Dec 01, 2008: Noodling (socially)...

...with creating Rosenfeld Media groups for both Facebook and LinkedIn.

Now don't get me wrong. Apples and oranges. I really love both services. And Christina, who's now at LinkedIn. They'd better be paying her really, really well.

But it's definitely easier to get going virally in Facebook. About 70 fans in about four hours, and a few helpful comments. In fact, the process of figuring out how to get it set up was aided quite a bit by a few of my 200 plus Facebook friends.

In LinkedIn, I have about 500 contacts. But, um, they're not friends. At least they don't feel that way. Sure, it's a business network, but I don't feel like there's anyone I can turn to for help. And it's far, far harder to invite those contacts to join.

Both services have their respective benefits. Sometimes a tighter, more restrictive network has its purposes. And it's far too early to make a judgment here. But I figured out how to get things going pretty quickly with the Facebook group. I'm still grappling with the LinkedIn group.

Some help here?

If you want to kick the tires on either or both, here you go: RM LinkedIn, RM Facebook.

Nov 20, 2008: Remote user research book

I'm pretty jazzed that Rosenfeld Media has signed a new book: Remote Research by Nate Bolt and Tony Tulathimutte. I'm convinced that more and more user research will be done remotely in the coming years, and we really need a book—this book—to guide us. Here's the full announcement:

Nov 17, 2008: More mental models

Just published Victor Lombardi's interview with Indi Young on the cutting edge of mental models. Obviously we're doing this to crassly promote our upcoming webinar with Indi. But hey, we did include a 20% discount on the page.

If you've already read Indi's book, you'll see from reading the interview that the webinar takes mental models beyond what she covered in the book. And if you haven't, well, the registration fee includes a copy of the book—and you should have more than enough time to read it before December 11.

Nov 14, 2008: Resolution for 2009: UX Book Salon tour

Even though the Christmas decorations are just starting to appear here in Brooklyn, it's not too soon to make a New Year's Resolution.

When I started Rosenfeld Media, I set up a few brown bag lunches with groups of designers and researchers from a few local UX firms. I was looking to learn more about what our target audience liked and didn't like about the design of the books they used for their work. I asked them to bring their own books to the discussion. The resulting show and tell discussions were fantastically useful, and had a significant impact on the designs of both our digital and paperback editions. (Notes on these discussions here.)

Just as important, these discussions provided an outlet for some intense, passionate discussions about UX books, their designs, and their topics. UX pros' pent-up feelings clearly needed to be expressed, and it was enlightening for everyone involved.

Unfortunately, once Rosenfeld Media started actually producing books, I got side-tracked by details of promoting, selling, and distributing them. Bad, Lou, bad. A publisher should always be meeting with and talking with his community. And a UX publisher? Only more so, obviously.

So, starting next year, I resolve to organize informal UX Book Salons on a monthly basis. The goal of these meetings will be to raise consciousness about the books we use as UX professionals. Books are products—information systems, really—that we rarely look at critically. We shouldn't take their design—or their topics—for granted. So this will be your opportunity to sound off about what works for you and what doesn't, what topics you'd like to know more about, and what authors really matter. I'll even give away some Rosenfeld Media books at each salon to sweeten the deal.

These salons will take place in two venues: the conferences I'll be attending (see the "Where I'll Be" list on my blog's main page) and, during the months I get to stay home, at various New York City UX firms. For the latter, I'll plan these in advance and if they're open to the public, I'll announce them here on Bloug and on the Rosenfeld Media site.

At conferences, I'll be organizing the salons in a somewhat impromptu way, using guerrilla techniques like Twitter to get the word out. (This worked extremely well earlier this year when we wanted to get a conversation going about Kevin Cheng's book topic.) Follow me in Twitter (louisrosenfeld) to find out when and where.

I really think that this is the right thing to do. It'll certainly help me as a publisher, but more importantly, it might help make us all better, more critical consumers of the books that help us do our work.

I hope you'll join me in one of these discussions next year if you're in the neighborhood. Happy new year!