OPEN

Looking forward to David Brain‘s new book, Crowd Surfing, which is out next month (he co-wrote it with Martin Thomas).

David’s a blogger I’ve followed for a long time and Edelman, where is President & CEO of the company’s European operations, remains one of the most interesting and credible major PR firms when it comes to developing responses.
For those reasons – and that he’s sent me an invite to the launch – I’m including his groovy video advert here (via Simon Collister‘s blog).

More interesting even than that teaser is the prospect of hearing more from the insiders at Dell (though not Andy Lark apparently) about how they’ve been connecting with their “crowds”.

As David says, there is “inevitably” a blog to accompany the book, called also Crowdsurfing…

Reflecting on the writing process he says:

It’s an odd thing writing a book if you have not tried it. The phrase; “I write so I know what to think” (AJP Taylor I believe) is apposite we discovered. And of course a book is so quintessentially ‘old media’ it seems an odd method of delivery when your subject matter is so intimately bound up in the new digital ways of communicating and ‘dialoguing’.

I know what he means – kind of – after battling my way through the writing of a couple of eBooks – which have a slightly faster route to market – What is Social Media? and Brands in Networks (out in the next couple of weeks on our website), but I do look forward to writing a book one day.

One of the things I’ve appreciated as I’ve been coaxed, threatened and cajoled into finishing at least version 1.0 by the marketing dudes, colleagues and my boss is the value of a good editor – mainly because I only started working with one, the erudite and considerately ruthless Simon Handby, one of the senior journalists at iCrossing UK. I’ve quickly realised how much time I’ve wasted by soldiering on alone. Very much looking forward to the next effort as a result!