We’re down to the wire — we have turned in the final manuscript to our publisher, AMACOM, and we have about a month to copy-edit our book, The Virtual Handshake. We’ve got an exhaustive book, but we think a few more real-world examples and stories will help make it a great book.

Many thanks to the numerous people who sent in stories in response to our previous call for queries; most ended up in the book. A truly excellent or unusual one could still be slipped in. We also will continue to highlight success stories here on this blog, in articles we write, our speeches, and more.

Here’s our laundry list of what we’re looking for. The top priorities are:

• A story about someone whose life has dramatically changed by his/her use of online business networks. The person started a new business, found key clients, and in other ways has very successfully leveraged this technology.

• An example of a distributed conversation between two or more bloggers on a non-technical, but business-oriented subject, e.g., blogger #1 person posted something, blogger #2 commented on blogger #1’s post and also created a longer response on their own blog, which blogger #2 linked to when he “answered” on his own blog. Ideally, this should result in a valuable action, e.g., getting a sale or a job.
• An example of a business-oriented personal website from someone who is an employee, not an entrepreneur or solo professional, and that is NOT a blog, e.g., it contains articles, a personal profile, etc.
• A story about how online communication differs from face-to-face communication at a very personal level, e.g., you didn’t realize the person you were dealing with had some sort of disability, because it never came up in the online interaction.
• A business-to-employee community that has some kind of public face. Doesn’t have to be much publicly visible - just need something to point to that’s not entirely behind firewalls.
• Business-oriented success story about using online tools, e.g., Meetup, to organize groups for face-to-face interaction.

  We’re also still looking for the following:

• A positive story about someone who proactively protected/reclaimed his online privacy without sacrificing online visibility - maybe after an identity theft incident, for example.
• An example of trusting someone online a bit too quickly, e.g., they revealed proprietary information or intellectual property which the other person took advantage of.
• An example of viral marketing / buzz generation for a product within business-oriented communities — NOT tech-oriented and NOT consumer-oriented.
• The absolutely greatest, most interesting, most unique, most powerful story you’ve ever heard about online (not hybrid) networking.

If you have experienced one of these stories yourself, or can point us to someone who has, or can accomplish it yourself this week, please submit it to us ASAP. The deadline for submissions is this Monday, November 8, at midnight EST. In the interest of time, please submit the complete story/example, not just a query to see if we’re interested. Be sure to include your email and phone number so we can follow up with any questions.

a) This is a great opportunity to tell your story in a major publication.
b) Please help!

Whichever of the two statements above motivates you, please ignore the other one!