Are you a maven? What’s that you ask? The term maven comes from the Yiddish and Hebrew words that mean someone who has knowledge about something and seeks to pass it along. The term was popularized originally, according to Wikipedia, by a series of television commericals in the 1960’s for Vita Herring. It has resurfaced in popularity due to its use in the book Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, published in 2000. However in the intervening years it has continued to appear in academic research such as Feick and Price’s 1987 article The Market Maven.

The reason we’re asking if you are a maven is that while most book publishers continue to hold onto outdated opinions of influencers we know that you, the technologist, the leader, the influencer, are the one who really matters. Whether you influence people through your blog, twitter account, or position in a company, we want to enlist your help.

We wrote The Art of Scalability because we want people to have this information. We spend a lot of time on the road with companies helping them learn how to scale their people, processes, and technology but we obviously can’t be everywhere. We are self-described scalability evangelists and zealots. We want tech teams everywhere to debate architectural principles and all leaders to consider scalability when designing organizations.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it… is to use your network to get the word out about The Art of Scalability, specifically about the concepts covered in the book. In order to help with this we’d like to make an offer. The first 10 people that email me, michael@akfpartners.com,  requesting a copy of the book and committing to spread the word about the book using whatever social network technology you are most comfortable with, we will send you a free copy. Yes, that’s right, a free copy, all for just helping us spread the word about the concepts in The Art of Scalability. If you have a blog, feel free to post a review of the topics; if you use Facebook, post a link along with your thoughts; if you lead a team, have a discussion on the concepts covered. If you already have already purchased a copy of the book, thank you, and feel free to accept this offer to receive one to pass along to someone else.

Check the comments on this post before you email me to see if we’ve reached our goal.

I don’t want to take credit for this idea and while it is said that immitation is a form of flattery I want to give credit. Seth Godin gave away copies of his new book Linchpin, for a $30 donation to the Acumen Fund. Hopefully you took Seth up on his offer and will take me up on this one.