Meetings cost time and are both physically and mentally draining to people involved. They can also be valuable tools for people in getting to know each other and solving important problems cooperatively.

Every company I’ve ever worked for has too many meetings. Somewhere along the way we forgot that no one’s actually working when we’re meeting. Meeting is not working.

Love them or hate them it’s tough to argue that meetings are free. They cost money, at the very least they cost salaries. Maybe the people holding meetings need to be accountable for those costs?

Maybe companies should charge people for holding meetings? I know some companies charge the appropriate project budget for the incurred salaries of the people sitting in those meetings, however, that’s just a client billing. If you want to drag the CEO, the CTO, and 5 developers into a 3 hour meeting then that’s fine. You will, however, have to play that return on investment(ROI) game that MBA types love to talk about.

A related Fast Company article, Change Is Sweet

It’s nice to see an idea clearly stated that’s been jumbling around in my head for years. Choosing a business name, or domain name, isn’t about taglines, service offerings, etc. It’s about memory.

The only rules I have in choosing a domain name are:

• Difficult to spell wrong.
• Easy to remember.
• Easy to accurately convey to someone, support viral marketing, ie. broken telephone syndrome.

Does Amazon make you instantly think of a bookstore? Does Google have you saying to yourself ’sounds like an internet search engine to me’? No but how easy is it to remember how to get to Amazon on the internet or how to tell your buddy where you bought your last book? It’s dirt simple and when was the last time you heard someone say they couldn’t figure out how to spell amazon?

I first tried O’Reilly’s Safari bookshelf by signing up for a free 14 day trial last summer. Eventually I moved to their personal version until finally landing on clearspace acquiring our own corporate package which offers us all slightly better rates.

I’ve tried one competing offering out there, that being Books24×7. Their interfaces, number of books, prices and features differ only slightly. The main differentiator is the books in their libraries, ie Wrox versus O’Reilly. If you prefer Wrox books, you’re best on books24×7, if you prefer O’Reilly then get Safari. Actually, just try them both out as I believe they both offer free trials. I ultimately prefer Safari because I have always trusted O’Reilly books in general.

To be blunt, I’m unsure how I coped without this. Regardless of which service you choose, the bottom line is you have instant and complete access to over 3000 books. For me, this supports my work in a far better fashion that traditional books. I need to quickly research a topic by hearing or reading a variety of voices and opinions. In the past I would rely solely on the free publishings on the internet. For anything more in depth I would search around on Amazon, do my best to pick a reputable book on the topic, and either order and wait days or head to the local bookstore and hope they have a title.

At best I’m able to get a book that day, most likely paying $50 to $100, at worst I’m waiting up to a week. If I’m lucky I choose well and end up with a book that solves my problems. If I make a crappy choice then I’m stuck with more useless dead trees. With Safari I have instant access to over 3000 titles allowing me to hunt around in a multitude of books in order to get a well rounded perspective on the topic at hand for the cost of about six books a year.