This is the full version of the text with artwork that you can download and read. I have the publishers proof in my hands, meaning that it will hit the streets in a week or two. Readers of Techwag get the book first.

No book is ever a solo effort, and there are always things you learn from writing a book. Therefore, here is a big shout out (right from the book) to:

This book is dedicated to everyone who has helped me find my own blogging voice, to ITToolbox, to Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, Read Write Web, ProBlogger, Chris Pirillo, Layer8, Locutus, and many others that I have met in person or read on line. This book is also dedicated to my family, Tammy, Tony, Ralph, Nancy, Alice, Phillip, Jack, Mike, Grace, Ben, Deanne, Phil, Steve (Pope), and everyone else who helps build the social fabric that we all live in.

You would think that there would be more to it, but when doing case studies I also learned some very important lessons here. When looking at people who are leading the way, or dropping off the face of the map.

1. Don’t ever do an interview when doing case studies – work from the public record, I did six interviews for this book, only two showed up in the final version of the book. The public record is more indicative of what the world thinks about the people involved. The public record when documented properly works to reveal more about the person than an interview ever could, and gives people a chance to go back to those records and form their own opinion. Case studies are about opinion, those the author makes, and those the reader makes. The opinions and the conversation around them makes or breaks a case study. Interviews are subject to spin control, even when the public record shows something different.

2. It is called social media for a reason, we form cliques, groups, friends, and alliances, those groups will support each other and generally allow new members into the group. In the end though, it all boils down to the clique, digging through the public record the good, the bad, and the ugly then seeing where it is tempered allows one to choose how to craft the case study.

3. Sometimes it is best if you do not publish everything, some things in the public record are very grim, you can simply point the reader off to them rather than living in the dirt.

4. The blogosphere is both better than we are individually and worst than we are individually. We do things on line that we do not do in public, that means we do not do the good we can do, and we do not do the bad we can do. That tempers us as a society, and as privacy becomes less and less, the image you have against societal norms becomes more important than anything else out there. The public record shows this, confirms it, and often brings people back from the edge of the razor they were playing with.

Most of this book showed up as individual articles on Techwag, and everyone had a chance to chime in or let me know what they think about the article. Nothing was better than getting a thumbs up on Robert Scoble’s section, or getting comments back that ended up with positive change on some of the entries in the book.

In all I hope you enjoy this free preview, as always, comments are welcome.

Link Deleted This really was a limited time offer, and thanks to the 112 people who downloaded it. If you really liked it, go to Amazon and write out a review.