My Media List: December 2013

One of the interesting things I saw recently, was a post about people sharing their media list. This could be books, music, movies or any type of content that they are using at the moment to advance themselves, or just for pure enjoyment.

I thought this was a great concept as a big fan of lifelong learning, so I wanted to start by sharing the content that I’ve been looking at in the recently, and that I’m using for learning and enjoyment as I head into the end of 2013.

These are the titles that I’ve been reading in the last couple of weeks.

My Books

The Phoenix Project

This is a re-read for me, but I actually make a point to review this great book every few months. It is a particularly quick read because the story is laid out beautifully and it is a real page-turner for folks who have are in the IT industry or in fact in just about any business. I had reviewed the book previously, so I’ll refer you to that post which is here: DiscoPosse Review: The Phoenix Project.

Click here to see the book on Amazon –The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

Designing for Behavior Change

As a member of the O’Reilly Blogger Review program, I have been given this book a couple of weeks ago and I am really pleased with it so far. It covers design from end to end and the way that design affects, and is affected by behavior. I really like anything that brings in the people side of design. There are real roots in behavioral psychology in technology that are often overlooked or misunderstood. UX/UI work is gaining focus for a reason.

Click here to see the book on Amazon –Designing for Behavior Change: Applying Psychology and Behavioral Economics

Lean Startup

Eric Ries does a phenomenal job of bringing the startup successes and challenges to the reader with Lean Startup, and whether you are in an “Enterprise” organization, or you are in a SMB or startup business, this book is absolutely applicable.

What I find to be great about this book is that is brings great concepts that you can apply to all aspects of your work and home life, and I have seen the benefit first hand. This is also one of the books that I re-read regularly, and each time it excites me to become better with things that I do.

Click here to see the book on Amazon – The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

vCAT

The VMware Press vCloud Architecture Toolkit is a great guide for those who do, or will soon work with VMware vCloud. Even if you are just wanting to evaluate whether this is a possible solution for your organization, this is one of the best guides I’ve found to lay out the technical, and people/process components needed to successfully deploy a VMware vCloud environment.

Click here to see the book on Amazon –VMware vCloud Architecture Toolkit (vCAT): Technical and Operational Guidance for Cloud Success (VMware Press Technology)

How to Create a Mind

If you are a fan of Ray Kurzweil, this is one if his great books.  An interesting insight into how the mind behaves, how learning occurs, and how pattern recognition shapes the way that we work. Again, this touches on the behavioral topics that I really enjoy reading and I recommend to others.

Click here to see the book on Amazon – How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed

Software Defined Networking with OpenFlow

This is a new book that was just released in November from Packt Publishing. This book gets deep quickly, so it is a real opportunity to dive right into the technical details of using OpenFlow and Software Defined Networking (SDN). If you want to see real topology examples with code examples paired up to allow you to use, this is a great resource.

Click here to see the book on Amazon – Software Defined Networking with OpenFlow

Videos

Pluralsight.com – Cisco CCNA Data Center: Intro to Data Center Networking

While I’ve already been CCNA certified, I had really key reasons to view this course. First, I wanted to refresh the concepts to prepare for the new CCNA-DC which uses Nexus technologies which were not covered in my CCNA Routing and Switching that I have already. Secondly, the course is given by Chris Wahl (http://www.wahlnetwork.com), who does a great job of delivering the content with both a technical depth, and a conversational delivery that makes it very easy to retain the info and stay interested throughout the course.

Click here to see more: CCNA Data Center with Chris Wahl

 

 

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