Global Neighborhoods Overview v2.0

Based on some very fine comments and my own struggle with saying just what this new book is about, I have done a major revision to the previous Overview.  I have also added in a "Target Audience section and finally, I have inserted a subtitle to the book name.

I know it's the holiday break, but when you are between time with family and friends, please take a look at tell me what you think. You have already helped me to write a better book and I have not yet gotten to the actual book yet.

I have set a personal deadline of Jan. 15, to complete the full publisher's proposal and have it ready to send off.  If you are an actual publisher and have some interest in this book, now would be a wonderful time to contact here. If you are so inclined, you can also just  leave a comment and I assure you I will get back to you.

Title
Global Neighborhoods
--Lowering boundaries to almost everything

Overview

Global Neighborhoods examines the impact of social media and low-cost networks to business and culture. It examines the powerful changes that phenomena such as  YouTube, MySpace, Bebo, SecondLife, Skype, text and multimedia blogging are having on business, politics and culture. It looks at other society-changing factors.

Central to the book is the argument that the inernet is dramatically lowering the barriers to where people hang out.  Geography is becoming much less relevant as  people everywhere use the internet to find others who share common interests.  We no longer live in just one neighborhood, but in many, based on our mix of interests, whether they be religion, sex, hummingbirds or macramé.

From the business perspective, this turns the marketplace upside down.  The power is moving from large incumbent organizations into communities where the people who are the most generous have the greatest influence. Companies can try to start their own communities, but unless they open it to competitors, they have little more than factory towns. Likewise, in the global neighborhoods, people making decision based on the advice on trusted friends.  Big budget ad and branding campaigns are rendered impotent in these new neighborhoods.

To understand where the marketplace is headed, Global Neighborhoods takes a long, in-depth look at the habits of today’s teens and young adults. It tours some of the Internet places where young people hang out. This is a genration who does not watch television,listen to the radio or read newspapers, yet seem to be amazingly well-informed. Young people are voting in larger numbers than in recent memory and that may explain why a flood of elected officials and political aspirants are leaping into the social media, particularly blogging. They are simply following the voters as they have historically done.

Further, Global Neighborhoods looks at the impact of low cost airfare is empowering more people than ever before to sample new neighborhoods and meet each other, exchanging slivers of each other's culture along the way.

Primarily, a business book, Global Neighborhood focuses at the intersection of technology and culture, showing how people with similar interests all over the world, speaking different languages can find what they share in common and it offers hope for people bypassing their own governments to make peace with each other.

Alongside interviews with executives from numerous companies large and small, Global Neighborhoods examines a private community of Palestinian and Israel teenagers who discover how very much alike they are. It reports on Saudi kids using cell phone messaging to flirt while a stern chaperon looks on in blissful ignorance. It talks with a Scottish teenager who created a Japanese-language parody of the US TV Dating Game and ended up making friends with Japanese kids. It looks at the opportunities in virtual reality, not just for product placements, and virtual news conference, but in its success in engaging autistic students and potential for making history literally come to life.

The book will look at some of the threats and dangers found for young people in social media, but it will dwell more on the hope for an emerging global society that is able to bypass marketing messages to learn the truth about products and services and perhaps--just perhaps, bypass governments to make peace with each other.

By reading Global Neighborhoods, readers will understand how they need to recalibrate their existing businesses over the short-term future,  why they have never had a better opportunity to start a successful global business from the comfort of their own homes.  They will have a much clearer sense of the neighborhoods in which their children dwell and how those neighborhoods may contain some dangers, they overall pose greater hope and opportunity than perhaps any generation that has preceded it.

Target Audience

This book fits into three market categories: Business, General Interest and Current Affairs very much like recent best-sellers such as The World is Flat, The Wisdom of Crowds,  Freakonomics and Blink.

Anyone in an established business trying to recalibrate strategy to survive fundamental marketplace changes will be interested in this book as well as business investors and entrepreneurs. Likewise parents, curious to see what their child’s world is likely to be like, will find this book valuable. Readers concerned with the impact of technology on world cultures will find this book useful and finally, people hoping the world might improve on any level if people can bypass large organizations and deal directly with each other will also find this book useful.

                                                     ***

I look forward to your thoughts and constructive criticism. Have yourself a wonderful holiday break and may the new year bring you only joy-filled things.

Comments

[Pat Phelan]

It's really good Shel. I think the human side of the stories should be an important part of the conversation though.

[Curt]

Shel:

Don't like the subtitle. Too vague.

I understand this is a draft, so my comment is a basic one: I think the whole thing needs a revisiting with a fresh mind just for the precision of the writing.

