Join the Age of Conversation

What began as a dare between two bloggers, turned into one of the most interesting blogosphere stories of 2007: The Age of Conversation.

Much has been written about this book, Advertising Age listed it among the 'Books You Should Have Read in 2007" and more than $10,000 were raised for Variety the Children's Charity.

How do you follow up this successful, social project? You create an even bigger, better, baddder and more daring book.

In the spirit of collaboration, the sequel begins with a call-out to the community to determine this year's theme. You can choose between Marketing Manifesto, Why They Don't Get It and My Marketing Tragedy). Weigh in now and vote.



Get the official announcement here.

And if you feel ready to join the conversation with your own voice, email Drew and become part of the gang.

And, did I mention, vote now?

Hat tip to Greg Verdino for the top graphic.

Ready. Fire. Aim.

Just scanned Michael Schrage's 'Serious Play' and was delighted by his approach to innovation. As quoted by Tom Peters, his principal axiom:

"You can't be a serious innovator unless you are ready and able to play. 'Serious play' is not an oxymoron; it is the essence of innovation." And, in turn, the heart of his serious play is ... fast prototyping: "Effective prototyping may be the most valuable core competence an innovative organization can hope to have." His (Schrage's) intriguing connection, which makes all the sense in the world to me, is that true innovation comes not from the idea per se, though it guides the work, but from the "reaction to the prototype." In fact, in a surprising number of cases (the majority?) the collective responses to a host of fast prototypes reshape the original idea beyond recognition—or lead one down an entirely new path."

This approach needs to be adopted by advertisers. This doesn't mean we need to jump on every fad and experiment with it. But we should invest in Emerging Media, gather quick learnings and reinvest in altered emerging media opportunities.
If you strategize for too long, wait around until competitors are dominating the field by deploying their prototype learnings, you'll be quickly irrelevant.

We live in fast times and new to adopt faster:

"The secret of fast progress is inefficiency, fast and furious and numerous failures."—Kevin Kelly, founding editor, Wired

Let's talk

The Age of Conversation continues to make waves in the marketing community.

Steve Woodruff gives you now a taste of the whole book by offering you a small bite of what each and everyone of the authors has written. Check it out

A Taste from A-D

A Taste from E-J

A Taste from K-R

A Taste from S-Z

Amazing read. Buy the book here.

Finally!

Can you feel the excitement in the air?

It took just a few short months but finally the 'Age of Conversation' hits the bookstore and you can order it here

As a recap, that's how it all started:

"Drew 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 Drew 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 & Drew 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."

That was a months ago. And here we are. The book is printed, ready to be downloaded or shipped to you.

I'm very honored to be part of this prestigious group of bloggers:
Please explore all the contributors and pay a visit to their blogs

A Google Map of all the authors. Created by Matt Dickman.

The first reviews/mentions are in:

AdAge

Social Computing


And, in case you forgot, all proceeds go to Variety, a charity dedicated to improve the lives of children around the world.

What are you waiting for? Order now.

Collaboration

I just read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book, ‘Creativity’. He defines creativity as happening in the intersection of an individual who sees a new pattern, a ‘field of accomplishment’ (the ‘experts’ who can understand and accept the individual’s creative idea or act), and a ‘domain of knowledge and action’ (a body of knowledge mediated by symbols and bundled into systems, like geometry, art, or legal systems, which makes up what we call a culture).

If you think about it, this makes every creative act an act of collaboration. It's not an indivdiual act, it's a group act. We tend to focus on the achievements of individuals. But we need to become better collaborators.
We need to ask questions so that other people can think about the ideas and form their own opinions which they feel comfortable sharing. This will allow for more new ideas, allowing for open comments and looking at the world with fresh eyes.

You can be a creative genius but in the end it's all about the others. Surround yourself with people from all walks of life: different experience, different educational and cultural background. And see what happens.
You can't be creative by yourself. We're in it together.

Brilliance, by mistake

An article in the New York Times describes the success of Sudoku that was drven by the creator forgetting registering the trademark in the US:

While no one knows how much revenue is generated by the global sudoku business, most agree it has easily topped $250 million over the last two years from an estimated 80 million devotees. The New York Times syndicate provides a variety of logic puzzles, including sudoku, kakuro and others, for newspapers and Web sites around the world.
Nikoli received only a sliver of that money. Mr. Kaji says his private company, with just 20 employees, had annual sales of about $4 million.
Sudoku’s popularity in the United States caught Mr. Kaji by such surprise that he did not try to get the trademark there until it was too late. As a result, Nikoli receives no royalties from sudoku-related sales overseas by other publishers.
In hindsight, though, he now thinks that oversight was a brilliant mistake. The fact that no one controlled sudoku’s intellectual property rights let the game’s popularity grow unfettered, Mr. Kaji says. Nikoli does not plan to trademark other new games, either, in hopes this will also help them take off.
“This openness is more in keeping with Nikoli’s open culture,” said Mr. Kaji, who sat on a sofa in his Tokyo office among pillows adorned with printed faces of racehorses. “We’re prolific because we do it for the love of games, not for the money.”

