City 2.0.  The Habitat of the Future and How to Get There.  TED Books 2013. An excellent resource . It is pragmatic and full of real world achievable examples. The bonus is the linkage to individual  writers and their individual TED talks. If you are in planning and urban design – a must read.  Clearly written and a fairly quick read.

• 5 Ways to Become More Innovative (legalzoom.com)
• The Little Engine That Could ~ Bob Ecker ~ Wine Wrtier #44 (wine-blog.org)
• linkage-mapper – A GIS tool designed to support regional wildlife habitat connectivity analyses (allaroundgis.wordpress.com)

Baseline Selling. Dave Kurlan. 2006. ISBN 1420895672.  I discovered the author in notes in another sales book. The idea of comparing selling to a baseball game was intriguing as at Rocketbuilders we had kicked the game idea around several times in our explanations in sessions.  As Kurlan points out getting to every base and then hoem is very much like the stages in a selling process.  I appreciated his care in pointing out the need to identify the buyers process ( long before it became fashion able to do so.)  He also gives credit to several other authors ( including Sharon Drew Morgan)  in shaping his point of view.  A very reasoned and readable book,  I highly recommend it to those new to sales or if you want to sharpen up your teams execution. His Blog is well done . http://www.omghub.com/

• Are Your Salespeople Still Cold Calling? The Ugly Truth – By Dave Kurlan (sellingfearlessly.com)
• Study: 3 of 4 Sales Reps Have No Idea What They’re Doing (hubspot.com)
• Top 10 Steps Salespeople Can Take to Improve (sellingpower.com)
• Steps to Become a More Consultative Seller (sellingpower.com)

Smart Cities. Big Data, Civic backers, and the quest for a new utopia. Antony M. Townsend. 2013.   A serious review/analysis of civic planning and how we got to the topic of smart cities.   This is quite a neutral work that looks at most of the large and small projects and approaches that have been and are being tried.  What the reader will appreciate is the chance to form his/her own opinions on the topic. The field is fast changing and the execution quite complex since cities are multi facets and subject to many inputs.  Fiscal restraints can work to a benefit as large projects seem most prone to go off the rails.  Again setting up a municipally owned fibre network seems to the starting point for today’s initiatives.   Lengthy but a well written book heavily noted in the appendix.

• [Book] Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers and the Quest for a New Utopia

• Where R U? ‘Smart Cities’ Addresses Our Desire to Connect (Review) (popmatters.com)
• INTERVIEW: Anthony Townsend on Hacking Into ‘Smart Cities’ (nextcity.org)
• Introducing the Science of Cities (nextcity.org)
• Silicon Alley Insider: These ‘Civic Hackers’ Are Secretly Making Your Commute Better And Your Air Cleaner (businessinsider.com)
• What’s it like to live in a smart city? (bbc.co.uk)

The Ten, Make That Nine Habits of Very Organized People, Make That Ten. The Tweets of Steve Martin. Steve Martin. 2014. Short hilarious book by what turns out to be a pretty smart guy.  You will read it in no time , but laugh for a long time.

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