kindle_joe_listThis year has been an intense learning experience for me. It was a year of learning driven by curiosity, the need for background information for projects with folks I met via social media, and in preparation for major projects at work. In addition, a significant portion of my learning came through reading, mostly on my iPhone and kindle app. The topics I read include the following:

For the most part, I went through these books by skimming and scanning them. I then went back and deep-read those I found really interesting and/or those requiring more analysis. There are some books that could have been better written, but I always start a book with an open mind so I try to find new ideas from them. However, there have been some books I have had to return (Amazon allows electronic refund within a couple of days after purchase) as I either found them to be too hard to read (the author uses too many big words I don’t understand and I fall asleep/get headaches), or ideas are not well thought out, or just not very interesting. I found that in reading enough books on similar topics, I came to find themes. It is during times when I could combine themes from across disciplines/industries and analyze them as they relate to my current work and future of higher education that I find myself thinking about possibilities of where my world could be heading.

I was able to read the books below because I committed to spending time to read each day (every night and Saturday mornings) and using the time I can find to read whenever/wherever I can. I do most of my readings through my iPhone and the kindle app. Most of the books below are e-books (kindle) and downloaded via my iPhone from the Amazon mobile website. Only a handful of the titles are physical books.

I share what I read via Goodreads and Pinterest boards. I’ve got ideas on what books to read based on the books shared by those I’ve connected with. Most of the folks on these two sites are also those I follow on Twitter. At one point, I wanted to use Twitter to share passages I highlight but given the amount of highlighting I do, I didn’t want to inundate my followers’ timelines with these tweets so I created another account called @jpskindle. I had intended this Twitter account to be an additional form of “bookmarking”, a place I could search for passages when I ever needed text I highlighted. However, I haven’t had the need to do this, and Twitter search for particular text is not too effective. In addition, Kindle allows highlighted passages to be viewed online through the Amazon Kindle site.

In addition to the list below, I find great value in reading blogs by folks I follow on Twitter, specifically, student affairs graduate students/professionals and technologists from other industries as well. Because I’ve come to know their personalities based on their tweets, and in some cases, from meeting them face-to-face, these blog posts provide a layer of connection I don’t get from reading books.

Change & InnovationOther Topics

  1. Democratizing Innovation by Hippel, Eric von
  2. Innovation as Usual: How to Help Your People Bring Great Ideas to Life by Miller, Paddy, Wedell-Wedellsborg, Thomas
  3. Nail It then Scale It: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Creating and Managing Breakthrough Innovation by Furr, Nathan, Ahlstrom, Paul
  4. Summary: First, Break All the Rules Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman by Must Read Summaries
  5. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Heath, Chip, Heath, Dan
  6. Tales of the Revolution: True Stories of People who are Poking the Box and Making a Difference by The Domino Project
  7. The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work by Amabile, Teresa, Kramer, Steven


Communication – Public SpeakingOther Topics

  1. Cat Got Your Tongue?: Powerful Public Speaking Skills & Presentation Strategies for Confident Communication or, How to Create the Purrfect Speech by Windingland, Diane
  2. Magic of Impromptu Speaking: Create a Speech That Will Be Remembered for Years in Under 30 Seconds by Sedniev, Andrii
  3. Public Speaking: Storytelling Techniques for Electrifying Presentations by Karia, Akash


Communication – WritingOther Topics


General Business & ProductivityOther Topics


Higher EducationOther Topics


Information TechnologyOther Topics


Leadership/ManagementOther Topics


Technology (Social Media, Big Data, Wearable Computing, Cloud, Mobile, …)Other Topics

  1. Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy by Scoble, Robert, Israel, Shel
  2. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Turkle, Sherry
  3. Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload by Hurst, Mark
  4. Community in the Digital Age: Philosophy and Practice by Feenberg, Andrew, Barney, Darin
  5. Computerised You: How Wearable Technology Will Turn Us Into Computers (Kindle Single) by Richmond, Shane
  6. Digital Community, Digital Citizen by Ohler, Jason B.
  7. Future Minds: How the Digital Age is Changing Our Minds, Why This Matters and What We Can Do About It by Watson, Richard
  8. Mind Amplifier: Can Our Digital Tools Make Us Smarter? (Kindle Single) by Rheingold, Howard
  9. Networked by Rainie, Lee, Wellman, Barry
  10. Online Social Networks by Routledge
  11. OPEN: How we’ll work, live and learn in the future by Price, David
  12. Personal Connections in the Digital Age (DMS – Digital Media and Society) by Baym, Nancy K.
  13. Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die by Siegel, Eric
  14. Privacy on social network sites and its impact on computer-mediated communication by Reiher, Nico
  15. Social State: Thoughts, Stats and Stories about the State of Social Media in 2013 by Contreras, Esteban
  16. Taken out of context: American teen sociality in networked publics by boyd, danah
  17. The App Generation by Howard, Gardner, Katie Davis
  18. The Circle by Eggers, Dave
  19. The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Stone, Brad
  20. The Seven Success Factors of Social Business Strategy by Li, Charlene, Solis, Brian
  21. The Silent Intelligence – The Internet of Things by Kellmereit, Daniel, Obodovski, Daniel
  22. The Singularity by Rodseth, Mark