As already mentioned, I had the pleasure of reviewing a galley proof of Naked Conversations, by my friends Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. I had followed the development of the book on the blog, but because of the medium, and the fact that a book chapter is much longer than a typical post, I had a tendency to fast read most of them. Like Neville Hobson, I find that the printed book format is just much more appropriate to engage in focused reading.
I found the book practical, easy to read and grasp. The real test will be to get the feedback from complete corporate blog newbies, as to what/how much they learned from it. Since I have now been blogging for about 18 months, I have read/heard of/witnessed many of the recent stories that are mentioned in the book – but I still found it a useful reference. I also learnt about some anecdotes on what happened “before” (before as in before I started reading blogs regularly).
The 200+ interviews that Shel conducted have generated a lot of useful data points that “ground” the theory developed throughout the book: done right, blogging is beneficial to businesses – reach, customer service, visibility, credibility, and in a few cases revenues, have increased, sometimes substantially.
The most useful chapters for me were “Thorns in the Roses”, “Doing it wrong”, “Doing it right“ and “How not to get dooced” – because they cover a larger number of tips, suggestions and missteps made by corporations that readers will hopefully learn from.
I noted a number of interesting quotes, but the one that resonated most with me is the following (from the “Thorns in the Roses” chapter):
Another thorn is what we call the “echo chamber”. Blogging can fool you. You may think that you are conversing with the world, when it’s just a few people talking frequently, back and forth to each other, creating the illusion of amplification. The echo chamber can deceive a business into thinking it is either more widely successful or further off the mark than it is in reality, because a few people are making a lot of noise. Always remember that the people who comment and link most often are the ones with the most passion on a subject.
All in all, a very useful book that I would recommend to established bloggers as a reference, and to executives who are still wondering what to do about this “blogging thing”.
I was actually lucky to hang out with Shel at Blogon, and Robert in the Valley, so I could get them to sign my galley proof. Both told me that this was their first autograph. One can only guess that this was just the first of many thousands they will sign in the coming month following the release of Naked Conversations.
Congratulations again for completing the project, and best of luck with the promotion.
By the way, there is a couple of "Doc Searles" typos in the proof 
.