It's All Geek To Me: Effective Communication for the Technically Minded

267 Pages·2014·0.848 MB·English

by  Paul A LaPointe, John Dias (editor)

It’s all Geek to Me
Effective communication for the
technically minded

By Paul LaPointe

Edited by John Dias

Version 2.00
Copyright 2014 Paul LaPointe
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Second Edition
ISBN 978-0-9937891-0-6

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or
retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Contents
Chapter 1: Chinese Graffiti
Chapter 2: Roads less travelled
Chapter 3: Why should communication matter to Geeks?
Chapter 4: How rational is your thinking?
Chapter 5: Consistency and Bias
Chapter 6: The Audience
Chapter 7: Channel Capacity
Chapter 8: Effective Listening
Chapter 9: Plan to fail to avoid failing
Chapter 10: What's the point?
Chapter 11: Noise
Chapter 12: Choosing the right medium for the message
Chapter 13: The Six Sins of Communication
Chapter 14: Perspectives on truth
Chapter 15: Telling the Truth
Chapter 16: Influencing people
Chapter 17: Confidence
Chapter 18: Conclusion
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
About the Author

Foreword

I had the pleasure of working with Paul at xkoto, our fledgling
software start-up from its founding in 2005 to acquisition in 2010. As
you will read in these pages, Paul has the “cred” to speak
authoritatively on the challenges and opportunities for geeks to
communicate more effectively. Paul was part of our development
team when he was tapped to take a customer-facing role as a pre-
sales engineer. Together, we learned a lot about how to express
complex concepts to wide-ranging audiences.

This book captures practical lessons learned in the trenches,
presented with a dry wit and insight earned the hard way. If you are a
geek you may resist the suggestions that follow as “exercises for the
reader”, but I suggest you give the content a chance – it may change
the quality of your relationships with colleagues and significant
others. If you are not a geek, you will find that this book serves well
as a primer on understanding how geeks communicate (or don’t) so
that you too can gain more in your dealings with “the dark side”.
Either way, as Paul points out, communication is a two way street –
with the help of this book, maybe we can all walk on the same side
for a change.

Albert Lee

Author of How to Meet the Queen – Ask Good Questions, Get Good
Answers