This is supporting content for my talk at Dreamforce 2025. My talk references many of the resources listed here. This page also includes other content I hope people find useful.

Writing References

It’s good to have an understanding of what other people expect from us, what the rules of the road are, and how we can break those rules at times.

Elements of Style aka Strunk and White,

~ William Strunk & E. B. White: The premier guide to the constructs of formal written English. This is your driver’s ed manual: the rules other people expect us to follow, but not sufficient for all conditions and settings.

• World Cat
• Amazon
• Barns and Nobles

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves

~ Lynn Truss: An exploration of how to use the rules effectively. We can bend, twist, and even break formal rules to improve our writing.

• World Cat
• Amazon
• Barns and Nobles

Blah, Blah, Blah

~ Dan Roam: How to use images to fill the gaps our words leave behind.

• World Cat
• Amazon
• Barns and Nobles

Speaking References

Public speaking is hard for a lot of us. Having some suggestions about how to do it well can be part of helping us learn to power through.

The Art of Public Speaking

~ Dale Carnegie: The original, and classic, guide to good public speaking technique.

• World Cat
• Amazon
• Barns and Nobles

Speaking Memorably

~ Bill McGowan & Juliana Silva: A 2025 guide on good public speaking and modern presenting.

• World Cat
• Amazon
• Barns and Nobles

Other Material I Think is Worth Your Time

In addition to the published works above, I think these resources can be useful to a lot of people.

• Posts about writing for developers and technical consultants
• Some classic works in our field
  • The Mythical Man-Month
  • Soul of a New Machine
  • Just about anything on this list
• Listen to good podcasts
  • Hidden Brain
  • People I Mostly Admire
  • Freakonomics Radio
• Trailhead Modules
  • Soft Skills for Sales
  • Storytelling & Communication
  • Writing Style
  • Virtual Presentations

Practice Suggestions

What you do for practice doesn’t matter a great deal. What’s really important is that you do it and get feedback. Here are some things you might consider for practice:

• Short Stories or other fiction writing that you publish online, ebook, or print on demand
• Contribute project documentation to an open source project
• Essays for Medium, or other blogging platforms
• Participate in online writing challenges
• Create a YouTube (or similar) channel

Whatever you pick, you want to be in control of how often you create content, and then make sure you create content on a regular basis. If you aren’t in control, you might find yourself cut off from chances to practice.

I strongly suggest you don’t use AI during your practice. You need to do the work, even when it’s hard.

Closing Suggestions

Generally, I recommend being curious person. Push yourself to learn more. The more you spend time finding good information sources to learn from the more examples of good communications you’ll have for inspiration on how to get better.

He spent 10 professionally formative years with the American Friends Service Committee. Starting as the kid in IT who did whatever no one else wanted, he was their Web Director responsible for all digital marketing by the time he left. Since then he has been a full-stack Drupal developer, a Salesforce consultants, developer, and technical architect. He currently leads a small but mighty Salesforce team for Ava Community Energy. Along the way he became a Salesforce MVP.

That range of experience give him the ability to perform a variety of roles in projects of many types. He can lead, or support, at all stages from initial audience and strategy discussions, through information design, and implementation. He has a passion for helping nonprofits get the most of out their online communications to build powerful relationships with supporters, donors, service recipients, and whatever else they need to do to make the world a better.

Aaron lives with his wife and their two greyhounds, Petey and Faith, in Aiken, South Carolina. When not busy spinning code for good he spins yarn for knitting.

This blog is a mix of thoughts about nonprofits, work, Salesforce, software development, spinning, volunteering, and whatever else he thinks others might want to read about. It is mainly a source of practice to keep him in the habit of writing on a regular basis. Except where explicitly noted, all opinions are his own.

You can also find him on GitHub, LinkedIn, Drupal.org, and in the Trailblazer Community.