The Curious Engineer

Scott Berkun

2003–2007

529 posts

2008–2026 →

2007 157

December 2007

  1. Thursday linkfest
  2. What is your dangerous idea?
  3. Learning from London’s speakers’ corner
  4. Video/podcast from my talk at Lunch 2.0
  5. Usability review #4: Simplygoogle
  6. Usability review #3: Ginablack.net
  7. Usability review #5: Freetheslaves.net
  8. Myths named Jolt Award finalist
  9. Wednesday linkfest
  10. What new chapter do you want?
  11. The best book I read in 2007
  12. When genius bombs
  13. Ask Berkun (Friday mailbag)
  14. Wednesday linkfest
  15. Why you should go to the GEL ’08 conference
  16. Comment lottery: win signed copy of the Myths of Innovation
  17. Most interesting video you’ll see today
  18. New essay: how to be a genius
  19. Myths of innovation: best book for strategy+business magazine
  20. Book review: A Whole New Mind
  21. The best innovation paper you’ve never read
  22. Should you ban blackberries at meetings?
  23. (Seattle) speaking at Lunch 2.0, free, today
  24. Buy nothing for Christmas
  25. Usability is not a verb

November 2007

  1. How to pick a name
  2. The failure of Scolidays
  3. The new name for the artofpm book is…
  4. The art of project management – going out of print
  5. The 8 challenges innovations face
  6. (Seattle) Speaking at Lunch 2.0, Thurs Dec 6th
  7. Usability review: parkingfriend.com
  8. Usability review: iwethey.org
  9. $1544 raised for Hopelink!
  10. Writing quote of the day
  11. The future of the laptop: designed by kids
  12. Debunking The Top Thanksgiving Myths
  13. Help me help folks in need
  14. Innovation Myths in Schoolhouse Rock
  15. Myths of Innovation: #4 on Amazon’s best of 2007
  16. The saddest cubicle in the world
  17. The best public speaking tip ever
  18. Why conferences have bad speakers

October 2007

  1. Does Google 2008 = Microsoft 1998?
  2. World usability day: Free usability review
  3. Do you use / teach with the artofpm book?
  4. Are you a leader or a tracker?
  5. It’s Novel writing month: join NaNoWriMo!
  6. Lessons from amazing projects: Russian Ark
  7. 30 hours in Philly: a speed travelogue
  8. Into the Wild: movie review (& more)
  9. Why you should be bad at something
  10. Upcoming speaking: Philly, Villanova U, Boston
  11. Why I love Australia
  12. Top ten die hard travel tips

September 2007

  1. Forums locked due to general hate of phpbb
  2. CMU study on online privacy – opinions wanted
  3. Six reasons why I haven’t posted in a month

August 2007

  1. Come to MX-East and I will buy you dinner
  2. Wednesday short notes
  3. Innovation quote of the day
  4. Understanding book sales
  5. Help decide the title of a book
  6. Does open source help or hurt innovation?
  7. How to write a book – the short honest truth
  8. (Seattle) next ignite, tommorow night
  9. New essay: Creative thinking hacks
  10. Lessons from the browser wars @ Google
  11. Site slow – essay on bullshit hit digg top 10
  12. Make your own DVD commentary: Overcast Media

July 2007

  1. In defense of brainstorming
  2. Upcoming speaking: Seattle, Philadelphia and more
  3. Art of PM book: what do you want in 2nd edition?
  4. Seattle area book tour – venues wanted!
  5. Speaking in Portland, July 25 & July 26
  6. Innovation at big companies
  7. More social software: Crowdvine + Pathable
  8. Reading the the U.S. Constitution
  9. Lessons from FOO Camp ’07

