A blogger from Muscat is part of what may be a first-of-its-kind collaboration via the Internet.

It involves more than 100 marketing professionals from four continents and 10 countries.

Arun Rajagopal joined online with 102 other bloggers to author 'The Age of Conversation', a book about engaging consumers through conversations in a world being shaped by citizen marketers.

The book has an unusual story behind it, involving online connections between people around the world who have never met each other.

The idea of the collaborative 'book' began with a casual exchange of ideas between Drew McLellan, an advertising executive based in Iowa, US, and Gavin Heaton, Interactive Director at Creata, Australia, one of the world's leading marketing agencies.

Both incidentally are authors of two most-read Top-25 marketing blogs in the world.

McLellan and Heaton, through their blogs, invited other marketing professionals and bloggers to commit to writing an essay about conversation. They set what they thought would be an impossible goal - 100 bloggers. They received commitments from 103 authors in less than seven days.

Each author contributed a one-page chapter on their marketing communications expertise in a book that is being hailed by Advertising Age for its powerful insights from around the world on emerging media and marketing.

In a true spirit of community sharing, the authors have waived off all rights to royalties and are donating proceeds of book sales to Variety, an international charity committed to serve children across the globe.

Arun Rajagopal (www.arunrajagopal.com) is a Content Strategist at UMS Interactive, a leading web solutions company in Oman.

His chapter 'The Rules of the Garage. For Digital Media Conversationalists.' is about creating exciting digital media conversations using HP's renowned 'Rules of the Garage' management philosophy.

The Age of Conversation is available for purchase from a dedicated online store in three formats (e-book: $9.99, paperback: $16.9 and hardback: $29.99).Trade Arabia News Service