Review: The Art of Letting Go

"Die Kunst, loszulassen" has very few highlights and some good articles but overall is a disappointment, as you can read (in german) here.
There also is an english version and a website.
One of the things which disappointed me was that there was is no appropriate web counterpart to the book. Only one article of the book is available online, and there is obviously no active community there.
But Willms Buhse, one of the editors of "The Art of Letting Go" is going for a radical change with his new book "Wenn Anzugträger auf Kapuzenpullis treffen". This is a complete collaborative approach, looks very promising. Check out his website!

A living legend

Many of my readers will not remember the great old days of BYTE magazine. It was that definitive ressource for the PC enthusiast, it had tons of reviews, deep insights, adverts which made us germans dream...and it had that column which I always read first: Computing at Chaos Manor, written by Jerry Pournelle.
Probably Jerry can claim having written the first blog, and it was this informal and interesting style, written not from a pedestal but from a peer-to-peer view, which made it so interesting.
And of course it was his "reviews": Jerry got all sorts of equipment into his house (which must have been stuffed with all these gadgets), and he used them and wrote about his experiences. A "recommended" by Jerry was more worth than any in-depth review, even if it came from BYTE.
All this seemed so long ago that I feared I would have the write this blog post as an obituary, but I was happy to find that Jerry Pournelle is still very active and writes his columns regularly.
Here are some links:

• Chaos Manor Reviews, Jerry's weekly PC column - always a good read!
  
• Jerry Pournelle's homepage
  
• How to get my job: the secret of becoming a professional writer - good advice for all of us who try to write as good as Jerry
  

Free!

Chris Anderson wrote an excellent article how scarcity is replaced by abundance. And he lives what he preaches: his new book "Free: the future of a radical price" can be downloaded as an audiobook for free from here.
Even better: the full text and the audiobook in the full version (free) and an abridged version (not free!) are here.
If you are like me an iPhone/Touch/Pod addict, you will want to hear this as an audiobook and not just as a collection of MP3s. I Used "Mp3 to iPod Audio Book Converter" to convert the MP3s into an audiobook. It's free (of course) and does this job very easily. Recommended!

The way towards internal Enterprise 2.0

Just found an excellent presentation. Here's what I found most important:

• Don't replace Knowledge Management by a Wiki - it wont work. People need the right audience to share their knowledge.
• Integrate social network tools into the day-by-day work of the people, so that it makes their work easier.
• Culture can't be changed, only influenced.
  
• Think big, start small. Make you sure you know where you want to go, but don't expect you can plan your way. It will take experimentation and constant learning.
• Crisis time is innovation time.

Have a look for yourself, it's worth the time!

First part:

The Wikipedia Myth - Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management

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Second part:

Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management - People at the Center

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Third part:

Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management - Getting started

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