During my career as a campaigning consultant and agency owner I came across a couple of books that marked milestones in the development of strategic thinking and the way business developers, marketers, strategists and communication specialists address change. I am thinking of people like:
- Marty Neumeier, author of The Brand Gap
- Alexandre Robert, co-author of Produkt ist Kommunikation
- Mats Lindgren and Hans Bandhold, authors of Scenario Planning
- Helen Edwards and Derek Day, authors of Creating Passionbrands
- Joe Trippi author of The Revolution Will Not Be Televized
- Tom Peters, author of Re-Imagine
- Adam Brandenburger, Ada Brandenberger and Barry Nalebuff, authors of Co-Opetition
- Harro von Senger, professor and expert for Chinese strategemes (www.36strategeme.ch)
- Marco Althaus, author of Kampagne!
The concepts that they present in their books are mostly identical to my own campaigning concept. They come from different directions and work in different fields, but the mindset is the same. Since five years now the idea has been around to bring these authors together in order to learn from each other and make the world a better place. Because learning works best when you work together on a solution that is challenging and inspiring, with everybody adding his knowledge and experience to create something that is more than the sum of all, the idea is to choose a problem that poses a real challenge to humankind, the solution of which will be contribution to the future of our planet and our societies.
Some of the authors above have already confirmed that they would like to participate. In 2009 I tried to delegate the fundraising for and organization of the event. Today I started to give it another try myself. I updated the flyer and website and during the coming weeks I will make an effort to find sponsors – foundations that are interested to support this or corporations that will get an additional value by being allowed to present their own problem to be solved by this high-potential group of strategists.
Website: www.worldcampaigningforum.org