June 2007

  1. Interview with Guy Kawasaki
  2. Interview on The Well: your questions wanted
  3. More on asshole driven development
  4. Innovation history: the bouncing bomb
  5. How and Why To Write a Rude Q&A
  6. Asshole-driven development
  7. Management by fire: Bourdain on leadership
  8. Social software applied: Pathable
  9. Myths of Innovation: $14.99 on amazon
  10. Interview & review at DigitalWeb
  11. How to innovate on time
  12. More reviews for Myths
  13. Attention and Sex: 5 minute video
  14. Today: Radio tour!
  15. Efficiency vs. Creativity
  16. The best creative thinking books
  17. Seattle Bizjam conference, this weekend: Recommended

May 2007

  1. How long should a book be?
  2. Myths of Innovation #2 on amazon.com
  3. Slashdot review of Myths of Innovation
  4. Essay #55 – How to stay motivated
  5. Conversations about creativity
  6. I need your help with the new book
  7. Footnotes vs. Endnotes: Decision!
  8. Smart peanuts
  9. Bay area book tour: report
  10. First reviews are in: 5 stars!
  11. More tour dates: Vancouver, Boston & Seattle
  12. Podcast interview about myths of innovation
  13. Sample chapter now online
  14. Book launch a big success
  15. Myths of Innovation, SF May tour dates (updated again)
  16. Reminder: Book launch party TONIGHT
  17. The Moscow report: part 2
  18. The underuse of imagination
  19. Video: 10 minutes on the myths of innovation
  20. (Seattle) Book release party, Thurs May 10th

April 2007

  1. The Moscow report – part 1
  2. Speaking in Vancouver, BC, Thurs May 24th
  3. The myths of innovation – the cover and reviews
  4. Can big organizations innovate? Yes.
  5. Site update complete – now 100% wordpress
  6. the innovation book, sighting at e-tech
  7. How I became a Cory Doctorow fan
  8. Seattle ignite, tommorow night
  9. site changes in progress
  10. Report from e-tech 2007

March 2007

  1. Why research labs fail at innovation
  2. I will write you an essay – for free!
  3. Why you should treat contractors / temps well
  4. Bay area/Seattle book tour: venues wanted!
  5. Speaking in Moscow, April 25th
  6. Patents 2.0? Public patent review
  7. How to start meetings on time (the honest answer)

February 2007

  1. How to kill innovation hype
  2. First interview about Myths of Innovation
  3. Do headlines make us dumber?
  4. Research help: how many species have there been?
  5. Introducing “the book” (humor)
  6. Seattle: Ignite, Tuesday 8:30pm
  7. The life of a book: part 2
  8. The book: the myths of innovation
  9. Footnotes vs. Endnotes: the debate
  10. Book review: Founders at Work
  11. Difference making: darfurwall.org
  12. Book review: Designing Interactions

January 2007

  1. A favor: helping the good guys at etoner.com
  2. How a book is made: a short story
  3. This week in pm-clinic: the white knight
  4. Special offer from the book dart folks
  5. Creativity: Supply vs. Demand
  6. How we got here: Legacy of the whole earth catalog
  7. MLK, technology and inspiration
  8. In defense of simplicity
  9. Handcrafted software: Jackson Fish
  10. Upcoming travel: MX, e-tech, GEL
  11. Book review: Dreaming in code
  12. When should you take vacation? A strategy

2006 197

December 2006

  1. Thoughts on 7 days without power
  2. The return of power
  3. Death by Christmas Music
  4. Storm Survival: Day 6
  5. Cell text messages = the telegraph?
  6. I want your photographs
  7. The mistakes of having a VP of innovation
  8. Book update: inside scoop + 1st draft complete
  9. Why smart people defend bad ideas: the mailbag

November 2006

  1. Idea helpers: ways to grow ideas
  2. Idea killers: ways to stop ideas
  3. Mindcamp 3.0: report
  4. The early days of dogfood
  5. (Seattle) Socrates cafe forming on eastside
  6. Great managers of innovation?
  7. Legendary office pranks (w/photos)
  8. Time’s best inventions of 2006
  9. Browser review: Opera 9.02
  10. Browser review: IE 7 & Firefox 2.0
  11. How to know it’s November in Seattle

October 2006

  1. Book reviews: Engines of ingenuity & How Invention begins
  2. Good ideas/innovations that lost?
  3. This week in ux-clinic: managing sensitive designers
  4. This week in pm-clinic: Innovate or die
  5. Start-up camp: Nov 2&3 Mountain View
  6. How to make an innovative book? (help wanted)
  7. IDEA 2006 Conference: summary
  8. Can CounterStrike teach your team? (Video games as training tools)
  9. Report from executive summit @ Construx
  10. This week in pm-clinic: Haunted by ghost employees
  11. Liveblogging the IDEA2006 conference
  12. Maps of war: animation of middle east history
  13. Doodles, drafts and innovators
  14. Where designers should go: Seattle IXDA ’19 edition
  15. Why innovation efforts fail
  16. Worldchanging: Ideas for a better future
  17. This week in ux-clinic: Managing usability time
  18. This week in pm-clinic: Killing the zombie project
  19. How to create & manage ideas: the course
  20. The product vision test
  21. This week in pm-clinic: Being shown the door
  22. This week in ux-clinic: the usability police
  23. Writing with the wolves

September 2006

  1. Can we do better than Gannt charts?
  2. The ideal designer & project manager
  3. How to run a great unconference session
  4. This week in ux-clinic: Designing for novices and experts
  5. This week in pm-clinic: Keeping top talent
  6. Why Gutenberg is overrated as an innovator
  7. IDEA 2006 Conference, Seattle, Oct 23/24
  8. Interactionary at SXSW? You decide
  9. Innovation survey: results summary
  10. The real life of books
  11. This week in ux-clinic: in-house vs. outsource UX
  12. This week in pm-clinic: thick vs. thin specs
  13. Speaking at American Society for Interior Designers
  14. Back from Australia: quick report

August 2006

  1. Essay: Writing hacks (hacks on writing), Part 1
  2. Report from FOO Camp ’06 [foocamp06]
  3. The Office sitcom meets Microsoft
  4. This week in ux-clinic: harvesting the idea farm
  5. This week in pm-clinic: The need for two faced managers
  6. Seattle Mind Camp 3.0: Registration open
  7. This week in ux-clinic: Can UI be funny?
  8. This week in pm-clinic: Dealing with the powerful but annoying
  9. Last chance! Interview deadline EOD today (more prizes)
  10. What do you miss from the past?
  11. Reminder: interview deadline this friday
  12. Essay: How to detect bullshit
  13. This week in pm-clinic: painless ways to cut features?
  14. This week in ux-clinic: How to cut a bad, shipped feature
  15. Life as a series of piles
  16. Dud on arrival: why important buildings flop (Slate)
  17. How do you find good people? (PM)
  18. The start-up management inflection point
  19. This week in pm-clinic: Surviving the visionless manager
  20. This week in ux-clinic: Beyond don’t make me think
  21. Innovators wanted: get interviewed in a book
  22. Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 – short review
  23. Australia: Leading successful projects, the course
  24. Seattle: Crash course in web design & usability
  25. Who holds the first U.S. patent?

July 2006

  1. This week in ux-clinic: Superhero UX vs. conservatives
  2. This week in pm-clinic: Managing proof of concept
  3. UI makeover: del.icio.us
  4. How to get people to read a blog post
  5. CHI 2007 – We want you
  6. This week in ux-clinic: The requirements to design gap
  7. This week in pm-clinic: the myths of buffer
  8. How do executives learn? Executive software summit – Oct. 16-18
  9. Two kinds of people: complexifiers and simplifiers
  10. If your name is Edward it’s your lucky day
  11. Tricks for writing: book darts
  12. This week in ux-clinic: Getting the new up to speed
  13. This week in pm-clinic: interviewing managers
  14. How skunkworks got its name
  15. How honest should you be?
  16. Embarassing web tales: part 1
  17. The architecture at Google
  18. This week in ux-clinic: vision and collaboration
  19. This week in pm-clinic: turning the tide
  20. Quick kill project management
  21. The motherlode of book writing statistics
  22. New coke: an innovation case study
  23. What innovation means: a short report
  24. The lost concept of the holiday
  25. The 3 People In a Room Test
  26. Book research help: rate of tech adoption

