Here we go - a release from 2006, a little book from one of my favorite “small” companies (with over 500,00 paying customers and unknown numbers using their free services – I’d like to be that “small”).

“Getting Real” – if you don’t know the book, can you guess what it’s about from these sample headings taken from it? 

Build Less Have an Enemy

It shouldn’t be a chore Stay Lean

Be Yourself What’s the big idea?

It’s a problem when it’s a problem Hire the right customers

Start with No Test in the wild

Unity & Alone Time Meetings are toxic

Seek and celebrate small victories Hire Less 

Actions not Words You can’t fake enthusiasm

Don’t do dead documents Tell me a quick story

Use real words Personify your product

Free samples Easy on, Easy Off

Tough love Publicise your screwups

I’d have guessed it’s one of those wonderful self-help and life enrichment books. Well, acting on the advice in the book can certainly deliver these things but in fact its primary focus is on building web applications, because that’s what 37Signals do... brilliantly and simply 

“Getting Real’s” messages apply to any project or small business initiave that could be a small initiative/part of initiative or a big initiative in a small business). Getting real is somewhat anarchic in its approach to software, to business, to team collaboration, and to honesty with customers and sales prospects. If you are old-school you feel it shouldn’t work, (my background was originally IBM Research Labs) but it does. You may be tempted to say that what works for a bunch of geeky software whizzes can’t work for an e-Learning project, or an induction programme, or devising the menu for a start-up café… but it absolutely does. I’ve even used it when taking over an old, overgrown allotment.

So combine this with the guidance in, for example, “Informal Learning in the Cloud”, and you have the elements of a new learning service.

37Signals live by their own advice. Their Open Source products (Basecamp, BackPack, Ta-Da list etc) and their programming platform/toolkit Ruby on Rails are models of effective, easy to use, “no fancy dressings” apps that have won acclaim around the world. The business model they use and marketing approaches are equally valid for people in all areas of the Learning Industry. And the techniques of Getting Real are the same as those used in the creative bits of Google, IBM and Microsoft.