogative way of describing the process of bringing software to life.

Now watch out for the third one: nerds make money, dude!

Which is great. Wel love what we do. And are mostly able to get paid quite well.

But watch out – vast parts of the labor force does it vice versa. They hate what they to. And are mostly unable to get paid quite well. In this context of the army of motivation 2.0 there is a growing number of companies who claim they are a nerdy agency, a geeky software company or a haxxor related start-up reactor.

If you read sth like that in a job description: check for keywords. We nerds may not be easy to categorize, but we all agree that waterfall leads to project delay which leads to unnecessary extra hours. And that agile is the way we want to work. Of course there are some exceptions – but you get the picture.

So watch out for keywords like “Account Manager” & “Experience with Gantt tools” before getting interested in that fancy job description. I should know, I’ve been having a harsh shower under the waterfalls of different enterprises for the last half decade.

On the bottom line there’s my picture of a nerd friendly work environment:

There are a couple of nerds & geeks. Who have some sort of 20% time agreement. With some meta nerds having a look after them & a vision in mind where the story goes to.

“OK, sounds great – what keywords do I have to look out for in the job description?” you may ask.

Easy answer: in the best case, your attention gets to the job because some friend tells you about it. Or a random maniac at the local rails user group catches your attention. Then you’ll test drive your potential employer with at least 2 days of daily business done together.

Yours truly, 5v3n – careers counselor.

Now let’s have a rough cut & got back to the initial observation: it’s fashionable to be a nerd. Which is quite cool. We had a lively discussion some months ago I really enjoyed that was focussed on the positive aspects.

And C.C. Colton’s famous expression “Imitation is the sincerest of flattery” was coined by a nerd himself as far as I can judge. I guess it is, but it’s also by far the most annoying form to express your admiration for a subject.

Let me finish these thought’s with another quote from a great thinker:

That’s all folks!

I’m happy to have finally managed to put my thoughts online again after all these months. I am more than curious about your reaction!

BTW: extra credits earned for recognizing the band & song I quoted the lyrics from!

Cheers

Sven Kräuter | 5v3n

Program Or Be Programmed - first thoughts

2010-10-10T00:00:00Z

Douglas Rushkoff’s new book “Program Or Be Programmed” is remarkable in many ways. It tries to guide you through the special period of the computer age we all happen to live in by 10 basic advices – which he aptly calls commands.

Reading the introduction, Rushkoff’s point gets quite clear: we are living in an highly programmed landscape. We all use various types of computer programs on a daily basis.

Soothingly, it does not seem the first media revolution we’re undergoing. The author lists examples, from language over the alphabet through the printing press. The common discriminator of all the past media revolutions: the access to the creation of the different media types was limited to a small elite, be it the handwritten word or the printed book.

As far as I can see, there’s a major difference – the past revolutions were driven by religious, political and corporate leaders who were also able to strictly apply access rules to the emerging technologies. Right now, we are all able to shape the face of the digital age. But the majority of our contemporaries prefer consuming of producing – digital natives included.

But let’s get back to the book: The alphabet lead to a society of listeners, the invention of the printing press to one of readers.

The big question is: how are we going to be judged by our ancestors? Will the digital age be considered “The Age Of Programming”, or “The Age Of The Programmed”? Could this age become a digital renaissance?

As a professional software designer, I have to strongly agree when Rushkoff sums the situation up by writing:

“We teach kids how to use software to write, but not how to write software.”

(Douglas Rushkoff, Program Or Be Programmed)

Surprisingly, the first two commands are not about programming – but address the general use of the internet and how we interact. Rushkoff’s ten commands for a digital age are focused on different biases of new media we are all using. Let’s have a look at the first command concerning the temporal bias of the digital media we are all using:

I. Time: Do Not Be Always On

Tough one – I’m an online addict. I’m the type of guy who buys a new phone charging device at the airport when realizing to have forgotten mine at home. My mobile mail client updates my private mail account every 30 minutes, my business account is checked during office hours accordingly. Replying on twitter the next day? No way!

So what’s the point anyway? The point is: by accelerating our own response times, we also accelerate the volume of our daily online communication. Neither budget nor time do increase, so how are we funding the increase of communication? Right, by a lowered quality of our conversations.

Not only our replies are of a lower quality, but also our ability to absorb high quality content. Who still reads long blog posts like mine? I love the fact that there are still some people out there who do – but they’re an steadily decreasing minority.

Rushkoff’s recalls the old times – when you used your phone line to dial-up and connect to the internet, loaded most of the content you were going to read in offline readers and you just took your time to respond. Which lead to quality conversations. Those were the days ;–).

