I’m reading Jon Steel’s Perfect Pitch: The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business, and, like Nick Sieger’s remarks about jazz, some of it seems uncannily relevant to programmers. There’s even a reference to “pair advertising”:

There’s a reason why copywriters and art directors work in pairs, and it’s not because writers can’t draw and art directors are illiterate. Ideas get uncovered more quickly when people dig together. And the ideas get better much more quickly when they are shared and debated by a small group of people who like and respect each other.

Words for every shop to live by. Steel also resounds Obie Fernandez’s remarks about the importance of being willing to say “no” to a contract if you aren’t going to be able to do your best work or be proud to put the project in your portfolio, and devotes a whole chapter to Tom Preston-Werner’s conceptual algorithm of setting aside dedicated thinking time.

For anyone else suffering withdrawal symptoms from the stimulating and wide-ranging discussions at RubyFringe, this could be just the book.