Book sprint

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Over 5 days in mid January 2010 the Transmediale festival locked 6 writers and 1 programmer in a Berlin hotel room to collaboratively write a book about the future of free collaboration; the authors started with only the title, Collaborative Futures, and ended the week with a book. Adam Hyde and Alan Toner at Collaborative Futures Book Sprint, January 2010.jpg
Over 5 days in mid January 2010 the Transmediale festival locked 6 writers and 1 programmer in a Berlin hotel room to collaboratively write a book about the future of free collaboration; the authors started with only the title, Collaborative Futures, and ended the week with a book.

A book sprint is a method of creating a book collaboratively in a short period of time, usually three to five days. [2] [3] Book sprints make use of unconference techniques [1] [4] to ensure that a group of content experts under the guidance of one or more facilitators can not only write but publish a book at the end of the sprint period.

Collaborative writing

Collaborative writing is a method of group work that takes place in the workplace and in the classroom. Researchers expand the idea of collaborative writing beyond groups working together to complete a writing task. Collaboration can be defined as individuals communicating, whether orally or in written form, to plan, draft, and revise a document. The success of collaboration in group work is often incumbent upon a group's agreed upon plan of action. At times, success in collaborative writing is hindered by a group's failure to adequately communicate their desired strategies.

Contents

Books are made available immediately at the end of the sprint as e-books and/or with print-on-demand services. [5] Book sprints have been compared to the programming sprints common in agile software development or Scrum. [6]

Agile software development comprises various approaches to software development under which requirements and solutions evolve through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams and their customer(s)/end user(s). It advocates adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continual improvement, and it encourages rapid and flexible response to change.

Scrum is an agile process framework for managing complex knowledge work, with an initial emphasis on software development, although it has been used in other fields and is slowly starting to be explored for other complex work, research and advanced technologies. It is designed for teams of ten or fewer members, who break their work into goals that can be completed within timeboxed iterations, called sprints, no longer than one month and most commonly two weeks, then track progress and re-plan in 15-minute time-boxed stand-up meetings, called daily scrums.

History

The seed of the book sprint was sown in London in 2005. [7] Wireless network expert Tomas Krag recognized the need for a single, authoritative, online, freely licensed book on the topic of developing wireless internet infrastructure in Africa and other developing countries that could be translated into multiple languages, but he was unwilling to write the book himself using traditional methods. [7] This "book sprint" took several months, however, both in preparation and in post-sprint editing. [7] [8]

Web artist and FLOSS Manuals founder Adam Hyde turned the rough idea of a book sprint into a systematic method, defining and refining the process in the course of many book sprints, and turning the book sprint into a time-boxed event of at most a single week. After learning from Tomas Krag about his initial "book sprint" effort, Hyde recognized the potential of the method, especially for producing Free/Libre/Open Source Software help manuals and handbooks. [8] [9] Hyde facilitated a five-day book sprint in 2008 that produced a how-to book about bypassing Internet censorship as well as a prototype of a collaborative writing platform designed with the book sprint in mind. [10] Since then, book sprints have been held on a wide range of topics, including art, education, [11] governance, [12] science, [13] and software. [3]

FLOSS Manuals A non-profit organization that creates free software manuals

The FLOSS Manuals (FM) is a non-profit foundation founded in 2006 by Adam Hyde and based in the Netherlands. The foundation is focused on the creation of quality documentation about how to use free software.

In time management, timeboxing allocates a fixed time period, called a timebox, within which planned activity takes place. It is employed by several project management approaches and for personal time management.

New Art/Science Affinities

New Art/Science Affinities (NA/SA) is a book, while focusing on contemporary artists, also alludes to those in .edu Art Departments-nationwide; where all are working globally at the intersection of art, science, and technology co-published by Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University and STUDIO for Creative Inquiry. It focuses on sixty international artists and art collaboratives. The book is accompanied by an exhibition titled Intimate Science, first shown at Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University in January 2012.

