I love it when I can play connector and bring together people who have never met to do something meaningful as a team.

Joseph Jaffe is writing a new book, “Join the COnversation.” Joe’s the blogger behind JaffeJuice and the podcaster behind the new marketing podcast, “Across the Sound. He’s also the president (and “chief interruptor”) at crayon, the new marketing company that now employs me.

For his book, Joe needed a survey to show the status and perceptions of converastional marketing. For the survey, two things were required: an organization to sponsor the survey and somebody with the expertise to draft an effective survey instrument, host it online, and produce a comprehensive report of the results.

For the sponsor, I turned to the Society for New Communications Research; I’m a research fellow and member of the advisory board. Luckily, Executive Director Jen McClure told me the Society, which is pretty new, was looking for a good research project to support. For the survey work, I contacted my old friend Tudor Williams who, along with his son, Ryan, runs TWI Surveys. Tudor told me he has been pondering ways to expand the visibility of his company beyond the employee communications business.

Man, the stars must have been aligned just right for all these elements to come together at the right time.

So Joe and some other crayonistas worked with Jen and the SNCR advisory board and Tudor to draft a survey. It’s online now at the TWI Surveys site. If you work in marketing or organizational communications, I’d be grateful if you’d take 10 minutes to complete it:

The results will be presented in Las Vegas March 7-9 at the New Communications Forum, and more comprehensivley in “Join the Conversation” when it’s released later this year.