The Blogosphere has been whirling quite fast last month : Kathy Sierra, a programming instructor, game developer, co-author of the Head First series of books on computer programming, and respected blogger had to face anonymous death threats, forcing her to cancel her speech at the O'Reilly Media's ETech conference back in late March. Kathy Sierra explained her decision, detailing the threats, on her blog Creating Passionate Users .
I let other bloggers comment about this story. Fact is that CPU is one of my very favorite webblogs, that I read almost every day, for it's full of really great insights for marketing & business development.
Also, note the always crisp & clear illustrations, should it be photos, diagrams or drawings. Kathy Sierra knows what communication means (well, it's the minimum for an instructor and author). See " My Favorite Graphs... and the future " : Sierra' s own favorite pictures from her CPU blog.
Here are my Top-Ten CPU * articles - based on the ' Past favorites ' list displayed on the front page, because there are so many excellent posts that the choice was difficult to me : better build the top-ten list from a already shortened list.
- User Community and ROI : another perspective on Evangelism and Early Adopters.
- Ultra-fast release cycles and the new plane : why the word " instantly " becomes the rule in the Web 2.0 era.
- How to be an expert : combined with Colbert 's own vision of being an expert, an excellent introduction template for us consultants ;-)
- The hi-res user experience : quote Sierra : " If we want passionate users, we might not have to change our products--we have to change how our users experience them. " If you do fiber testing and use a lead-in fiber with your state-of-the-art OTDR, you get the picture. (note to novices : no hypertext links here, on purpose : please use Google to find out what an OTDR is ! )
- Subvert from Within: a user-focused employee guide : how to engage your customers to make them passionate users of your products when you work with a big company (will ring a bell to my fellow Musketeers @ Agilent...)
- Listening to users considered harmful ? : this one is about providing customers with what they really do want but don't realize it because they had no way to imagine it. Think of your friend next door who's willing a PC because he needs to do wordprocessing, web browsing, and emailing : in fact, he wants a Mac.
You ARE a marketer. Deal with it. : even if only for the Old-School vs. Neo Marketing, read it, now !
Stop your presentation before it kills again ! : another perspective on the use/abuse of PowerPoint those days. Shows that a simple paperboard together with black, blue,red, and green markers are often better than slides...
Motivated to learn ? : just-in-case learning vs. like just-in-time learning. Sounds familiar ? Welcome to the Age of Google and Wikipedia !...
Your brain on multitasking : a must-read for people who think that multitasking is a great advantage for human workers. Personal anecdote : before moving to Germany for Agilent Technologies back in 1999, I was proud to be a real multi-tasking guy; I always got ten things runing in parallel, from answering emails and calling someone on the phone to brainstorming on a mission-critical project. Since I left 4 years ago, I do only one thing at a time. I tell you what : I'm way more productive than in '99, thanks to my German colleagues !
* each time I write this acronym I think not about computers but CTU' hero Jack Bauer' s journey ;-)