Book sprints now generally emphasize that participants should not prepare before the sprint and should not continue work after the sprint, that one or more trained and experienced facilitators must be present who do not take part in the writing of the book, and that book sprints are an appropriate method for any topic. [5] [14] According to Hyde, book sprints are best when run by a trained facilitator and using the right kind of collaborative writing software. [4] However, others have used variants of the process to produce books, e.g., Creative Sprint, which spread work over 7 weeks, beginning and ending with face to face sprints. [15]

In 2013-4 "BookSprints for ICT Research" produced a detailed study of Book Sprints, additionally producing five books at book sprints over the course of the study. [16]

Process

In a book sprint, between five and fifteen experts sit together in the same space. Apart from an idea for the topic there are no requirements or contents prepared beforehand. Central to the process is the facilitator who guides the contributors through the process to develop a book in maximum five days. [11] The resulting book is published by the end of the five days through print on demand as well as in different e-book formats. In general, the books are distributed freely, and the main resources are not generated from sales but through sponsors or crowdfunding platforms, for example. [17]

Some books produced at book sprints

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References

  1. 1 2 Mushon Zer-Aviv; Michael Mandiberg; Mike Linksvayer; Marta Peirano; Alan Toner; Aleksandar Erkalovic; Adam Hyde (2010). "Anatomy of the First Book Sprint". Collaborative Futures. Retrieved 9 March 2014.
  2. ↑ "What is a Book Sprint?" . Retrieved 9 March 2014.
  3. 1 2 Nathan Willis (2012-12-12). "Google DocCamp 2012: Book sprints". LWN.net.
  4. 1 2 Altena, Arie (2012-06-19). "Book Sprinting with Adam Hyde". V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media. Retrieved 9 March 2014.
  5. 1 2 "What is a book sprint?" . Retrieved 9 March 2014.
  6. ↑ Zennaro, Marco; Canessa E; Fonda C; Belcher M; Flickenger R (2007). "Book Sprint: A New Model for Rapid Book Authoring and Content Development". International Journal of the Book. 4 (1): 105–109. Retrieved 9 March 2014.
  7. 1 2 3 Lovink, Geert. "Thomas Krag on Booksprint and Collaborative Authoring". Boek uit de Band. Retrieved 9 March 2014.
  8. 1 2 Kean, Martin (2012). "Open source publishing,'book sprints' and possible futures". Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue. 15. Retrieved 9 March 2014.
  9. ↑ Gentle, Anne (2012). Conversation and community : the social web for documentation (2nd ed.). Laguna Hills, Ca.: Xml Press. pp. 54–66. ISBN   978-1937434106.
  10. ↑ "About this Manual". How to Bypass Internet Censorship. FLOSS Manuals. Retrieved 9 March 2014.
  11. 1 2 Phil Barker; Lorna M. Campbell; Martin Hawksey; Amber Thomas (2013). "Writing in Book Sprints" (PDF). Proceedings of OER13: Creating a Virtuous Circle. Nottingham, England. Retrieved 8 March 2014.
  12. 1 2 "World Bank and Partners Publish Book on Mining Contracts". 2014-01-28. Archived from the original on 2015-01-06. Retrieved 2014-10-26.
  13. ↑ "Book Sprint #CoScience @ CeBIT 2014".
  14. ↑ Ausserhoffer, Julian. "The Method of Book Sprints". B00MBL1TZ. Retrieved 9 March 2014.
  15. ↑ "We proudly present… the Booksprint!". 2014-03-05.
  16. ↑ "Project results, reports and resources". BookSprints for ICT Research. 2014-07-25.
  17. ↑ Hänßler, Boris (September 2013). "Die Neuerfindung eines alten Mediums – Das Buch als ein Ort der Begegnung". BuB – Forum Bibliothek und Information (in German). Retrieved 8 March 2014.
  18. ↑ Tom Fifield (2014-03-14). "Introducing the OpenStack Operations Guide".
  19. ↑ Jason Baker (2014-04-29). "Now in print: O'Reilly OpenStack Operations Guide". opensource.com.
  20. ↑ "Roundup of the Geography Open Textbook Sprint | BCcampus OpenEd Resources" . Retrieved 2015-12-07.
  21. ↑ "How to turn a great idea into an open textbook in just four days | BCcampus". bccampus.ca. Retrieved 2015-12-07.
  22. ↑ "How Nigerian Bloggers, Writers, Activists Wrote a Book in Five Days". Global Voices Online. 2015-03-16.
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