Just finished reading "The Invisible Hook" by Peter Leeson, about pirates, economics and workplace democracy.  The main takeaway is to let the needs and structure of your market drive your organization, not the other way around.  Pirates did so and very successful at it.

I guess I should not be surprised, but I find it kind of creepy that there is such a thing as a virtual USPTO and even a Second Life Bar Association.  I guess that wherever the money goes, the law (and lawyers) follow.

"Tribal Leadership" is one of the books that some of us have placed on the night stand. I haven't read it fully yet, but I have already found something interesting just by reading the homepage of the book, and this is the concept of tribes.  I find this idea very inspirational for the kind of work we do.

Last night's Churchill Club's event turned out to be great on many dimensions.  Even the chicken dinner was remarkably good.  Most striking to me was the contrast in culture between Hastings and Eisner.  I hope the video is made available soon because it really illustrates the chasm between traditional and modern business culture.

Hashtags are a clever convention invented by Twitter users.  They can be extremely useful, but excessive use of these can make a post harder to scan/read.  If you overuse hashtags consistently, your followers will skip your posts and, eventually, stop following you altogether.  Learn to strike a balance.

Last night, at the San Francisco New Tech event, more than 50 people checked-in using Foursquare.  Only a handful of people did it via Gowalla.  Nobody used Yelp.  That pretty much does it for me: I am focusing on Foursquare from now on.

Traditional code reviews are not much fun, particularly for the author.  They are very valuable, but can easily devolve into a bashing session.  Using the Charrette Protocol could be a more effective alternative that leaves the author in control and makes it more fun for everyone involved.  The charrette is also more in-line with Agile practices.