Example: "It looks at other society-changing factors." Like what?

Example: "Central to the book is the argument that the inernet is dramatically lowering the barriers to where people hang out." What now?

Example: "...Global Neighborhood focuses at the intersection of technology and culture..." On I think, not at.

As to the overall idea, I think it's very interesting and will make a valuable and interesting book.

As to content, I think you have two lines making up the cross-hairs, the What (examples of global neighboring) and the So What? (the implications and changes these neighborhoods are and will lead to). Perhaps those could be brought up in the mix a bit.

[Connie]

Hi, Shel. I'm a big fan of Naked Conversations, so I'm really looking forward to watching Global Neighborhoods take shape.

I also spent ten years in the publishing industry as a book writer and editor, so I'll think through this some more and e-mail you a few tips for crafting the proposal.

The word "lowering" in the subtitle struck me as negative, even though the idea you're wanting to convey is a very positive one. I think you're on the right track but haven't hit the right phrase yet; as Curt mentioned, it's vague.

A quick tip for making it more reader-friendly is to move some of the text into bullet points. For example:

Global Neighborhoods tells the stories of how people around the world discover they share similar interests even though they speak different languages:
- Palestinian and Israeli teenagers ...
- Saudi kids who use cell phones to flirt ...
- a Scottish teenager who created ... etc.

[Tac Anderson]

I am very excited about this book. These themes are at the core of why I love New Media. This seems very ambitious though; new media, multi-national relations, teenagers, low cost air fare and tying it all into business. It seems like a more focused approach would make it easier to understand as well as write.

[Jane Genova]

One key barrier that's fading, thanks to the Internet, is the one between geezers like you and me and youth. Those geezers like you and me who "got it" about the Internet now can be in the same space, have the same professional opportunties, and market in the same way as youth. This is extraordinary. I started becoming involved in social media three years ago and I got "younger" LOL every year.

This book is a homerun is you hammer the examples. That's what has legs.

[OffTheSidelines]

What a great topic for a book. Are you planning to also cover the impact of Global Neighborhoods on nation states? What impacts businesses will undoubtedly affect governments.

[Jeremiah Owyang]

The subtitle is not striking, to overall theme.

Perhaps rather than 'lowering boundries' but focus on the speed of connectivity (not just the technical sense).

[Matt Edmundson]

Merry Christmas -- in the UK it is about an hour away, and I am sat here on my laptop reading your new overview and watching love actually...

...enough said about that...

Much better -- I mentioned last time that my clients wouldn't understand what the book is about -- but you have turned that around! Extend your right hand, reach it over your head and pat yourself on the back several times...

...one thing - run your spell check first before sending and make sure that you consitiently use italics on your book title.

Still using the word "neighbourhood" eh...oh well!

Love the twist that brings in "parents" as well as business men.

I don't think that it is there yet - and I am not too sure why, maybe because it is late and I am excited about Christmas tomorrow -- but I do think it is a lot better and you are close, really close!

Merry Christmas everyone!

[Justin Thorp]

Shel, this sounds like an exciting book. I want to read it now because its applicable to some of the work that I'm doing.

In the book would it hit on the negative of global neighborhoods? People have spent too much time concentrating on their global relationships that they forget to pay attention to their face to face relationships. I have many friends whom I've lost to World of Warcraft.

Another thing...Have you read much about the One Laptop Per Child Initiative? (http://www.laptop.org) They are working on getting laptops with internet access in the hands of children from many developing nations.

It is really exciting because it allows the children to participate in the global neighborhoods. They get to experience the world beyond their own and see the possibilities and opportunities that are available. It could provide a lot of hope.

Another thing...you may want to get in touch with John Yunker. He wrote a book the book Beyond Borders. He's a Web globalization consultant and a really nice guy. He might be able to provide even more stories and perspective.

Have a wonderful holiday!

[shel israel]

Justin,

I plan to deal with negatives, although I am pretty optimistic about what the world will look like when my grandchildren come of age because of what social media may do.

I had not heard about One Laptop per child. It has some similarities to Nick Negroponte's plan to provide a network computer to third world people for $150. This is possible for the book but is not at the key focus.

I've given a great deal of thought to a book that is about stuff like OLPC, and the instant communities that form around human crises, but readers have been advising me to limit focus and I think they are right.

Justin, I've said this to you in email already. Have a wonderful holiday and avoid Michigan frostbite. May the new year bring you only joy-filled things.

[ted demopoulos]

How about some riff on "dissolving boundaries" instead of "lowering?"

I like it!

[Jeremiah Owyang]

Shel

As i understand it, the 'one laptop per child' is the SAME program as Nick Negroponte's plan.