Books by author: Scott Berkun

Note: There is a newer edition of this book titled Making Things Happen.

I've had this book on my shelf for five or six years and finally decided to plow through it. It's full of good practices and advice for project managers, and it lines up pretty well with the best practices I've observed and applied over the years, but it's very densely written and a bit of a slog. I'm curious how the new edition differs.

This was occasionally entertaining, but held little advice that was useful to me. The helpful bits boil down to:

1. Know your audience
2. Be concise
3. Practice

which is good advice, but not enough to hang a book on. My mistake was thinking that this book would help me be a better public speaker, when in fact it's more about what it's like to be a professional public speaker.

Clearly some of the gap here is that I've been giving demos and talks for more than a decade, first as a grad student and then as an engineer. I'm not great at it, but I've already learned to work around most of the rookie mistakes. If you are new to public speaking, your mileage may vary, but I'm still guessing there's a better book out there for you.