It’s been a while since I have recommended a book, but the last few books I’ve completed just haven’t passed the test and quite honestly have been rather disappointing, until I started reading Buzzmarketing!  This book essentially says throw your traditional marketing out the window.  Yes it’s one of those complete change of mindset type books and I really enjoyed the experience.

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I recently reread Steve Krug’s masterpiece, Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, that is a must read for anyone who works directly or indirectly on a website. This classic is one of the few books that is so practical and universal that it applies to anyone dealing with the web from a designer, developer, or programmer to a marketer or a content writer. The practical approach of keeping everything as simple and as easy as possible for users is something that is regularly forgotten about as we attempt to make websites more advanced, more interactive and add features. The hard-line truth is if a user can’t figure out how to use your site like you intend then it doesn’t matter how wonderful your site is.

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I just finished reading The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed the other night.  If you’re not a baseball fan then you can skip the rest of this post without offending me.  Besides being a book about something that I love, this book was written by a Wofford alum!  All the more reason to reason to read it!  The author J.C. Bradbury runs an interesting blog, Sabernomics, where he writes all sorts of interesting baseball articles. Sometimes they are specifically Atlanta Braves related articles, but they run the gamut from free agent player values to, and most recently, the steroid situation.

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I am definitely a people watcher and want to understand people better. What people like, how they think, and why they do what they do all fascinate me. I have an extremely eclectic music collection and listen to a little bit of everything because I want to understand why people like what they do. I love to watch movies for the same reason.  Like a five year old kid I still have to ask the “why” question to anything and everything that I don’t understand and with the creation of Google, Wikipedia, and blogs this has only assisted in my obsession with knowledge. It’s also allowed me to be a lot less annoying in my inquires.  You can find answers to anything online, let me also just state that you have to sift through a lot of crap to find real answers online if you don’t know where to look.  I guess where all this randomness is going is that managing people is something that is very important, complex, and one of the most difficult skills to master. It takes a large dose of psychology, time management, respect, and business sense not to mention expertise in your industry. Currently I’m “over” an assistant and five student workers at Wofford. I say over because I really consider them much more as friends and co-workers than as their boss.

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