I'm still finishing up two books that I'll mention today. Most non-technical books I read straight through, anything technical/learning based tends to be start and stop effort as I absorb it.

First up is Follow The Story by James Stewart is about how to write non-fiction by a well published non-fiction writer. It's interesting to hear his perspective on what makes a good story - for the front page of the Wall Street Journal for example and he's starting to go into how he builds the story once he has the idea. Some of it stuff I don't need yet like how to sell a story idea to an editor. Different stuff than technical writing, or at least it seems so at this point. If you haven't read Stewart he writes a column for Smart Money magazine that I enjoy, and has published a few other books including Disney War (interesting read as well). It's not the end all book for me on writing, I'll have to read more about how to get to where I think I want go, but it has given me some insight into what's possible and what was worth the price of the book.

Writing a book is on my list of things I want to do, but I want to make sure I have the skill and experience to do a really good job when I do it. I write a lot, and I'd say well enough to be usable, but not reaching to elegant. Should it? Don't know yet! It's natural to consider writing a technical book, but I'm really interested in non-fiction outside of that, both historical and business related. At some point I'd like to try my hand at fiction, but that seems like a harder task and not as immediately interesting. Part of my challenge on the book project is I want to write solo. Team books make sense for many reasons in the technical space, but I want to do something that is uniquely me (and editor) even if it's harder to do that way.

Anyway, back to books. The second book is Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi and I have to say I read part of it at Chipotle during lunch...alone, just for the fun of it! It's a networking book, and networking is one of many areas where I know I need to build skills and change some long held negative views about some aspects of networking. He's definitely a power networker, and I'm not sure that is what I want/need to be, but even with that qualification parts of it are good. One chapter is on how to achieve more networking at a conference (more on this in a separate post next week) was interesting,talking about his approach he calls the 'deep bump' to meet someone quickly and with enough depth that you can follow up later. Part of what I like about this book is he believes in being genuine, not just building a contact list in case he needs it, but being proactive about assisting his network. Again, I've spotted some ideas I like and a couple that so far I don't, I'm going to finish reading it, wait a bit, and then read again, I think once I've had time to consider some of it re-reading may let me internalize it more than the first time.

I mentioned above my negative views about networking; I think a lot of them stem from dealing with a lot of people that are bad networkers and want me to follow their style...and it just doesn't fit. More importantly, I'm not sure how successful they are based on the effort they put into it, a network is only useful if you can leverage it somehow, directly or indirectly. I'm still gathering my thoughts on networking, but I'd enjoy any input you have about what you do that works or doesn't work.

I was mildly amused by my friend Steve Jones blog post Finding a Direction about not really wanting to spend a couple days in meetings. The amusement is in part because I know he's just as contrarian as I am, but really it's because we have an entire generation of workers that have grown to believe 99% of meetings are bad. I won't argue that I've been to a few bad meetings in my career but in general meetings (and I mean face to face meetings) can be very productive if you follow the rules of good meetings. I know there are entire books, but here's my list:

• Good meetings have agendas. I want to see who will be there, how long it will last, and at least a couple bullet points about what we'll discuss and most important, is there a deliverable due at the end of the meeting. I also want to know if I need to prepare in advance and if I'm a primary participant or just there as staff in case my expertise is needed.
• Good meetings always have minutes. Doesn't have to be fancy, but weeks later it's entirely helpful to know who actually attended, few sentence summary, and reminders about todo items assigned during the meeting
• Someone needs to be assigned as the moderator so that one or two people don't dominate the meeting, throw it off course, or just cause it to run twice as long. Nothing wrong with altering the agenda as needed, but the moderator can decide if something should be tabled for later
• The number one reason to have a meeting is to share information. Over communication is almost impossible, most of us under communicate badly. Email is a useful tool, as are intranets, wiki's, blogs - take your pick, but it's a rare meeting where questions are asked because something wasn't covered in the email.
• The number two reason to have a meeting is to brain storm. Even a great idea can be made better by putting some people with the right knowledge in the room and just turning them loose to think. (As an aside, when I participate in these sessions I like to stretch the envelope beyond what is probably doable/practical/affordable just to see if there is one good idea lurking at the edge, then gradually reduce the solution radius until we're back inside whatever we can afford to do).
• If you're a primary participant don't have your laptop open unless you have to have it support the meeting, and stay off the Blackberry too. If you're there just in case move back from the table and listen while you work on some non-critical task.

If you think about the bad meetings you've been to I bet they violate most of those ideas. What do you do when your boss runs bad meetings? Suffer. Send them a link to this post. Buy a meeting book and pass it around. And then perhaps still suffer.

We're knowledge workers and none of us are dumb, a few are astonishingly smart. Good things happen when you put a lot of smart people in one place, but it's not even close to realistic that we can do great things without some interpersonal contact. What are you saying/projecting when you don't want to meet with others on your team? That you're too smart to need help? That they are too dumb to help? That you'd rather do 'ok' rather than 'great' rather than ask for help?

There's also something to be said for the old platitude of 'attitudes are contagious'. If you're determined to be miserable you probably will be!