Communication according to Professor Osmo A. Wiio

I just yesterday got a nice reminder from a Twitter conversation about the Wiio’s laws. These laws describe the communication through seven laws that have been created through observations during the 1970s.

So here’s some food for thought for the weekend:

Wiio’s Laws of Communication

I Communication usually fails, except by accident.
- If communication can fail, it will
- If communication cannot fail, it still most usually fails
- If communication seems to succeed in the intended way, there’s a misunderstanding
- If you are content with your message, communication certainly fails

II If a message can be interpreted in several ways, it will be interpreted in a manner that maximizes the damage

III There is always someone who knows better than you what you meant with your message

IV The more we communicate, the worse communication succeeds
- The more we communicate, the faster misunderstandings propagate

V In mass communication, the important thing is not how things are but how they seem to be

VI The importance of a news item is inversely proportional to the square of the distance

VII The more important the situation is, the more probably you forget an essential thing that you remembered a moment ago

Quite insightful…

Now anyone can publish a book

I just found my way to a service that I had nearly forgotten. I've thought of writing a book that gives an easy and simple explanation on what agile development is about and why it is something everyone in software development industry should be familiar with. The easiest way to publish this kind of quite short and simple book is to use Lulu.

Lulu is an online publishing service, that lets you publish your own books and get some income from it too. Idea is simple and powerful: Upload your text, add some information and let Lulu do the publishing and manufacturing. Afterward you can let Lulu also sell your book or acquire a ISBN number for it and sell it e.g. in Amazon. Brilliant idea!

The best thing in this idea is that it really answers some need. People really want to publish their writings. Usually it is hard, and for most people finding a publisher would be a waste of time. Lulu makes it easy, gives a way to bring yourself out in hardcover format. As Time magazine stated: The person of the year is You. And Lulu brings you available to everyone.

New! Link exchange and software dev blog

Well, the topic tells it all. I've got two new things here...

1. Link exchange
I've added a link exchange item that can be found as the topmost item on the right. If you wish to start link exchange with me, please contact me by adding a comment to this blog post.

2. New software development blog
I've also created a new blog Software Development Dynamics for more technical blog posts and articles. Now I should be able to concentrate only on business, management, projects, processes etc. in this blog.

Anything else new? Well, still don't have enough time to write as much as I would like to. However I've cleared some time for writing during next half a year. I feel optimistic about getting some new blog posts out at least monthly to both blogs. We'll see how it goes in reality... :)

Summer holiday

Finally my summer holiday started!

I had to delay the start by one week due to a bit busy situation at work (in fact, I've been working whole morning at home to get things done). Have to say that now it feels really free and relaxed. I even have time to write to blog and to read few books that I've been thinking about reading for few months already.

I also feel like I should develop at least something during the summer holiday. Just to have something to do during rainy days :). The problem is that I have had a huge number of ideas during the winter and spring about tools that should be done, but now my head feels empty. Well, maybe I should just start with open source Scrum tools project that I've been considering for ages. If you have any ideas, please let me know...

Shelfari virtual bookshelf

I just stumbled upon a quite nice web site called Shelfari. The idea is that you can create your own virtual bookshelf and add your own books, the books you have read and the books you would like to read in it. Shelfari also offers the trendy community features like groups, friends, recommendations, tags and reviews to help you find the best books available.

I have to say that as I like to read and I like to own books, I became right away interested about the service and decided to add my books to the virtual bookshelf. Have to say that the first impression of the service is really good. Everything works smoothly and intuitively. Also a great bonus is the widget that can be added to blogs etc. websites. So I decided to replace my current readings widget with Selfari's Now reading widget. Looks a bit better now.

Some additions to site

I added some new features to the blog.

1. Now reading... box on the right side. Tells which book(s) I'm currently reading and what I read previously. I have a habit of reading at least three books a month, maybe I even should list these somewhere with a short review...

2. Added Google search

3. Added work related links section, that hopefully will be quite dynamic and changing according to my situations. Now including mainly basic agile sites I use a lot.

4. Added links for the events I'm taking part. Maybe I should use Upcoming for this... Hmm..

More visitors for Managing Dynamics blog (Part 1)

For this afternoon I thought I should reserve some time to work a bit more with my blogging business :). So I started with Google, as usually people who want some visitors on their pages do. Google Webmaster central seemed like a correct place to start growing organic visibility of my blog in Google. Well, after submitting my sitemaps and pages to Google, I still couldn't find my blog from Google. Darn.

Reading a bit more carefully through the webmaster help at Google popped new thoughts of marketing this blog. First of all, lists of blogs. A quick search resulted a few interesting lists (e.g. Technorati) which all seemed to need a new blog on their list. So after quick registrations and blog addings there was few links to Managing Dynamics blog! \o/

Still, I felt like my target audience would not find me. So I decided to search for some tips on how to make blogs popular. One very interesting one was the lenses at Squidoo. There was even a free e-book on how to get more traffic on websites with lenses. After reading through that, I was determined that the thing I was missing is a lens. Again in 10 minutes my blog was easier to find, thanks to Managing Dynamics lens. Now, after 1 hour of intensive marketing campaign, I will let Google's webcrawlers do their job and add this blog into Google index. And then it's time to start waiting for income from advertisements. :)