Here’s to the Age of Conversation

Here’s how it all happened.

I posted about a project called We Are Smarter than Me which gives people a chance to help author a guest book.

In the comments of that post Gavin Heaton said “Great concept! And it sounds like it could be fun … but you know what, Drew? I reckon between a few of us we could knock out a short book…All we need is a theme and a charity …”

To which I said…“You are very right. Let’s do it. Watch for an e-mail from me!”

Two weeks later — here we are. And we’d like you to consider joining us.

And out of that blogging conversation and a few e-mails, Gavin & I concocted the idea for an e-book about this new era of communications we’ve all entered together. But not just any book. It has to be a quick book. Exciting. Sharp. Inclusive. It had to be a book about community and conversation that came from that community and spoke the same vernacular. The title — The Conversation Age.

And that is why we are talking to you. Our idea:

100 authors. We’re a few but need more.
The overriding topic is “The Conversation Age” — where you take it is up to you.
The items are short – one 8.5″ x 11″ page — it can be words, diagrams, photos (again up to you) If it is words – about 400, give or take a couple.
We write it quickly and get it out there. We publish electronically.
We make it available online for a small fee and we donate 100% of the proceeds to Variety the Children’s Charity — which serves children across the entire globe.

If you’d like to write a chapter, here’s what you need to do. E-mail me with a commitment and a focus/topic that will fit under Conversation Age (first in gets to choose) by April 11th. I’m going to keep the master list so we keep the content from getting too overlapped.

Your chapter will be due April 30th.

We’ve already got a few chapter authors on board. Want to know who your co-authors will be? (If I missed anyone — I apologize. Shoot me an e-mail.)

Gavin Heaton
Drew McLellan
CK
Valeria Maltoni
Emily Reed
Katie Chatfield
Greg Verdino
Mack Collier
Lewis Green
Sacrum
Ann Handley
Paul McEnany
Roger von Oech
Anna Farmery
David Armano
Bob Glaza
Mark Goren
Matt Dickman
Scott Monty
Richard Huntington

We hope you’ll join us! And a special thanks to Mike Sansone for creating our button for us!

UPDATE: Ann asks a great question. Who is our audience? Our intended audience is anyone who has to create marketing tools in this Conversation Age. It might be a small business owner, a CMO, a marketing student, an agency type, a marketing blogger, or even a professor who is teaching tomorrow’s marketers.

UPDATE 2: We were waiting until CK was back online to make this announcement. As most of you probably know, she lost her mom recently. Gavin and I decided that one way this community could honor our friend CK and her mom was to dedicate the book to her. What I said to CK in an e-mail was “as you can imagine…many of your friends have already signed-on to write a chapter. So it felt right to make this community and conversation-focused book be dedicated to the woman who obviously taught you your values of community, listening, loving and bringing others into the conversations.”

And so it will be. We hope that makes this project even more special to all the authors, readers and of course, our friend CK.

UPDATE 3: The book is CLOSED! We have exceeded our 100 author goal — thank you very much. We are now a mere 17 days away from the chapter submission deadline, so we will not be accepting any new authors. Stay tuned for the author list — it rocks!