Astonish Us has to be one of the more persuasive pieces of any genre I have read in a very long time.
The advice you find there is applicable to funding for topic maps research, marketing topic maps to potential customers, promoting topic maps among fellow researchers, in short, every aspect of spreading the word about topic maps.
Go read the post and then come back here (using the back button) to post your comments on what astonishes you with a topic map on some particular subject? How do you want to convey that astonishment to others?