June 2006

  1. This week in ux-clinic: Drive by critiques
  2. This week in pm-clinic: mystery of personal goals
  3. Replacing the desktop (not yet)
  4. Mistakes in technical leadership (Hacknot)
  5. How to Prevent Bad Morale Events at Work
  6. More on preventing innovation
  7. Love and hate: the management of Mark Cuban
  8. Berkun down under: Sept. workshops in Australia
  9. Hard conversations
  10. This week in pm-clinic: Shifting a culture
  11. This week in ux-clinic: Does help matter?
  12. The Power to Stop Innovation
  13. Tales of Vista development at MSFT
  14. Small tales of technology failure
  15. This week in ux-clinic: Keep ’em seperated?
  16. This week in pm-clinic: A management puzzle
  17. Do you need radicals for change?
  18. Saving the world by laptop

May 2006

  1. Free book for startups: special offer
  2. Essay: Advice for new managers, part two
  3. Great management in progress: NBA playoffs
  4. Sacred places: NYC architecture tour report
  5. Three great machines and innovation limitation
  6. Gel ’06 re-cap
  7. Improving unconferences
  8. Mindcamp 2.0 re-cap
  9. The things you never hear
  10. License to manage? (On PMP and certification)
  11. This week in ux-clinic: The horror of the small screen
  12. This week in pm-clinic: Management at start-ups

April 2006

  1. This week in ux-clinic: Leading the design skunkworks
  2. This week in pm-clinic: Managing the middle talent
  3. Writing for Seattlest on design & architecture
  4. Review: 37signal’s Getting real, the book
  5. This week in ux-clinic: Blog-‘O-rama
  6. This week in pm-clinic: The softer side
  7. The top 100 most innovative companies (BW)
  8. Ten things Bad VPs never say
  9. The next book: an invitation
  10. This week in uxclinic: Death by comparison
  11. This week in pmclinic: Mutiny
  12. Seattle: MindCamp 2.0 registration open
  13. The victimization ratio
  14. How to know your staff hates you
  15. ArtofPM on Business Week
  16. A year in the life of a book: a summary
  17. Pms vs. Programmers (This week in pmclinic)
  18. This week in ux-clinic: Being the UX hero

March 2006

  1. WSJ Innovation awards – nominations open
  2. The GEL Conference (May 4/5) – Why you should go
  3. The Vista saga: an opinion
  4. Surviving the blue sky project (This week in ux-clinic)
  5. Quality is job #15 (This week in pm-clinic)
  6. Essay: Attention and sex
  7. In Toronto this week – Fri/Sat
  8. This week in ux-clinic: Lost in the tag cloud
  9. This week in pm-clinic: Plan for the plan
  10. ArtofPM wins Jolt Productivty award
  11. Ask berkun and forums are back
  12. The Boss That’s Never There
  13. Scolidays – 2006 (Custom holidays)
  14. Clever designs: Top ten alarm clocks
  15. Cool != Good and the future of UI
  16. This week in UX-clinic: Drowning in customer love
  17. This week in pm-clinic: the “poof” of concept
  18. E-tech report and UI talk slides
  19. Art of PM the course: In Vancouver April 12th/13th
  20. The trip to India: part 1

February 2006

  1. This week in pm-clinic: the boss who won’t listen
  2. This week in ux-clinic: novices vs. experts
  3. Personal: visiting India this month
  4. This week in ux-clinic: How not to blow the big presentation
  5. This week in pm-clinic: managing our time
  6. Speaking at Emerging technology conference
  7. This blog: weekly situations – yay or nay
  8. Why vision documents stink
  9. Get in my shoes: Cool mentorship auction