This point reminded me of an oddity I grant myself: I don’t use instant messaging services. It’s not that I don’t like to chat online, but Jabber, ICQ & the likes just eat up too much precious time. And if I think about it, using my mobile to check e-mails kind of accelerated my e-mail-account into an instant messaging service.

So – what can I do about it? I started to decelerate my online conversations by setting my mobile client to update all of my mail accounts only three times a day. Including my business account. Let’s see if that has some positive effect.

Concerning twitter… I started firing up my twitter client only from time to time in contrary to running it in the background all day. I still love to tag the city with Foursquare & show off nice places I visit via TwitPic. Which is a smooth transition to the next command…

But I prefer to continue to read right now & leave the second command open for the next post. Dramatization: Since I’m offline right now & typing these lines on my text editor, I am not in a hurry but able to produce some well thought quality content ;–).

I’m looking forward to reading your thoughts on the subject!

Cheers

Sven Kräuter | 5v3n

What watching TV and developing for an open source project have in common

2010-09-06T00:00:00Z

Right now, I’m sitting in Berlin, enjoying the sun & trying to congest the impressions I had so far on this giant trade fair I happened to visit – the IFA.

Focus is on consumer electronics, mainly all kinds of more or less unique new tv sets. People are staring into these goggleboxes & get distracted of their more or less miserable lifes, I thought. The average guy comes home after work & spends quite an amount of time with this complete waste of time.

After this short rush of arrogance, I started to approach it a bit more grown up. I remembered my girlfriend’s comment on my habit of “jumping into that X-Terminal” from time to time when I dive into a serious hacking session.

Wait a minute – does that mean that I have that same habit of staring into a gogglebox & get distracted of my more or less miserable life? Am I coming home after work & spend quite an amount of time with this complete waste of time?

Yes, I’m guilty of all these points – but there is one big difference: It’s no waste of time. And, I am quite confident that my life isn’t more miserable than necessary ;–). I mean, I’m a working class boy who thought his way through an academic system which is so not made for my kind of people – and am enjoying a quite charming professional & private life in a wonderful city.

So what’s the big thing about open source projects when I just argued that – at least in my case – it can’t be distraction? It’s more about the cosy feeling of… the give a little, take a little game.

To be more precise, it’s more like taking a little – for example you use that open source blogging microframework. And then giving a little – like helping to add some functionality you missed in that framework or add some new features.

Sure, I could as well use tumblr and save a lot of time. And perhaps blog a little more and hack on the blog and it’s features a little less. But one important aspect would be missing: I’m doing something for the community. OK, it’s a worldwide spread community. But it sometimes feels like doing some work for your local neighborhoods development project.

What I like most about Open Source Projects is the fact that people spend their time with somthing useful. I like the spirit of the corresponding meetups, the general mood of the scene and the fact that I’m not the only lunatic who spends his working day with software development – and a variable amount of his free time, too.

I have to confess that I’m quite a new face when it comes to open source software – but nevertheless, I guess I described some aspect that are common perception. Sitting here in the Berlin sun, trying to settle my thoughts on the IFA.

One idea that came to my minde recently – how about open source literacy? Technical books are already written using the concept that first applied solely to software. Wouldn’t it be great to write a novel? Or would that lead to a too many cooks spoil the broth situation?

So – what’s your opinion about the subject? Do you agree? Do you love TV and hate Open Source? Tell us, it’s just some keystrokes & a click away.

Cheers

Sven Kräuter | 5v3n

Nice talks, one book & a leitmotif

2010-07-27T00:00:00Z

During the last weeks I met a lot of interesting people. Having talked about the widest plurality of subjects, I realized that there was one common connector, a kind of leitmotif that occurs in almost all conversations I enjoyed. It’s the general situation of our working conditions, which leads to Daniel Pink’s book “Drive”.

This one book is outstanding, but I want to give an overview of all the books I read during the last months. Since I’m a slow reader, you don’t have to be scared: this list is quite short ;–). Have a look at this small pile:

So, here are the books from the stack above that I…

..read during the last couple of months

Daniel Pink, Drive

Absolute must-have-read! This book’s title sells it short. It answered so many questions, to name a few:

Why did I prefer to switch from superb paid body leasing to working for a company with a much lower salary but much higher “sympathy-factor”?
Why do I as a pro dev & IT consultant spend time in open source / non-profit activities in the exact same field in my free time?
Why does being paid for reaching goals almost always takes the long term motivation (and fun) out of it?

