Mary Jo Foley turns her "unblinking eye on Microsoft" (her phrase, not mine) to book mode.
After years of insisting I had no interest in writing a book, I’ve finally taken the plunge.
I am writing a book about — you guessed it — Microsoft. It will be published in the Spring of 2008 by John Wiley & Sons. The title: Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era.
See her post for more details. I suspect the folks at Waggener Edstrom have already formulated a team of people to, er, monitor the project...
I've often toyed with the idea of submitting a book proposal, and I'm constantly amazed by people such as Barry Briggs, who find time to write books (see the "Writings" section of his blog home page) despite very intense work schedules.
I pitched a SharePoint book idea to Addison Wesley in 2006, and Tom Rizzo was kind enough to be an advocate for the proposal, but I didn't invest enough time in the proposal process (perhaps instinctively anticipating the disruption on my overall life/work balance equation, if AW had opted to go ahead with the proposal...) and didn't pursue it.
My hypertext research over the last couple years has also altered my world view on books -- I strongly prefer hypertext (reading and writing) to long narrative mode these days, which makes my day job -- largely focused on producing research documents that are notorious for their "thud factor" (i.e., if you print them and drop them...) -- more challenging in some respects; fortunately, Burton Group is investing a lot of energy in determining how we can optimize the use of hypertext to complement our traditional document models.
Maybe I'll revisit the book scenario in a few years, when I may be able to publish a book that's more hypertext than dead-tree-format.
In the meantime, Mary Jo: I look forward to reading your book; let me know if/when/how I can help with the project.
» Coming Soon: Microsoft 2.0 the book | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com
No comments:
Post a Comment