Planning Begins at 40: Crowd Source My Speech?

[John Grant]

In July i am going to speak at an event hosted at JWT in London (along with Jeremy Bullmore, Jon Steel and others) celebrating 40 years of planning and looking ahead too.

I'm not sure I have anything new to say on the matter that I have been banging on about for some years. So... My idea is that instead of presenting my views I get 40 fellow planners from diverse backgrounds to help me put it together. I would open a blog and for the next 3 months we'd just talk about the brief (ie taking this as an opportunity just like any other for a piece of communication to have some sort of effect). We'd then write the presentation together, pick interesing visuals or creative ways to bring it to life, and finally write a speech which I would simply ead out on behalf of the team.

All of which depends on if this grabs 40 of you. I'm going to crosspost this on .ning plus the facebook planning groups and give it 1 week. If 40 people say they are interested then we have a project. (If not I'll have to think of something else!) Do say if you'd like to take part (first come first served) & add comments & ideas

:J

[gemma]

Count me in.

It would be great to include Planners from all kinds of areas (e.g. digital, PR, working overseas, freelance) and from all kinds of training backgrounds (e.g. market research, structured agency training, mentoring, self taught).

gemma almostalwaysthinking
(north of England, integrated agency)

[paul isakson]

Sounds like a great idea.

Would love to pitch in.

Paul

[John Grant]

great stuff, welcome to the longest speechwriting exercise in recent history, it looks like between the various networks there could be a fair amount of interest (doesnt have to be literally 40 people, although there is a certain symmetry to that) I think there's about 16 of us so far, let's let it run for the week it takes most people to check in on groups and see who's up for it :J

[Emily Reed]

I love it. Would love to help.

[Ozioma]

I would like to be involved as well.
Looking forward to it!

[Amelia Torode]

Let me know if you still need Planners - would love to be involved!

[farisyakob]

sure thing dude - rock on

[jason oke]

Heck, why not. I'm in (I replied on FB too).

[John Grant]

there's 25 on board so far (and everything i hoped for - some of my favourite planner/bloggers and also a very diverse bunch of people who are new to me and in some cases to planning)

The list, and a first topic for us to start discussing is at
http://planningbeginsat40.blogspot.com/

do join up if you havent so far, and if/once you put your name down do pop by that blog and lets get things started

[Christian Verschaeren]

I'll try anything once.

[emilie hitch]

i'm in.

[Mie Demin]

I like the idea and I'd love to contribute. Have you already reached your objective of 40? The latest count I saw on the dedicated blog was 27.
Mie Demin, Strategic Creativity Advocate at Ogilvy (in Brussels).