Scott Berkun's Blog, page 91

Help me improve The Myths of Innovation!

I'm working on the paperback edition of my 2007 bestseller, the Myths of Innovation.

I'd love to involve some of you in the process and have a small crew of people who can help me scrub, polish, and refine the book over the next few weeks.

If you're interested – leave a comment or contact me.

Tasks include:

Checking/Improving the references in the bookIdentifying factual errors in the book (known ones are here)Finding typos (known ones are here)Offer counterarguments to my claims (this might be...

Inside Pixar's Leadership

There were plenty of high profile people at the Economist event I was at last month, but hands down the best session I saw was a simple interview with Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar.

Martin Giles from the Economist did the interview, and did an excellent job letting Catmull cover some excellent territory.

Here's the video, and below I transcribed my favorite quotes. Interesting, based on the talk I gave at the same event, how little he used the word innovation (I don't think he says it...

Why New Systems Fail: an interview

My friend Phil Simon published a book in 2008 called Why New System's Fail.  The book explores the many reasons why projects, mainly IT projects, fail and what a wise person can do to prevent and recover from these situations. It's a hard nosed, low to the ground book, which tend to be my favorites.  The book did surprising well in its first printing, so the book was reissued recently in an updated and revised edition.

Given failure is one of my favorite topics, I interviewed him about all...

Should the web be allowed in class?

There's a fantastic discussion on metafilter about whether college students should be able to use the web during class time.

The original question by quodlibet was this:

How do I keep my students off the internet during lecture? Today, in the class I TA – I had about 5 students on facebook, another 2 texting, a bunch checking their email, 1 playing tetris, 1 reading the sports, and another reading the nytimes. It drove me mad. One on facebook was even looking at pictures of girls in their...

Thursday Linkfest

I've tried to do this on Wednesdays, but some weeks before I know it, Wednesday is long gone and Thursday is half over. So as a testament to slipping schedules everywhere, I give you, Thursday Linkfest:

YouTube – How to Dial a Rotary Telephone – This is amusing, but it's easy to forget in 20 years all the cool stuff we're so proud of today will seem just as silly to the young then as this does to the young now.YouTube – Watson Describes Invention of Telephone by Bell – Nothing quite as good...

Updated: My speech at The Economist (on innovation)

I spoke yesterday at the The Economists' Ideas Economy event at UC Berkeley on March 24, 2010.

Updated: Below is the actual video recording of my short speech.  Beneath it is a rough, and somewhat improved written version of the same material:

Rough Transcript of the Speech

Here is an edited, and non-verbatim version of the speech I wrote from memory before the video was posted. It's on the mark in spirit:

Today I make a living as a writer of books and I talk about ideas from those books. But my ...

Philosophy: Everything you need, in 5 minutes

I'd always wanted to do a talk about my curious path through the world of philosophy. I've studied philosophy my whole life, trying very hard to undo the bad lessons I was taught while getting a degree in the Philosophy Department in college. Thanks to Ignite Seattle I got my chance.

So here's Everything You Need to Know About Philosophy in 5 short minutes.

I'm half-way done with a follow up essay on this same topic, as I didn't get my main points quite right in this delivery. And it's fun to s...

The future of WordPress: help wanted

On May 1st I'll be speaking at WordCamp San Francisco (registration here), the premier event for Wordpress developers, users and fans. Matt Mullenweg asked me to talk about the future of Wordpress, which is, as you can imagine, a tall order indeed. Many important people in the WP community and at Automattic will be there, and if I play my cards right, what I say might impact how they think about what they do next.

I think the power to write and publish is a precious thing, and Wordpress has...

The future of Wordpress: help wanted

On May 1st I'll be speaking at WordCamp San Francisco (registration here), the premier event for Wordpress developers, users and fans. Matt Mullenweg asked me to talk about the future of Wordpress, which is, as you can imagine, a tall order indeed. Many important people in the WP community and at Automattic will be there, and if I play my cards right, what I say might impact how they think about what they do next.

I think the power to write and publish is a precious thing, and Wordpress has...

How do authors earn credibility?

From the mailbag, here's a question from Emrah on reputation and writing:

I just read the post titled How I make a living: in detail and I was  curious about how an author earns credibility, especially someone  starting from scratch, for the value of the books she writes. It's  one thing for the book's content to be good, but another thing for  people (customers,  publishers) to believe that you really have something valuable to  share, right?

Is it less about credentials and more about...