Book picks similar to
Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World, Volume 1: Designing for Emergence by Ann M. Pendleton-Jullian
design
systems-thinking
future
complexity
The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide: How to Learn Programming Languages Quickly, Ace Your Programming Interview, and Land Your Software Developer Dream Job
John Z. Sonmez - 2017
As John invested in these skills his career took off, and he became a highly paid, highly sought-after developer and consultant. Today John helps more than 1.4 million programmers every year to increase their income by developing this unique blend of skills.
"If you're a developer, green or a veteran, you owe it to yourself to read The Complete Software Developers Career Guide." - Jason Down, Platform Developer, Ontario, Canada
What You Will Learn in This Book How to systematically find and fill the gaps in your technical knowledge so you can face any new challenge with confidence Should you take contract work - or hold out for a salaried position? Which will earn you more, what the tradeoffs are, and how your personality should sway your choice Should you learn JavaScript, C#, Python, C++? How to decide which programming language you should master first Ever notice how every job ever posted requires "3-5 years of experience," which you don't have? Simple solution for this frustrating chicken-and-egg problem that allows you to build legitimate job experience while you learn to code Is earning a computer science degree a necessity - or a total waste of time? How to get a college degree with maximum credibility and minimum debt Coding bootcampssome are great, some are complete scams. How to tell the difference so you don't find yourself cheated out of $10,000 Interviewer tells you, "Dress code is casual around here - the development team wears flipflops." What should you wear? How do you deal with a boss who's a micromanager. Plus how helping your manager with his goals can make you the MVP of your team The technical skills that every professional developer must have - but no one teaches you (most developers are missing some critical pieces, they don't teach this stuff in college, you're expected to just "know" this) An inside look at the recruiting industry. What that "friendly" recruiter really wants from you, how they get paid, and how to avoid getting pigeonholed into a job you'll hate Who Should Read This Book Entry-Level Developers This book will show you how to ensure you have the technical skills your future boss is looking for, create a resume that leaps off a hiring manager's desk, and escape the "no work experience" trap. Mid-Career Developers You'll see how to find and fill in gaps in your technical knowledge, position yourself as the one team member your boss can't live without, and turn those dreaded annual reviews into chance to make an iron-clad case for your salary bump. Senior Developers This book will show you how to become a specialist who can command above-market wages, how building a name for yourself can make opportunities come to you, and how to decide whether consulting or entrepreneurship are paths you should pursue.
The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World
Jeremy Rifkin - 2011
The price of gas and food are climbing, unemployment remains high, the housing market has tanked, consumer and government debt is soaring, and the recovery is slowing. Facing the prospect of a second collapse of the global economy, humanity is desperate for a sustainable economic game plan to take us into the future.Here, Jeremy Rifkin explores how Internet technology and renewable energy are merging to create a powerful "Third Industrial Revolution." He asks us to imagine hundreds of millions of people producing their own green energy in their homes, offices, and factories, and sharing it with each other in an "energy internet," just like we now create and share information online.Rifkin describes how the five-pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution will create thousands of businesses, millions of jobs, and usher in a fundamental reordering of human relationships, from hierarchical to lateral power, that will impact the way we conduct commerce, govern society, educate our children, and engage in civic life.Rifkin's vision is already gaining traction in the international community. The European Union Parliament has issued a formal declaration calling for its implementation, and other nations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, are quickly preparing their own initiatives for transitioning into the new economic paradigm.The Third Industrial Revolution is an insider's account of the next great economic era, including a look into the personalities and players -- heads of state, global CEOs, social entrepreneurs, and NGOs -- who are pioneering its implementation around the world.
Windows 10: The Missing Manual
David Pogue - 2015
Windows 10 (a free update to users of Windows 8 or Windows 7) fixes a number of the problems introduced by the revolution in Windows 8 and offers plenty of new features, such as the new Spartan web browser, Cortana voice-activated "personal assistant," new universal apps (that run on tablet, phone, and computer), and more. But to really get the most out of the new operating system, you're going to need a guide.Thankfully, Windows 10: The Missing Manual will be there to help. Like its predecessors, this book from the founder of Yahoo Tech, previous New York Times columnist, bestselling author, and Missing Manuals creator David Pogue illuminates its subject with technical insight, plenty of wit, and hardnosed objectivity for beginners, veteran standalone PC users, new tablet owners, and those who know their way around a network.
