Marketing is not my profession, but it is something that I am keenly interested in and enjoy discussing. Last Spring, I started following the blogs of some pretty insightful marketing professionals. About that time, two of those professionals came up with a very innovative idea: the creation and publication of collaborative business book entitled The Age of Conversation (buy it). AOC began as a challenge between Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton but ended up being a highly insightful collection of essays from over a hundred marketers, writers, thinkers and creative innovators. AOC was also a testament to the power of community AOC raised more than $10,000 for Variety the Children’s Charity and was listed among Advertising Age’s “Books You Should Have Read in 2007.” If you aren’t already familiar with AOC, you can get read about it here.
One of my big regrets for 2007 was not joining in that particular conversation. I’m not going to repeat that mistake this year because Drew and Gavin have decided to do a sequel and I have already signed up. Once again, it will be a collection of writings from more than one hundred authors. So what’s going to be different this time around? Drew and Gavin have decided to let the community decide the topic. They have proposed a short list of topics (Marketing Manifesto, Why They Don’t Get It, and My Marketing Tragedy) and are asking the community to vote for the one they’d most like to see as this year’s theme. By the way, if the topics seem a little vague, you are very perceptive.
You can read Drew’s announcement here.
So do you want to join the conversation??? — send an email to Drew and let him know. If you don’t plan to write for the book, we still want you to help us decide what the topic will be so go ahead and take the one question survey here by January 31. I’ll be providing updates as the project progresses.
(image courtesy of Greg Verdino)
NextUp 
My biggest regret is that I wasn’t around to hear about the book until it was too late.
But I’m signed up this round!