Sharon CurtisSenior Project Manager | World Archipelago London, United Kingdom
Hey,
Many people who know me know that when I am not working on projects I (almost) always have my head in some book or other, reading a blog or two watching a webcast, listening to a podcast etc. looking for something I can use on one of my projects. So here are some of the things I have been reading, watching, listening and talking about this last couple of weeks.
This is my favorite blog at the moment about web analytics I find it very insightful - from a web project managers perspective it talks about getting the most from the quantative and qualitative data we can collect online to enable us to make better business/ project decisions based on business facts.
This is the book I am reading at the moment "Agile principles and practices in C++" by Robert C Martin - I am finding it especially useful - as I am working on making things more agile where I work and I think its important to understand the development side of agile as well as the project management side. My favorite chapter so far has been on why designs rot. And I have been able to pick up a number of XP techniques that I am going to implement on my new project which is going to be starting soon here.
I have been listening to the road to agile web series (in the coming events section) on Ganthead (I am haft way through at the moment and I have found it very handy.)
It would be interesting to know if there are any like minded researchers out there? And what you are reading, listening to and watching and whether it’s worth a good read.
Almost finished with The World is Flat: The Globalized World in the Twenty-first Century by Thomas Friedman.
This is an excellent book that provides a timeline about how technology has come to almost control all that we do!
Saving Changes...
I am listening to hours of archived material on the public speaking industry. If anyone is interested in becoming a professional speaker or trainer, I highly recommend this program: National Speakers Association Academy for Professional Speaking (http://www.nsaspeaker.org/academy/).
It is not cheap, but it is less than a lot of the other "become a professional speaker in X days..." types of programs that I have seen. The membership includes access to all the old telephone interviews that they have done, going back over about the past two years. There is a lot of good advice there, and I am enjoying listening to them in the car.
By the way, I am not doing a plug for a commercial service. NSA is a non-profit professional organization, like PMI. The Academy is a way for non-professional speakers to get some of the benefits of membership, before they earn enough as a speaker to qualify for full membership. The Academy also provides different learning resources, to help people build their speaking career. The idea is to get people up to membership-level bookings ($25K per year or 20 paid speeches per year) within about 12 months. Saving Changes...