January 2006

  1. Me, Microsoft and Digg.com
  2. Essay: advice for new managers, part 1
  3. Best of Berkun
  4. The best software writing, Volume 2
  5. 2006 JOLT Awards
  6. The exceptions to Brooks’ Law
  7. Interview with Fred Brooks (Fortune magazine)
  8. Review of artofpm on slackermanager
  9. In Love with Pandora: Music recommendations
  10. This week in PmClinic: Help a randomized team
  11. This week in UXClinic: Finding UX a home
  12. The meaning of New Years Day

2005 142

December 2005

  1. Lessons on social bookmarking (Learning from del.ico.us & blink)
  2. Essay: How to make a difference
  3. PM Clinic: Nominations for think-week
  4. Vote for Best of UX writing 2005
  5. Best questions from the Microsoft talk
  6. The good experience live conference (GEL 2006)
  7. Google’s 10 rules compared to Microsoft
  8. This week in UX-Clinic: who to hire
  9. PM-Clinic: Where to put the business folks
  10. (Seattle) Speaking at Microsoft
  11. Right For The Wrong Reasons

November 2005

  1. Embarassed in Seattle: The monorail
  2. This week in UX-Clinic: The Frankenstein prototype
  3. Pm-clinic: The happy holiday bonus
  4. The Song airline experience
  5. This week: winning at schedule chicken
  6. Taking back the web: the next generation
  7. Design games (or learning and playing at the same time)
  8. Announcing UX-clinic: a discussion on design
  9. Essay: Good, evil and technology. A fun philosophical inquiry
  10. ArtofPM on slashdot
  11. Ask Berkun: open for your questions
  12. How to follow web 2.0: programmableweb.com
  13. This week: the fate of acquired teams
  14. Seattle MindCamp wrapup
  15. The worst software bugs in history (and how to learn from them)
  16. Speaking in Portland Thursday
  17. This week: the joy of team rivalry
  18. UI critique: feedshot.com
  19. UI critique: seattlechildrens.org
  20. Why ease of use doesn’t happen
  21. Artofpm reviews: B&A and MSDN
  22. Free UI reviews: World usability day tommorow
  23. The data death spiral

October 2005

  1. Book tour wrap-up
  2. This week: Making handoffs
  3. Speaking at amazon.com today
  4. Stories from the road: the train experience
  5. The evil wall of requirements
  6. Lecture #2 at MIT: Why software sucks
  7. New essay: Teams and stars
  8. This week: How to be the wolf
  9. Four ways to big decisions
  10. Good notes on startups
  11. BT: Lecturing at MIT
  12. BT: Lecture #2 at Boston CHI
  13. BT: Speaking at Northeastern university
  14. Book tour(BT): Tuesday, O’Reilly
  15. This week: Death by autonomy
  16. Book tour: hurry up and wait
  17. Boston: Social time change, now 8pm
  18. ArtofPM Book Tour: Oct 11-19, details
  19. The bias of social software
  20. Book Review: Management of the absurd
  21. The two points of contact theory
  22. More on why software sucks

September 2005

  1. Goals for this blog
  2. The mystery of the front row
  3. The life goal: writing books
  4. This week: Figuring out lessons to learn
  5. Teaching programming / management the Harvard way
  6. Book review: Deep Survival
  7. Info on book tour part2: nyc, boston, pittsburgh
  8. Why software sucks: an essay
  9. More on Firefox, IE & slashdot
  10. Slides from tonights Seattle PMI presentation
  11. Why I switched to Firefox
  12. This week: managing up to executives
  13. Smart people, bad ideas and expertise
  14. Manifestos and more personal mba
  15. How to decide when to fix bugs, part 2
  16. Yesterday’s Artofpm Webcast now available

August 2005

  1. Thanks for watching
  2. Webcast tommorow: 1012 people signed up
  3. This week: when the party’s over
  4. The 3 ways to work
  5. Leadership for startups (Podcast part 2)
  6. Interview at Lifehack.org
  7. More on unstructured events (FOO)
  8. Notes from FOO camp
  9. Reminder: Live webcast next week
  10. Two from Foo Camp
  11. Blog rankings, popularity and quality
  12. web developer or designer needed (CSS/HTML)
  13. This week: Assigning programming work
  14. Essay: work vs. progress
  15. Essay: How to decide what bugs to fix
  16. Book Tour: Part 2?
  17. This week: Managing the 2nd class project
  18. Manifestos for your mind
  19. More reviews in for the art of PM
  20. The Personal MBA: learn business on your own time
  21. Mark the date: Free webcast on the art of project management
  22. at OSCON this week
  23. This week: you make the call

July 2005

  1. Berkun Live: Podcast on leadership and management
  2. This week: Loose cannon programmers
  3. New essay: how to learn from your mistakes
  4. This week: How to reorganize a team
  5. Talent vs. Experience
  6. Discussion summaries now available
  7. Ending the wars between testers and programmers
  8. ArtofPM #2 on Amazon.com best seller list
  9. This week: Lead programmers . vs project managers

June 2005

  1. This week: Leading the unleadable?
  2. More reviews in for the art of PM
  3. Pmclinic: Getting started with direct reports
  4. This week: Fear of changing direction
  5. New essay: How to survive a bad manager
  6. This week: working with programmer/architects

May 2005

  1. Slashdotted
  2. artofpm mentioned on furrygoat.com
  3. More on amazon rankings
  4. Lessons learned: radio interview
  5. Radio interview link fixed
  6. First review: 43 folders
  7. This week: happy project status meetings
  8. Radio Interview: sunday
  9. Interview on the Well
  10. Book tour: lessons learned
  11. Last stop: Adobe
  12. New Essay: Why you must lead or follow
  13. Day 3: Macromedia & Automobiles
  14. ArtofPM now category best seller
  15. Day 2: Social event: Faultline brewery
  16. Day 2: speaking at Yahoo (Wed may 11th)
  17. Day 2: Speaking at Google
  18. Day 1 continued – baychi
  19. Book Tour Day 1 report
  20. The start of rank checking..
  21. How you can help me
  22. Tour dates
  23. Mysteries of book publishing, part 1

April 2005

  1. Planning a book tour
  2. It lives
  3. London book update
  4. QC1 / QC2

March 2005

  1. The book index
  2. Nothing is happening

February 2005

  1. Slow, slow, slow

January 2005

  1. From here to publication
  2. The waiting

2004 28

December 2004

  1. London revisited
  2. How to build a better web browser

October 2004

  1. Draft 2 finished
  2. The passing of Butch
  3. Half ideas and stumbling over them
  4. Draft 2 – Chapter 4

September 2004

  1. Draft v2
  2. Finished Draft V1

August 2004

  1. Chapter 12 & Charleston chews
  2. Interviewing PMs

June 2004

  1. Stories from the road trip: Seattle To Denver 2004
  2. Struggling to write this sentence
  3. Break: denver road trip

May 2004

  1. Sheer will
  2. The schedule

April 2004

  1. Signed

March 2004

  1. They’re interested
  2. Sent PM proposal
  3. Changing focus
  4. Mailed London book proposal
  5. PM Book proposal finished
  6. Project Management book beginnings

February 2004

  1. Chapter 4: London

January 2004

  1. Daily writing plan Part 2
  2. Chapter 3: London
  3. Drafts of drafts
  4. Daily writing plan
  5. Berkun plan 2004

2003 5

December 2003

  1. Writing plan
  2. Power is out
  3. The Chunnel

November 2003

  1. London project

September 2003

  1. Microsoft no more

2008–2026 →