Today is the official release for The New Social Learning and I want to take this opportunity to tell you a little about the book and also reflect on what I’ve learned since we signed off on the final draft in June.
The comparison between birthing a book and birthing a baby wasn’t obvious the last time I published because my last two books came out a few months before my son.
The similarities are that a book grows with you, fills you, leaves you feeling nauseated at times, and makes you very thankful for your partner and supporting team. The difference is that at the end of pregnancy you have a child who changes every day (this week at our house, he skipped a shoe and pants size entirely)–and a book upon birth is pretty much fully formed, ready to drive around the block if you’re lucky. Each are rich and rewarding experiences, full of learning moments and exciting turns.
If you are interested in celebrating the birth of The New Social Learning with us (we’re both very involved, although I’m the one nursing and dealing with stretch marks), here are a few gifts we welcome over the next few weeks.
1) Tweet the good news. The hashtag is #newsociallearn. If you want to mention the proud parents, my twitter acct is @marciamarcia, Tony’s is @tonybingham. The bebe’s account is @newsociallearn. The URL to the book on Amazon.com is http://amzn.to/newsociall (available in both paperback & Kindle). The website (www.thenewsociallearning.com) is being painted and almost ready for guests.
2) Read about it, Blog about it. Check out the foreword by Dan Pink and a good bit of the first chapter here: http://j.mp/TNSLsample (PDF). You can share this URL/websample with anyone either via URL or download and repost.
3) Talk about it wherever you are. Encourage organizations to buy copies for your department and customers. 800CEOReads has great group discounts at http://j.mp/800tnsl. Mention to people it’s the first book to showcase how social media tools can be used inside organization to connect people and spur innovation–both for learning and for improving the bottom line. It’s chock full of case studies, examples, approaches to address the critics, and lessons learned.
4) Offer your personal experiences. We’ve begun hearing from people whose stories we didn’t capture and in some cases, who have more to the stories we did catch than we included in the book. Drop me a line and tell me how you’d like to get those messages out. I’m going to blog about some of those “rest of the story” moments and welcome hearing from you.
5) Join the conversation. There’s a blog tour this week so consider commenting on blogs, retweeting posts, and generally spreading good energy around. There’s also a radio tour on Tue/Wed and I hope to be able to share a few of those too. To see links to the blog posts, follow @newsociallearn and my account, @marciamarcia. I hope to capture and repost as many links as I can.
Now it’s time to catch some sleep while I can.