Damn ! I just realized that my latest article is almost 1 month old ! This is unacceptable for my trusted readers and as I spend a night in London I decided to share one of my latest read. I did read during the past months but for once, I indulged myself with some great science-fiction books I had in my stack: The forever war from Joe Hadelman (always trust a classic. This is an awesome read !), the Ophiuchi Hotline from John Varley and The Currents of Space from …

Thanks to some well deserved vacation, I was able to finish a book I’ve started a while back: Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days. I had 2 main interests in the reading of this book. The first one was related to the time I’ve spent in the Silicon Valley from 1998 until 2006, when I had plenty of good friends working from various Startup during the Internet Bubble: Excite, Netscape, Paypal, WebTV etc. You’ve got to understand that during these times (especially 1998 until 2002) all conversations during …

From a knowledge availability standpoint, being involved in testing in 2009 is probably much easier than 15 years ago. The community is not only larger but also, thanks to the Internet, able to share easily and broadly to a large audience. While there are some excellent commercial books on any testing topics (It is becoming a very large business …), and plenty of interesting blogs, there are also a number of very good free magazines out there which are worth our attention. I regularly read some of them and thought …

I finally had a chance to finish reading Richard Branson’s biography: Losing my virginity. After Jack Welsh, Branson was on my top 10 business leaders list and after reading his 600+ pages bio, he’s probably not far from the top. What an amazing read ! To my surprise, it really reads as a novel and has a very particular personal touch I appreciate. The most surprising of all for me is the fact that Branson was not necessarily promised to such success: Poor academic records, dyslexia, not a lot family …

I’ve always picked up quite a bit of management and business knowledge by observing and talking to leaders around me. I’ve been fairly lucky so far and have been regularly surrounded by people who impressed and inspired me. They all helped me in one way or another to get better at what I’m doing.
Another way to get some inspiration and motivation is to read biographies about very successful people in whatever industry they are working in. Jack Welch, is one of these people and his biography Straight from the Gut …

As part of my professional growth and training, I spend quite a bit of free time reading books on various subjects. These days I’m particularly attracted by the business shelf. I get technical growth directly on web article and conference (online and live test conference. More on this in a future post) but nothing replace (other than experience) a good book in the business area. I’m part of the personal MBA community which offers an interesting concept. I can’t say that I’m a very active …