Finished The Cluetrain Manifesto last night. This was a very interesting read. In the end, I definitely agree with a lot of what the authors are saying. The nice thing is that some of the stuff they discuss is already going on in my company.
My goal now is to try and take some of the ideas that we are not implementing (or at least implementing well) and get people to start thinking about them and trying to put them in to use. I think a lot can be learned and gained from doing some of the things discussed in the book.
It was funny trying to read this book because it kept making me think. And when thinking I got distracted and started not really reading some of the pages of the book and had to re-read some sections. I guess in some respects this is really a sign of a good book.
Though I am definitely a hard core geek at heart I have more and more been getting in to some of the business end of work again. I couldn't really do it at my last company (though I did it a lot at the company before) and now figure I should push some of my skills as far as I can and try to learn as much as possible. Also, I might as well make my voice heard because otherwise I could watch something happen that I think is bad and it could make me not happy to be at work anymore and I definitely don't want that.
Though the book told me to burn and bury it at the end, I do think I am going to suggest it to some co-workers and maybe even some management types. I think it has a lot of ideas that at least will make people think, as it did for me. Even if people disagree with the ideas at least they can see an alternate point of view and maybe can learn something from that.
The book has also inspired me to try and wirte down a number of the thoughts I have had about both collaborative projects internally, as well as knowledge management ideas. I think there are a number of things we should be doing both internally and externally using blogs and wikis and whatnot to really enhance the company.
Overall, awesome book, really glad I read it. Now on to HP5 (which I am actually already 120 pages in to).
