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My associate at Collaborative Ideation, Ryan Rasmussen, and Duc Ly (who blogs at Duc N. Ly) had a little chat in Second Life recently, regarding the role of business-customer conversations and community involvement. Ryan was part of a massive collaboration on a new book “The Age of Conversation“:

In what may be a first-of-its-kind collaboration via the internet, more than 100 marketing professionals have joined together online to write The Age of Conversation, a book that will be published July 16…

The book has an unusual story behind it, involving online connections between people around the world who have never met each other.

Drew McLellan, who heads McLellan Marketing Group, an advertising agency here, has been writing a blog online for since September 2006. His blog, www.DrewsMarketingMinute.com is among the 25 most-read marketing blogs in the world. McLellan’s partner in this adventure is another marketing blogger in the top 25, Gavin Heaton. Heaton is the Interactive Director of one of the world’s leading marketing and promotions agencies, Creata, where he is Director of Interactive. Heaton blogs at www.ServantofChaos.com.

In March, McLellan wrote about Wharton’s effort to create a collaborative book and Heaton commented, “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 and publish it. All we need is a theme and a charity …”

This book is not only unusual in that it has 100 contributors, it was written and printed at a breakneck pace:

…bringing together over 100 marketing experts under the single topic of “conversation” — in record time — from idea to completion in around THREE MONTHS!

Not only did the contributors band together, they also willingly put aside their royalties so that the profits from sale can be donated to Variety, the Children’s Charity.

The power of Web 2.0, still in its infancy, is undeniable. Here is a snippet of the conversation between Ryan and Duc:

Ryan: Although the ROI is near impossible to calculate, a word-of-mouth campaign is incredible powerful. However, it requires passionate customers + responsive merchants.

Ryan: Social media provide the opportunity for companies to really learn how customers feel about their brand through open conversation. Ben’s presentation leads me to seek out other marketing bloggers that might be actuating this sort of campaign.

Duc: Well said….

Ryan: Large companies, like Microsoft and Google, realized the importance of corporate blogging some time ago. I was on a quest to see who else was actively questioning and listening to their customers.

Ryan: This led me to Gavin Heaton’s blog, and the open call for participants.

Ryan: My email simply stated, “I have been working with customers online for quite some time.”

Duc: true true

Ryan: In my own article, I chose to speak of some of the obstacles to approaching this sort of open engagement.

I am looking forward to getting my hands on this book, it is exactly the sort of concept that I have been interested in for the past year or so, and led me to start writing this blog. Duc is an even bigger Lev-angelist© than I am, and very involved in the Notebooking community.

Ryan is very involved with the D*I*Y*Planner community and has been influential in bringing some of the DIY ideas and brainstorms out into the real world as commercial products.

Getting involved with communties is going to be the only way for businesses to survive in the Cluetrain world.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6rha95. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen