Read the full article on CNN.

Reading is sometimes just plain entertainment. I’ll never forget “American Psycho”, “Lord of the Rings”, and well “Harry Potter” – all very fun to read.

Reading is not always just entertainment, though. In many cases it is about getting smarter; learning new tricks; new perspectives on old tricks and so on. It’s kind of going to school – without the parties.

Only few people fail to understand that it’s important to keep learning. Wisdom and creativity is our most important currency – besides from “getting the job done!”

But many people need to discipline themselves to read and learn and just reading the subtitles of “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” wont work. It will not make you wise, creative, and problem solving.
If you don’t keep up you’ll become a vegetable. This is is a fact proven by Russian scientist in 1918 in a small town just outside of Moscow … I’ve read it – so it’s true.

Facing this situation we in TraceWorks have put together a small library. It’s growing pretty fast with many different books; typically about something related to our line of business; software development, business development, designing UI, .NET / C# / SQL2005 / Flex 2.0.

I think what (both books / blogs) we read will to a certain degree define us a company why I think I’ll start posting about new books I find interesting.

I’m currently reading:

The Solution Centric Organization
By Eades, Keith M. and Kear, Robert

I’m part of the team in TraceWorks who is responsible for putting together our new communication platform.

“A “solution” is a mutually agreed-upon answer to a recognized problem that provides measurable improvement (value).”

The point is that we need to stop being to much product/price orientated! We need to THINK Differently, COMMUNICATE Differently, and ENGAGE Differently. We need to focus on designing the best possible SOLUTIONS. I think Headlight will be a good example of this and I want TraceWorks to become and stay an example of a “Solution Centric Organization”.

Authoritative and easy to use / read.

Interesting Web 2.0: The 24 Minute Documentary. One of the issues they address: “In a user generated world what role does a publisher have?” – Mike Arrington (TechCrunch).

I don’t think that the “user generated world” exist. I think it’s a small island the size of Bornhom.

User generated content is a fun and quirky supplement. But in the long run I really find most user generated content to be very un-interesting and boring. And I don’t see this changing.

Youtube for instance – 99% of the content is not worth investing valued time in. 1% is tolerable. All-in-all everything fails to be a serious contestant in the fight for consumer attention.

So, Mike Arrington, I don’t really see a “user generated world” now – or in a million years. I see a “user participation world”. I don’t think producers will loose any ground to user generated content so I don’t really see why the “role” of producers would be any different.

People want quality content available for free on-demand. “Quality content” is just as important an aspect as “free” and “on-demand”. What the hell is “content” by the way? Does a very personal journal on myspace.com filled with typos qualify to be “content”?

Microsoft is no. 2 and Google is only no. 24: http://bwnt.businessweek.com/brand/2006/

I thought Google would be no. 2 and Microsoft no. 3 (Coca Cola no. 1 – of course).