The Church of Facebook: How the Hyperconnected Are Redefining Community Review

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(More customer reviews)I heard about Jesse Rice's book, "The Church of Facebook: How the Wireless Generation is Redefining Community" from an interview he did on a podcast. The topic of online community and whether or not it can be authentic is of interest to me.
I wasn't sure what to expect; perhaps a Christianized critique of the whole social networking phenomenon complete with a set of warnings for believers and suggested rules for underage children. Thankfully this is not Jesse's book. Instead it opens with a fascinating story of the opening day on the Millennium Bridge crossing the Thames River in London. The unexpected shaking that day on the pedestrian footbridge is similar to the online spectacle of Facebook and other social networking sites. Jesse uses this and several other stories at the beginning of each chapter to create a historical framework for interpreting our online interactions. Jesse has done his research well and the book is very interesting because of it.
The science of connecting with others, of creating a "home" where we feel safe is the subject of chapter one. This is followed by a chapter on revolutionary changes to society and how Facebook is set up to be, if it not already is, a world changer. Chapter three delves into the controls people have of their online presence, of the information they choose to share online with others on their profiles. He poses the question of what we will do with the power we have to create, to shape society, with our online influence. Chapter four studies the impact that all of the new information has on an individual, understanding that people have adapted their behavior with this new way to connect with people, share information and collect new data. The fifth chapter focuses on the question of community and whether or not it can be experienced online. Are our relational needs truly being met? The final chapter speaks to implications of using social networking and some of the inherent behaviors that could be attributed to living life via an online presence. Jesse suggests some boundaries to keep the experience healthy, balanced and authentic.
Although the book could be categorized as a Christian book by a Christian author, it doesn't come across as preachy or fear-based. As such I hope it will be picked up by readers interested in modern communication, community development, sociology, and human psychology. It broadened my perspectives of social networking and has stayed with me as I've continued connecting with old and new friends online.

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This timely release explores the community-altering phenomenon of social networking sites and what it reveals about friendship, God, and our own hearts.

With hundreds of millions of users, social networks are changing how we form relationships, perceive others, and shape our identity. Yet at its core, this movement reflects our need for community. Our longing for intimacy, connection, and a place to belong has never been a secret, but social networking offers us a new perspective on the way we engage our community. How do these networks impact our relationships? In what ways are they shaping the way we think of ourselves? And how might this phenomenon subtly reflect a God who longs to connect with each one of us?

The Church of Facebook explores these ideas and much more, offering a revealing look at the wildly popular world of online social networking.

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Well Connected: An Unconventional Approach to Building Genuine, Effective Business Relationships Review

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(More customer reviews)This is an extraordinary book that presents a completely new approach to developing and using business relationships in a dramatically more effective way. I've been a client of the author and familiar with his approach, but I still found the book to be a fantastic and enlightening read.
The book presents a kind of a "unified field theory" in which the author explains why typical networking usually doesn't work and often erodes business relationships, all as a predicate to offering a values-based approach that shows respect to one's current and prospective colleagues and allows networkers of different personality types, including shy people like me, to play to their strengths in a much more natural way. Having made the case for pursuing business relationships based on mutual advantage and clear strategic objectives, he then presents a step-by-step framework with cogent illustrations that bring his new way of seeing things to life.
The author has a much more realistic and mature understanding of the challenges we all face when engaging in such complex activities as looking for a job, clients, funding, or vendors than any of the many books I've read on the subject. His advice is particularly astute for experienced workers with significant accomplishments under their belt, but who face intense competition at higher levels of career advancement. There are no cliches or fads or silver bullets in this book, just an exceptionally thoughtful and original approach to a set of problems we all face and a lively and realistic roadmap for making it your own.

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Achieve your goals by selectively engaging the right people and connecting well with them
Smart executives who want to reach virtually any business goal-from raising capital to finding sales leads to finding the perfect job-know that networking is the key to their success. But traditional networking approaches-meet as many people as possible, amass huge numbers of "connections" and "friends" in your LinkedIn and Facebook networks-rarely produce more than a handful of relationships that pay off. In Well-Connected, networking maven and coach Gordon Curtis explains that the secret to building truly effective relationships is to narrow--rather than widen--your network. His proven methodology for building key relationships that deliver results every time emphasizes selectively engaging the right people and connecting with them well : First, identify a "critical enabler," someone who has access to the knowledge you need and is inclined to help you; second, unlock the critical enabler's willingness and ability to provide what you need by offering her something valuable before you ask her or him for anything.
Well-Connected reveals a breakthrough approach to networking that delivers predictable, positive results
Filled with success stories, the book provides an accessible action plan for all readers
Networking maven Gordon Curtis has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Sunday Globe, Fast Company Magazine

Well-Connected serves as the playbook for sophisticated business people who know there's a better way to connect with the right people to get things done better and faster.

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Designing Social Interfaces: Principles, Patterns, and Practices for Improving the User Experience (Animal Guide) Review

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(More customer reviews)Malone and Crumlish have done the user-experience design community an amazing service with this volume. It does the hard, rigorous work that most of us simply do not have time or dedication to do -- creating the first solid set of building blocks for designing socially driven digital platforms.
The book goes beyond the easy categories of things like "blogs & wikis" and breaks those and other compounds down into their essential elements, helping us make more informed and less platform-dependent decisions.
Design patterns are always challenging to produce, especially since designers inevitably nit-pick them to death. But these patterns are up to the challenge: they actually make sense, and I suspect will stand up handsomely to the persnickety-designer test. But even if you differ with some of their particulars, it's incredibly valuable to have the heavy lifting already done, so all you have to do is react, refine and "improve" for your own use.
More than a mere collection of patterns, the book doles out large helpings of hard-won wisdom from the authors and other veterans of the industry who have wrestled with the volatile, emergent nature of socially driven digital design.
If you're doing anything with social design, from being asked to create a corporate blog to enhancing the way employees share knowledge on your intranet, do yourself a favor and get familiar with Designing Social Interfaces.


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From the creators of Yahoo!'s Design Pattern Library, Designing Social Interfaces provides you with more than 100 patterns, principles, and best practices, along with salient advice for many of the common challenges you'll face when starting a social website. Designing sites that foster user interaction and community-building is a valuable skill for web developers and designers today, but it's not that easy to understand the nuances of the social web. Now you have help. Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone share hard-won insights into what works, what doesn't, and why. You'll learn how to balance opposing factions and grow healthy online communities by co-creating them with your users.



Understand the overarching principles you need to consider for every website you create
Learn basic design patterns for adding social components to an existing site
Rein in misbehaving users on an active community site
Build a social experience around a product or service and invite people to join
Develop a social utility without having to build an entirely new infrastructure
Enable users of your site's content to interact with one another
Offer your members the opportunity to connect in the real world
Learn to recognize and avoid antipatterns: emergent bad practices in the social network and social media space

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