Our first attempt at writing a book as a community, launched last fall, was fascinating and frustrating. While many many people immediately recognized the ground breaking potential and the "coolness" of the idea, a large number found it difficult to find meaningful ways to contribute.
We did end up with quite a lot of material for the first book through both the wiki and the forums. And the book itself is a great read with solid community examples and some nice prescriptive steps for implementing community practices in your business. But our stated goal of having the commuity write the entire book through the wiki was not quite achieved. Contributors from an (incredibly talented) team of professional writers were required to produce the result that will be on the shelves soon.
BUT WE ARE SMARTER THAN WE WERE THEN
or maybe the big "WE" of the community was smarter than the little "we" of Shared Insights, Wharton, MIT, and Pearson.
A number of members of the community weighed in with suggestions on better ways to run a community written book project, and we have attempted to distill the best of these into one method. Take a look at the new Write The Book page for the current vision. Our hope is that this slower, more organic approach will lead to a more truly community written book.
I sincerely hope that both existing and new members of the community will throw themsleves into this new effort. We are gathering case studies and topic ideas for our book about communities both augmenting and replacing traditional marketing functions.
Let's get it started - I can't wait!