Daily Thoughts 11/20/2009

This picture was taken from Contes populaires de Basse-Bretagne (Popular tales of Lower Britanny), by F-M. Luzel, Paris, 1887. This came from oldbookillustrations.com which hosts a variety of public domain images from old books.

Daily Thoughts 11/20/2009

I am almost done reading Smart Networking by Liz Lynch. I'll probably finish reading it on the train home. I also have quite a few books which I have checked out for my vacation; Peter and Max A Fables Novel by Bill Willingham, The Elements of Expression by Arthur Plotnik, Makers by Cory Doctorow ( Cory Doctorow is one of my favorite authors), Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars by William Patry ( William Patry is the Senior Copyright Counsel at Google, Inc.), I Drink For A Reason by David Cross (I saw this in Forbidden Planet on the way to my Twitter for Libraries class.), and The Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics, selected and edited by Art Spiegelman & Francis Mouly, with an Introduction by Jon Scieszka (Art Spiegelman is superb, he is the author of Maus, and Jon Sciesczka is a most excellent childrens author. Sciesczka is best known for his fractured fairytales like The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales.)

I also took out a dvd, Monsters vs Aliens which is a Dreamworks film.

Last night, I finished watching Pinocchio. It was very enjoyable and very dark. I was already familiar with the story because I read the Little Golden Book version of Pinocchio which is very true to the Disney film. I have never read the original book by Collodi. Disney considersthis a masterpiece. I liked it a huge amount. It is much darker than many of the previous disney films I have seen.

Smart Networking Attract A Following In Person and Online by Liz Lynch

This book is an overview of the networking process. It integrates old fashioned one to one in person networking with more modern social networking tools. It is about how to use both based on your needs.

The opener of the book is an attempt to help you get over your fear of asking other people for help as well as how to offer help in a networking context. There is a very nice description on how to not push too hard.

I liked the ideas in this book, especially on how to create a pitch, and create a one page plan.

For social networking tools, linkedin is described as a must. They also describe how to use an ezine or email letter to create contacts and build a following. This is not something I had seen other networking books do.

The book is short and to point being 192 pages long including the index and bibliography of popular business titles. There are lists of things to do as well as success stories in each chapter. The writing is very upbeat, easy to read, and is aimed at motivating people to go out and make contacts.