It’s always interesting to see what books sell at a conference. I was also in a lucky position to meet many authors and to discuss with attendees the books that they have read and liked. I’ll pass a few of these suggestions onto you.
The Checklist Manifesto by Dr. Atul Gawande, Guest speaker. Book completely sold out. I wish we had brought in his earlier books. Apparently his first book was the basis of the TV show “Grey’s Anatomy”.
Superfreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Very entertaining guest speakers. I listened to this book along with the first and highly recommend both. Especially if you like collecting an analyzing data like most of us do! Watch these two authors spin a great story around data and come up with sometimes a radical conclusion. You won’t be disappointed. I bought printed copies for gifts.
The Art of Business Seduction by Mark Jeffries. At the conference Mark entertained us from the stage with his amazing accent and engaging way to speak. I’m looking forward to reading this book to learn how I can “get noticed, get promoted, and get ahead”. If his book is only half as interesting as Mark is, it is well worth the read.
IBM Cognos 8 Report Studio Cookbook by Abhishek Sanghani. Cognos had a huge presence at the conference and this book selling so well was no surprise. I haven’t read this book, but do own it. It looks very hands on and easy to read.
Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. This is the first of their books and also the first to be turned into a movie. I’m looking forward to seeing how they’ve managed to convey their stories into a movie. Oh, apparently the authors are in the very early stages of their third book. If you’ve read the second one, you’ll know that they often take suggestions from their readers. If you have an off ball set of data that you think they would like to play in, contact them to see if they want to analyze it for their next book.
The Art of Enterprise Information Architecture by Eberhard Hechler, Martin Oberhofer, Steve Lockwood, Michael Schroek, Mario Godinez, Klaus Koeig . This book delivers a practical, comprehensive cross-industry reference guide that addresses each of the key elements associated with developing and implementing effective enterprise architectures.
The New Era of Enterprise Business Intelligence by Mike Biere. This is Mike’s third book and it proved to be quite popular. This book is product-independent and brings together start-to-finish guidance and practical checklists for every senior IT executive, planner, strategist, implementer, and the actual business users themselves. Drawing on thousands of hours working with enterprise customers, Mike helps decision-makers choose from today’s unprecedented spectrum of options, including the latest BI platform suites and appliances. He offers practical, “in-the-trenches” insights on a wide spectrum of planning and implementation issues, from segmenting and supporting users to working with unstructured data.
Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data by Stephen Few. This is the first book in the list where the author was not at the conference. This book is about using dashboards to communicate important information at a glance.
IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence: The Official Guide by Dan Volitich. As I mentioned earlier, Cognos had a huge presence at the conference with Cognos 10 being announced. I can tell you that this book is currently being updated for V10, so watch for the new edition coming soon.
Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience by Carmine Gallo. OK, don’t we all want to be as good with an audience as Steve Jobs? I didn’t see this book, but wish I had.
Business Dashboards: A Visual Catalog for Design and Deployment by Nils Rasmussen, Manish Bansal, and Claire Chen. Another one on dashboards. Clearly a big topic for this audience.
MDM for Customer: Optimizing Customer Centric Management of Your Business by Kelvin Looi. This is a small, inexpensive, easy to read book that looks at Master Data Management from a customer data perspective.
Enterprise Master Data Management: An SOA Approach to Managing Core Information by Allen Dreibelbis, Eberhard Hechler, Ivan Milman, Martin Oberhofer, Paul van Run, and Dan Wolfson. I read this book as it was being written and can honestly say that I learned a great deal. I liked the way these authors described a very complex industry and provided architecture recommendations to have one version of the data to avoid mistakes that can so easily be made.
Making it Big in Software by Sam Lightstone. Another book I enjoyed reading. I’ve attended several of Sam’s talks including the one he did at IOD. It is pretty easy to ignore taking care of your career, but you shouldn’t. Kick start your career with some tried and true advice from Sam. This is also a great book for those just finishing their education or for those who like to coach and mentor young graduates.
Jeffrey Gitomer's Little Black Book. This book seems to make it to the top 20 book every year. It is such a small and cleverly put together book, I can see why it sells so well.
Dealing with People You Can't Stand. I must say that I've been lucky and have only found a few people who I really can’t stand, but when it happens it’s on par with the worst experiences a person has to go through. When it’s happened to me it becomes all-consuming stress. You may not be able to change the person who is causing this, but you can change how you react to that person and maybe learn some tips to make encounters with that person to be less harmful to you.
SPSS for Dummies by Arthur Griffith. I wish I had more SPSS books! There were many requests for books and this is the only one that we had for sale. I met some SPSS experts, so let’s see if we can turn one of them into an author!
DB2 9 System Administration for z/OS: Certification Study Guide: Exam 737 by Judy Nall. Judy is an IBM Gold Consultant and a person who I have known for years. I encouraged Judy to write this book to share her incredible knowledge with people who are trying to become experts in this field. Judy taught a pre Conference Crammer Class this year for the first time and I hope she will do so again in the future.
A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum. While this was being written, I chatted with author Steffan Surdek who told me that they wrote this book using Scrums. I can’t say I truly get the idea of Scrums, but from the little I know, it is a great way to work on a project with people located in other locations. I met Matt Ganis at the conference and found him to be a pleasure to chat with. Interesting note: the authors have donated all their royalties for this book to charity.
Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results by Tom Davenport. Tom was a guest speaker at the conference a few years ago. With this book rounding out the top 20 of the best sold books at the conference, do you notice a trend? It seems to me that everyone is looking for ways to analyze their data… maybe to make radical conclusions like they do in Freakonomics?
Personal Tidbit
At the IOD Conference, I had dinner with Scott Hayes who gave me a suggestion on how I can increase the readership of my blog in order to reach the fast approaching milestone of 1 million views! I won’t tell you what his suggestion was, but hope that you notice.
Susan
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Over the past years, the internet has evolved from a static to a social platform. This evolution has an impact on the way consumers communicate and take purchasing decisions. Unfortunately, most advertisers have failed to evolve along. 