Plus, this book is walking on the shoulder of giants with a big bad scientific literature list. “There’s a mismatch between what science know, and what business does.” is a well thought repeated phrase during the read.

The big competitive advantage of this book is that it does not just point out the symptoms of the wide spread modern business misbehavior and what to do about them, but the sources.

I repeat: a must-read!

Feel free to check Amazon for an offer.

Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson, Rework

Very easy to read, since it’s sliced into short handy chapters which are supported by illustrations by Mike Rohde. Provoking approaches to well known problems and situations that we sometimes see as self evident.

A must-read!

Cory Doctorow, Makers

Great fiction novel, taking place in a not too distance future. Absolutely entertaining book that’s also thought provoking.

Makers, published in October 2009 by Tor (US) and HarperVoyager (UK) is about people who hack hardware, business-models, and living arrangements to discover ways of staying alive and happy even when the economy is falling down the toilet. Weirdly, I wrote it years before the current econopocalypse, as a parable about the amazing blossoming of creativity and energy that I saw in Silicon Valley after the dotcom crash, after all the money dried up. Cory about this book on craphound.com

Gary Vaynerchuk, Crush It!

Social Media Guru writing a book. Hm… I can’t really get excited about a millionaire who succeeded in self marketing after he was already wealthy giving tips about quitting your job to support your family with tweets & blog posts.

To be fair, he describes ways to play the exit from your day job smart.

Bottom line: this book is quite okay, but not really inspiring.

…started to read

Douglas Rushkoff, Life Inc.

Amazing intro – about Rushkoff’s own awakening about the social costs of gentrification biting the colonial gentrificators in the… backside. Absolutely curious about this one!

Steven Levy, Hackers

If “MIT Tech Model Railroad Club” and “TX-0” ring a bell, you’ll like this one.

I stopped reading this historical overview over the history of hacking since I got some more… contemporary & forward oriented books in my hands. But this one’s definitely on amongst the top of the waiting queue.

Seth Godin, Linchpin

Solid tips for being exceptional despite possible stumbling blocks in your way.

I stopped reading it since I didn’t like the subliminal “work like a horse even if your job sucks big time” attitude.

If I don’t like the circumstances I’m in, I change them. If my job sucks, I do everything to change it to the better. If I do not succeed in this plan A, plan B would be finding a place where my attitude & values are more welcome ;–).

That’s why books like “Rework” and “Drive” are more of my taste, although this is definitely a great book, too.

… did not read yet

37Signals, Getting Real

Being addressed to “web application development”, I skipped this one when it came out. Which was a big mistake…

After reading “Rework”, I saw how universal and useful the findings from 37signals about running software projects in general are.

It’s said to be far better than Rework – I can’t tell yet, but I’ll soon find out.

My advice: if you only read one book this year, choose Drive.

Having a look at this video gives you some insight in the general subject that is discussed – and it’s discussed in a very adequate manner.

If you watched that video & don’t feel the urge to get a picture of the whole story – please check your pulse. Otherwise, feel free to go get that book.

OK, so after finishing Life Inc., there’s only two books left on the stack. I’ll have to find some new material to feed my appetite.

What are the last books you read you’d say made a good reading?

If you also read one ore more of these books: what’s your opinion?

Hope you enjoyed these micro-reviews & I’m looking forward to reading your feedback ;–)!

Cheers

Sven Kräuter | 5v3n

The next steps

2010-07-19T00:00:00Z

Fiddling around with toto & the blog_helper extension, I realized two things:

Having total control over your blog is awesome! In theory, you’re able to customize everything & connect all kinds of necessary and unnecessary services.
Having total control over your blog is cruel! In practice, I’m customizing everything & connect all kinds of necessary and unnecessary services.

The latter results in zero blog posts for over two weeks, which is not good at all.

So what are we going to do about it? How are we bringing some order into that creative chaos?

And I use the word “we” on purpose here.

I had a real fun time when you guys successfully guessed the color I picked for my new espresso machine in a twtpoll.

Now, I’m going a step further.

How about this: let’s just crowd-source the decision for the next feature I’ll hack for this blog. I think a nice little gadget that’s missing is a history of recent activities on my favorite social networking services (after twitter & forrst): twitpic and foursquare.

So, please join the fun & take control over the future development of this blog – don’t ask what this blog can do for you, ask what you can do for this blog!

Enough pathos, let’s get back to the fun part of this. Please participate & enjoy the following poll:

I’m totally looking forward to seeing how you decide this time.

Let’s get some more hacks going! Erm, I mean: let’s decide what hack to get going next!

Sven Kräuter | 5v3n