The future of design

Bruce Nussbaum of BusinessWeek wrote this manifesto about the future of design, who designers are and how this will impact the business world as we know it.
It feels very authentic, heartfelt, almost like the manifesto Jerry Maguire wrote.
The column is so refreshing and innovative, I almost want to subscribe to Businessweek after reading this.

Please, take your time and read it. Take a break of a few days and read it again. And, if you're too lazy to read the whole article, at least read the excerpts below.

"Are Designers The Enemy of Design?

In the name of provocation, let me start by saying that DESIGNERS SUCK. I’m sorry. It’s true. DESIGNERS SUCK. There’s a big backlash against design going on today and it’s because designers suck.

So let me tell you why. Designers suck because they are arrogant. The blogs and websites are full of designers shouting how awful it is that now, thanks to Macs, Web 2.0, even YouTube, EVERYONE is a designer. Core 77 recently ran an article on this backlash and so did we on our Innovation & Design site. Designers are saying that Design is everywhere, done by everyone. So Design is debased, eroded, insulted. The subtext, of course, is that Real design can only be done by great star designers.

This is simply not true. Design Democracy is the wave of the future. Exceptional design may only be done by great star designers. But the design of our music experiences, the design of our MySpace pages, the design of our blogs, the design of our clothes, the design of our online community chats, the design of our Class of ’95 brochures, the design of our screens, the design of the designs on our bodies—We are all designing more of our lives. And with more and more tools, we, the masses, want to design anything that touches us on the journey, the big journey through life. People want to participate in the design of their lives. They insist on being part of the conversation about their lives."

"So Lesson One here is that the process of design, the management of the design process, is changing radically. Egos and silos are coming down, participation is expanding, tools are widespread and everyone wants to play. People want to be in the design sandbox so you have to figure out how to get them in and do design with them. This is a huge challenge."

"But how do people who’ve spent a lifetime using their left-brain, suddenly shift to using both their left and their right? How do people used to deconstructing old problems into their parts and squeezing answers out of each of them then learn to see problems with fresh eyes and integrate parts of many solutions into one new one. Enter design and design thinking. Over the past decade, design has evolved to become an articulated, formalized method of solving problems that can be widely used in business—and in civil society. Design’s focus on observing consumer/patient/student—human behavior, it’s emphasis on iteration and speed, its ability to construct, not destruct, its search for new options and opportunities, its ability to connect to powerful emotions, its optimism, made converts out of tough CEOs."

"Today, I kind of coach a team of about 8 people, 6 women in their early 30’s, one guy in his thirties, and a women in her twenties (she’s Canadian and a generation ahead of the 30-something sisters in technology). Our process is totally different from the hierarchical way of writing and editing we had just a few years ago. We all write for both platforms—online and print, and do a little TV on the side. Our job today as journalists is to curate conversations among groups within our audience, with Jessi Hempel doing social networking and philanthropy, Reena Jana doing fashion and gaming culture, Matt Vella doing cars and green technology, Aili McConon doing sustainability and motion technology such as wii. We design stories with our audience. As John Battelle said recently, the conversation now is the content. It’s not about the finished story but about the ongoing story. It’s the conversation. And since most conversations don’t have a conclusion, they are ongoing. We live a life in beta.

A final point on language: Innovation and Design. Business men and women don’t like the term “design.” I think they think it implies drapes or dresses. Even top CEOs who embrace design don’t want to call it that. They want to call it “Innovation.” That has a manly right to it. It’s strong, techie. These folks are perfectly willing to use the word “vision,” whatever the heck “vision” is. They like “Imagination,” whatever the heck that is. But they don’t like “design.” Go figure.

I solve this problem by calling it all a banana. Innovation, design, eco-imagination, just call it whatever they want to call it and do your design thing. Because your design thing is a glorious thing that has the potential of changing our lives in a myriad of ways in a myriad of places."

I'm so drawn to this column because we're experiencing a real change how we develop and create. The top-down approach will face tremendous challenges in the coming years and we will encounter new ideas from unexpected places. All the superstar marketers, designers, copywriters and advertising gurus won't be around for long unless they develop their relationship skills. In the end, relationships will make you successful.