I always try to have something I’m reading but recently I went on a book binge and sold a bunch of old books and ordered a bunch of new books. Here’s some of what I’m reading…
The Starfish and the Spider – The subtitle gives a good summary of this book: “the unstoppable power of leaderless organizations.” If you cut off the legs of a spider, it dies, but if you cut off the legs of a starfish, it grows new legs in their place. So the authors talk about leaderless organizations like a starfish. Think of examples like Wikipedia or Craigslist. These are organizations that have offices and headquarters but for the most part, what they do is run by the people and the customers themselves. Anyone can go add or edit any Wikipedia listing and the Wikipedia organization isn’t sitting and waiting to police the system. The users do that. Same with Craigslist. So the argument is made that if you create organizations that let the people run the system, it creates a better experience for everyone. Very interesting read. I’ve really been trying to figure out how I can make this work in what I do with students.
The Spark – This was a quick and simple fiction story based on Cirque du Soleil. It is about a man who gets a major backstage tour of the inner workings of Cirque du Soleil and begins to find that creative fire for his own work. Because it is fiction based, it doesn’t have a lot of specific ideas and tips but getting a glimpse at how such a creative organization like Cirque operates through the eyes of a fictional story was very interesting.
Naked Conversations – This book is about blogging, so don’t think this is a new style of speaking I’m trying! I don’t plan on having naked conversations with anyone! I currently write a blog and am trying to do some new things with it. This book seemed to be a good intro into blogging but I didn’t find much beyond that. I will say that after the first few chapters, I ended up skimming through most of it, so there’s a strong chance I missed some of the nuggets that may been in there.
Here are some other books I’ve ordered and will begin reading shortly…
A Technique for Producing Ideas
Reality Check – This isn’t out yet, but I’ve heard it’s supposed to be pretty decent! I’ve also heard you can download some sample chapters here!
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