Social Glass

I’ve just finished reading and highly recommend Rework by the guys from 37Signals.  While the book is over 250 pages, it’s a quick read (I read it in about 2.5 hours).

We recently dove head first into Scrum where I work, and I’m having my team read this book as an Agile “reinforcer”.   But Rework isn’t about Agile software development tactics per se.  Instead, it affirms the cultural and psychological shift that’s necessary in reducing the waste that’s often manufactured during product development cycles.

Let me know what you think.

After many months of blood, sweat and tears, Enterprise 2.0 Implementation is finally available. Aaron Newman and I started this endeavor at the end of 2007.  Aaron Fulkerson, CEO of Mindtouch,  later came on board as our technical editor and had some great insight for us based on his experience with DekiWiki and SOA architectural principles.  Jevon MacDonald was kind enough to write a foreward for us (and thanks, Jevon, for your announcement on the FASTForward Blog), with Susan Scrupski doing a review.

It’s a weird feeling seeing this book in its tangible form after spending so much time looking at PDF proofs and author/editor modifications.  You can see the copies of the book I was sent by McGraw Hill the other day in the picture on the left.

Early feedback holds the book is a great guide for the technical aspects of implementing Enterprise 2.0, but that we’re light when it comes to discussing the softer issues about managing organizational change with such an implementation.  I’d agree, although Aaron and I set out to create a technical guide for Architects and the like, as the technologies involved tend to be more ubiquitous than the techniques for driving the people side of the equation.

I’m open to any sort of feedback or comments about the book.  Feel free to leave a comment here, or send me an email at jeremy[dot]thomas[at]socialglass[dot]com.

Aaron Newman and I have been working for several months on putting an Enterprise 2.0 implementation guide together. Aaron Fulkerson, CEO of Mindtouch, has been doing the tech editing for us. And we’ll have another all-star, Jevon MacDonald, doing the forward for us. This is my first book, and let me tell you the process is extensive. Figures and illustrations have to follow a special naming pattern, chapters have to meet pre-determined page counts, and the tone of the book has to be consistent (which is tough when you have two authors writing it). Aaron and I edited each other’s chapters as they were completed, then sent them on to Aaron F. for more editing.

Then it’s the publisher’s turn to edit which means even more revisions and re-organization. But I must say this process, though tedious, adds tremendous value.

What’s really interesting is I’ve never met my co-author in person nor have I had a phone conversation with him. We used Basecamp to manage our deadlines and share deliverables. Twitter, IM and email were used for everything else (Basecamp rocked). I am continually amazed at how efficient it is to collaborate using social technologies.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with the book over the past few months (they didn’t give us any chance to give our input into the cover design. I’m not sure what I think of it), which is largely why I’ve been neglecting this blog.

But besides the book I’ve spent time adapting to the consumer world with my job at active.com. We’ve got a lot in the works to overhaul the site and make it more social, engaging and single-purposed. But we’ve got a long way to go and I’ve got a lot of people to manage.

Through the transition away from consulting towards a proper job I’ve learned a lot of things about how E2.0 may or may not add value to an organization. I must say I’ve been somewhat unbalanced with this blog tending to lean in favor of Enterprise 2.0 without adequately considering alternative perspectives. Going forward I plan to entertain opinions from the dark side a bit more to drive debate into a growingly homogenized E2.0 “industry”.