Arun Rajagopal

Getting to know ‘Age of Conversation’ Authors – 7 May 19, 2007

Hello there! Click here to visit the updated profiles of ALL ‘Age of Conversation’ authors on one page. UPDATED ON 16 JULY 2007.

I’m back with my seventh post in the ‘soon-to-end’ ‘Age of Conversation’ authors series. Have got one more left. I would like to thank Cam Beck, Sean Howard, Roberta Rosenberg, Toby Bloomberg & Tony D. Clark for their kind comments 🙂 Sure Toby, you can be envious of my 43 days off… I just hope I can keep blogging on a regular basis, especially when I get to India for a month in a few days from now. It will be the height of monsoon rains when I get home and I will post snaps of the rains, some trains and a lot of greenery. My blog will then look more like a travel blog… Let the profiles begin…

Mike Sansone from Des Moines, Iowa has got probably one of the most interesting domains on the World Wide Web – www.converstations.com. Nope, it’s not conversations, but ‘converStations’ – a coined word obviously, but one with a lot of meaning. And Mike calls him a ‘conversation conductor’. Mike is an independent business consultant specializing in business blogs and conversational copywriting. His experience in public speaking, sales and marketing, writing, and real-time online communication are strengths Mike relies upon in his role as a Conversation Conductor. Mike’s passion is to build communities – offline and online. He’s taken on many avatars do that – property management, online community programming, volunteerism, and – for a short time – as an assistant pastor at a Baptist church in Maryland. (Interesting that I’m now mentally imagining Mike as a conductor in a symphony leading ‘conversations’ between different ‘players’ and then also as a conductor in a train or bus helping people be a part of the ‘travel experience’ and then as a conductor in physics helping  the conduction of ‘charges’ which also a type of ‘electrical communication’. So there you go, so many meanings from a simple word – conductor.) Wow! Kick in the Caboose????!!! Mike, are you a rail-fan? Paul McEnany is a new media marketing strategist at a Dallas agency, and writes for Beyond Madison Avenue and The Madison Avenue Journal. He is also the greatest advertising human alive today. 🙂

If you were looking for the magician with the key to a box full of fun ideas to stimulate your creativity, look no further. Roger von Oech is an author, inventor, and consultant. He started his company, Creative Think, in 1977 to stimulate creativity in business. He’s probably best known as the author of A Whack on the Side of the Head and the Creative Whack Pack, and, most recently, as the creator of the Ball of Whacks (a set of 30 magnetic design blocks that act as a creative stimulant and mind freshener). Roger has a Ph.D. from Stanford in “History of Ideas;” and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Ohio State. Read his post ‘Think Like a Fool’.

Podcaster-Blogger-Coach Anna Farmery qualified as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG, joined the printing industry as a Financial Controller before being made Managing Director at the ripe old age of 25. She continued in industry with a growing reputation for motivating people, working for FMCG companies. After 20 years of being a Corporate Director – and latterly as a Group HR/Finance Director for a major worldwide brand she decided to establish her own company – The Engaging Brand. The Engaging Brand works with companies both small and major corporations on how to boost profits through motivating their people. She is a regular speaker on areas such as personal and employer branding, motivation and social media. She produces The Engaging Brand podcast and also coaches individuals on how to improve their leadership capabilities. Anna lives every moment like her last & can be the ultimate brand ambassador for iPod.

 “Stop calling yourself a blogger,” proclaims David Armano. A Creative VP at Digitas, David Armano’s personal blog Logic+Emotion exists at the intersection of Marketing, Brand Engagement + Experience Design – where passive consumers become active participants. In his 100^th post, Roger von Oech chose to interview David. His post ‘What makes David Armano tick?’ is the probably the finest piece on the David Armano story.

At his blog ‘One Reader at a Time’, Bob Glaza asks: why not bite off more than you can chew? Bob’s blog is about blogging and building community – learning and growing. He says: I hope one person at a time will find a bit of value. My wanderings stumble onto worthwhile blogs and sites. The reflections and posts focus broadly on imagination, marketing, print media, building community…and baseball. This blog expresses my opinions only. In addition, it expresses opinions of the people behind the links. Any similarity to real life just might be true! Bob has been in the newspaper business for over 20 years. “Technically in circulation and distribution for 19 and Consumer Marketing for the past 2 years.”

Mark Goren worked for 10 years in marketing as a copywriter at several traditional advertising agencies, before learning one sure thing: the traditional advertising model is broken. Mark’s now into new marketing consulting, freelance copywriting, social media advocacy, and anything else that’ll pay for a family of four to see the Habs in person. His marketing consultancy Transmission Content + Creative is designed to help ‘open-minded clients reach their targets in non-conventional, financially friendly ways by cutting out waste and targeting qualified prospects’. Openly. Honestly. Authentically. 

Matt Dickman (Mattanium) is the quintessential technomarketer as well as an interactive marketing strategist, speaker and technology evangelist working at DigiKnow, Inc. in Cleveland, Ohio. Click here for his recent seminal video tour on ‘Web2.0 for marketers: what it means for you’. Though he describes himself as ‘an amateur photographer finding the balance between work and photos’, I recommend a visit to his Flickr Travel snap collection.

The Social Media Marketing Blog is where you find Scott Monty’s perspectives on B2B implications of social media – the convergence of marketing, advertising and PR on the Web – for marketers, agencies and companies. Scott is currently Relationship Director & Consigliere at crayon, LLC plus Writer/Content Developer/Strategist at The Social Media Marketing Blog & The Baker Street Blog. He has also served time as Account Director at PJA Advertising & Marketing. A ‘benevolent idealist’ according to his DNA type, Scott is one of the most passionate online canons of Sherlock Holmes giving us what the world really needs: a blog about the world of Sherlock Holmes. 

Richard Huntington is a planner by trade and the former planning director of both HHCL and United London. Over the years he has made rodeo sexy, produced food porn for Diet Tango, helped men confront their fear of the phone, got the frozen retailer Iceland to care about food issues and had his last Tango ad banned for encouraging bullying. More recently he was busy making Sky more appealing to digital refusniks and doing serious harm to the ad industry by popularising their DVR, Sky+. He is on the management committee of the Account Planning Group in the UK and the Chair of Judges for the APG Creative Strategy Awards as well as a member of the IPA Strategy Group. He blogs at adliterate where he provides radical thinking for the brand advice business. It aims to be deliberately provocative with radical views and sets itself against orthodoxy in any form. The modern-day agent provocateur. Neat.