Product Design for the Web: Principles of Designing and Releasing Web Products
Randy J. Hunt - 2013
To create a successful web product that's as large as Etsy, Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest-or even as small as a tiny app-you need to know more than just HTML and CSS. You need to understand how to create meaningful online experiences so that users want to come back again and again.In other words, you have to stop thinking like a web designer or a visual designer or a UX designer or an interaction designer and start thinking like a product designer.In this breakthrough introduction to modern product design, Etsy Creative Director Randy Hunt explains the skills, processes, types of tools, and recommended workflows for creating world-class web products. After reading this book, you'll have a complete understanding of what product design really is and you'll be equipped with the best practices necessary for building your own successful online products.
The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide
Leah Buley - 2013
Whether you want to cross over into user experience or you're a seasoned practitioner trying to drag your organization forward, this book gives you tools and insight for doing more with less.
For the Win
Kevin Werbach - 2012
The careful and skillful construction of these games is built on decades of research into human motivation and psychology: A well-designed game goes right to the motivational heart of the human psyche.In For the Win, authors Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter argue persuasively that gamemakers need not be the only ones benefiting from game design. Werbach and Hunter are lawyers and World of Warcraft players who created the world’s first course on gamification at the Wharton School. In their book, they reveal how game thinking—addressing problems like a game designer—can motivate employees and customers and create engaging experiences that can transform your business.For the Win reveals how a wide range of companies are successfully using game thinking. It also offers an explanation of when gamifying makes the most sense and a 6-step framework for using games for marketing, productivity enhancement, innovation, employee motivation, customer engagement, and more.In this illuminating guide, Werbach and Hunter reveal how game thinking can yield winning solutions to real-world business problems. Let the games begin!
Shipping Greatness: Practical lessons on building and launching outstanding software, learned on the job at Google and Amazon
Chris Vander Mey - 2012
In this guide, Chris Vander Mey provides a simplified, no-BS approach to the entire software lifecycle, distilled from lessons he learned as a manager at Amazon and Google.In the first part of the book, you’ll learn a step-by-step shipping process used by many of the best teams at Google and Amazon. Part II shows you the techniques, best practices, and skills you need to face an array of challenges in product, program, project, and engineering management.Clearly define your product and develop your mission and strategyAssemble your team and understand enough about systems to communicate with themCreate a beautiful, intuitive, and simple user experienceTrack your team’s deliverables and closely manage the testing processCommunicate clearly to gracefully handle requests, senior-management interactions, and feedback from various sourcesBuild metrics to track progress, spot problems, and celebrate successStick to your launch checklist and plan for marketing and PR
Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
Richard P. Rumelt - 2011
Richard Rumelt shows that there has been a growing and unfortunate tendency to equate Mom-and-apple-pie values, fluffy packages of buzzwords, motivational slogans, and financial goals with “strategy.” He debunks these elements of “bad strategy” and awakens an understanding of the power of a “good strategy.” A good strategy is a specific and coherent response to—and approach for overcoming—the obstacles to progress. A good strategy works by harnessing and applying power where it will have the greatest effect in challenges as varied as putting a man on the moon, fighting a war, launching a new product, responding to changing market dynamics, starting a charter school, or setting up a government program. Rumelt’snine sources of power—ranging from using leverage to effectively focusing on growth—are eye-opening yet pragmatic tools that can be put to work on Monday morning.Surprisingly, a good strategy is often unexpected because most organizations don’t have one. Instead, they have “visions,” mistake financial goals for strategy,and pursue a “dog’s dinner” of conflicting policies and actions.Rumelt argues that the heart of a good strategy is insight—into the true nature of the situation, into the hidden power in a situation, and into an appropriate response. He shows you how insight can be cultivated with a wide variety of tools for guiding yourown thinking.Good Strategy/Bad Strategy uses fascinating examples from business, nonprofit, and military affairs to bring its original and pragmatic ideas to life. The detailed examples range from Apple to General Motors, from the two Iraq wars to Afghanistan, from a small local market to Wal-Mart, from Nvidia to Silicon Graphics, from the Getty Trust to the Los Angeles Unified School District, from Cisco Systems to Paccar, and from Global Crossing to the 2007–08 financial crisis.Reflecting an astonishing grasp and integration of economics, finance, technology, history, and the brilliance and foibles of the human character, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy stems from Rumelt’s decades of digging beyond the superficial to address hard questions with honesty and integrity.From the Hardcover edition.
Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries
Safi Bahcall - 2019
Mountains of print have been written about culture. Loonshots identifies the small shifts in structure that control this transition, the same way that temperature controls the change from water to ice.Using examples that range from the spread of fires in forests to the hunt for terrorists online, and stories of thieves and geniuses and kings, Bahcall shows how this new kind of science helps us understand the behavior of companies and the fate of empires. Loonshots distills these insights into lessons for creatives, entrepreneurs, and visionaries everywhere.
Natural Capitalism
Paul Hawken - 1999
This groundbreaking book reveals how today's global businesses can be both environmentally responsible and highly profitable.
The Grid: Electrical Infrastructure for a New Era
Gretchen Bakke - 2016
It’s not just that the grid has grown old and is now in dire need of basic repair. Today, as we invest great hope in new energy sources--solar, wind, and other alternatives--the grid is what stands most firmly in the way of a brighter energy future. If we hope to realize this future, we need to re-imagine the grid according to twenty-first-century values. It’s a project which forces visionaries to work with bureaucrats, legislators with storm-flattened communities, moneymen with hippies, and the left with the right. And though it might not yet be obvious, this revolution is already well under way.Cultural anthropologist Gretchen Bakke unveils the many facets of America's energy infrastructure, its most dynamic moments and its most stable ones, and its essential role in personal and national life. The grid, she argues, is an essentially American artifact, one which developed with us: a product of bold expansion, the occasional foolhardy vision, some genius technologies, and constant improvisation. Most of all, her focus is on how Americans are changing the grid right now, sometimes with gumption and big dreams and sometimes with legislation or the brandishing of guns.The Grid tells--entertainingly, perceptively--the story of what has been called “the largest machine in the world”: its fascinating history, its problematic present, and its potential role in a brighter, cleaner future.
Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action
Elinor Ostrom - 1990
Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr. Ostrom first describes three models most frequently used as the foundation for recommending state or market solutions. She then outlines theoretical and empirical alternatives to these models in order to illustrate the diversity of possible solutions. In the following chapters she uses institutional analysis to examine different ways--both successful and unsuccessful--of governing the commons. In contrast to the proposition of the tragedy of the commons argument, common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organizations rather than by a coercive state. Among the cases considered are communal tenure in meadows and forests, irrigation communities and other water rights, and fisheries.
The Minto Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing, Thinking, & Problem Solving
Barbara Minto - 1987
Topics covered range from the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning, to a discussion of how to highlight the structure of information.
New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future
James Bridle - 2018
Underlying this trend is a single idea: the belief that our existence is understandable through computation, and more data is enough to help us build a better world. In actual fact, we are lost in a sea of information, increasingly divided by fundamentalism, simplistic narratives, conspiracy theories, and post-factual politics. Meanwhile, those in power use our lack of understanding to further their own interests. Despite the accessibility of information, we’re living in a new Dark Age. From rogue financial systems to shopping algorithms, from artificial intelligence to state secrecy, we no longer understand how our world is governed or presented to us. The media is filled with unverifiable speculation, much of it generated by anonymous software, while companies dominate their employees through surveillance and the threat of automation. In his brilliant new work, leading artist and writer James Bridle excavates the limits of technology and how it aids our understanding of the world. Surveying the history of art, technology, and information systems, he explores the dark clouds that gather over our dreams of the digital sublime.