Book Reviews

I have been reading "Getting Real," book by 37signals, the creators of basecamp. BaseCamp is great and the book is great.  

In her new book, Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age, Alison Fine stands at the intersection of new technology on community activism.

Fine takes the skeptical community activist, nonprofit communications manager, or policy advocate on a whirlwind tour of new social media. She peeks in at everything from blogging to on-line advocacy and everything in between. She provides accessible examples of grass roots campaigns qualitatively reshaping and enriching themselves through judicious use of new web technologies.  

You have to read "Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Some Die" on a practical level. The book takes the reader through a series of predictors of how to make your writing, publicity, organizing initiative reach its intended audience, and stick. When ideas stick, they stay with you and change your behavior or expectations.

Another recent book, Malcolm Gladwell’s "The Tipping Point," focused more on how social phenomena spread outward and take hold. Made to Stick focuses more on the formulation of ideas themselves.