Where Do The Conversationists Come From?

Mike Taht asks the following over at Doc's place...

I love the idea of a "conversation department", however, how do you retrain or retask the marketroids that haven't a clue as to how to have a conversation in the first place?

Why do we need to retrain folks? Why do they need to be retasked? Let the clueless "marketroids" keep swinging the broadcast hammer if that's what they want to do.

You'll find the folks that are going to staff a Conversation Department coming from the ranks of the people who understand online communications platforms intuitively. Much like the first online agencies recruited heavily from forward-thinking colleges and universities, your Conversation Department is more likely to find the people it needs among the people who have been raised on computers, the Internet and online communities. In short, look to recruit them from universities with strong communications programs.

So I think we're looking at training folks to be consumer advocates long before they learn habits that they'll need to unlearn.