2015 in review

Another great year has gone by, and again we delivered books to 100% of our clients at the end of each Book Sprint. There are several highlights that stood out this year. We are especially happy about our new and repeat clients, our amazing team, and of course the Book Sprints we did all around the world in 2015. Read on for an update on these highlights and a list of all the Book Sprints we did this year.

All the best for your end of year celebrations and a happy new year!

A DIVERSE CLIENT BASE AND REPEAT CUSTOMERS

2015 has been a good year both in diversifying our client base and solidifying repeat business in the three main sectors we are working with – tech companies, international NGOs, and smaller, often research or art-oriented initiatives.

We were happy to see many of our clients come back for more Book Sprints in 2015. Especially two tech companies have become regulars. Cisco, after doing a first Book Sprint in 2014, did another 4 Book Sprints in 2015 with different teams at different venues throughout the US. And F5, who we facilitated a first Book Sprint for in 2014, organized another 2 in 2015, one in their Seattle office and one in Tel Aviv. The next F5 Book Sprint is scheduled for the beginning of 2016.

Among the international organisations, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) did their second Book Sprint in Sweden, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) held their second Book Sprint, this time in Rwanda. The World Bank organized another Book Sprint as well for their Tokyo Development Learning Center (TDLC), the first Book Sprint we did in Asia!

New clients included the Public Library of Science (PLOS), Aotaroa Digital Arts Network (ADA), Transparency International, and a group of free culture activists who came together for the Cost of Freedom Book Sprint. These clients were especially interesting as they present opportunities to extend and adapt our methodology to new subject areas and work dynamics.

With Book Sprints from East to West, we traveled all around the globe this year, to Christchurch, New Zealand – Tokyo, Japan – Tel Aviv, Israel – Lake Kivu, Rwanda – Berlin, Germany –  La Provence, France – Boxborough, Massachusetts – Raleigh, North Carolina – Milpitas, California – and to Seattle, Washington.

TEAM DEVELOPMENT

All of our ten dedicated and specialized team members that came together in 2014 to join Book Sprints Limited stayed on in 2015, continuing to build and polish our remote work flows between Nicaragua and New Zealand. Katerina Michailidi, based in Berlin, is now also fulltime as manager of Book Sprints Ltd.

Adam Hyde, founder of Book Sprints, is now also founder of the Collaborative Knowledge Foundation, where he is working full time to develop the PubSweet Publishing Framework, a rebuild of the collaborative writing and publishing platform PubSweet that is being used in Book Sprints.

The full team includes:

• Adam Hyde (NZ) – CEO
• Katerina Michailidi (GR)  – Manager
• Barbara Rühling (GER) – Lead Facilitator
• Mark Brokering (USA) – Client Liaison
• Juan Gutierrez (NIC) – Developer
• Raewyn Whyte (NZ) – Textual Clean Up
• Julien Taquet (FR) – HTML Book Production
• Henrik van Leeuwen (NL) – Illustrations
• Faith Bosworth (ZA) – Facilitator
• Laia Ros (AND) – Facilitator

OUTREACH

In February 2015, we published our first short documentary about a Book Sprint in Nigeria (you can watch it here). Also in February 2015, the “One Hope” book from a Book Sprint in 2014 was released by Augsburg Fortress Press (see the press release).

And we presented Book Sprints at several conferences, at the re-publica 2015 in Berlin, the 2015 Open Education Conference in Vancouver,  the BC Open Textbook Summit in Vancouver, and at the dLRN 2015 Conference in Stanford.

We also started a new series of video testimonials from participants and organizers at Book Sprints, some of which are online on vimeo.

In the fall, we sponsored a Book Sprint as part of the #FREEBASSEL campaign for the release of imprisoned Syrian internet activist Bassel Khartabil who has been imprisoned in 2012 and went missing from prision in October 2015. The resulting book “Cost of Freedom” was released immediately on costoffreedom.cc.

BOOK SPRINTS 2015

Below is a list of all the Book Sprints we facilitated this year.

CISCO
Milpitas, USA, February 2015
Facilitated by Barbara Rühling and Faith Bosworth
The year started with the second Book Sprint on the Cisco campus in Silicon Valley, the first one having taken place in 2014. The group produced the impressive operations manual “Operating Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure” of more than 450 pages. With marketing engineers, support engineers, and architects present, they discussed what questions and issues were most common among their actual customers and addressed these in the book with the reader in mind. It was distributed online immediately (see the pdf here) and 3000 copies were printed.
Illustrations: Henrik van Leeuwen
Book Design: Julien Taquet
Clean up: Raewyn Whyte
Language: English

F5
Seattle, USA, March 2015
Facilitated by Laia Ros and Barbara Rühling
The second out of a series of four Book Sprints with F5 took place in their Seattle headquarters right at the waterfront overlooking the bay and the train tracks passing in front of the building. There, a group of smart and hard-working participants wrote up the “F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Management Operations Guide” in five days.
Illustrations: Henrik van Leeuwen
Book Design: Julien Taquet
Clean up: Raewyn Whyte
Language: English

CISCO
Boxborough, Massachusetts, USA, May 2015
Facilitated by Laia Ros
This Book Sprint for Cisco took place in Massachusetts. In five days,  a group of seventeen engineers wrote the “ASR 5000/ASR 5500 Troubleshooting Guide” which may be our largest book so far at almost 700 pages. It was made available online here.
Illustrations: Henrik van Leeuwen
Book Design: Julien Taquet
Clean up: Raewyn Whyte
Language: English

Public Library of Science (PLOS)
San Francisco, USA, May 2015
Facilitated by Faith Bosworth
In the Public Library of Science offices in San Francisco, a group wrote an internal handbook for the PLOS staff about a new platform for authoring and submitting content to journals. It was an exercise of testing and learning about the new tool as much as documenting it.
Language: English

World Bank’s Tokyo Development Learning Center (TDLC)
Tokyo, Japan, May 2015
Facilitated by Barbara Rühling
Our first Book Sprint in Asia took place this May in downtown Tokyo. As the Tokyo Development Learning Center prepared for its third phase, they wrote an internal operations manual about the ongoing procedures,  the new components of the third phase, and the collaboration between the center and their partners. Several of the partners were present in the Book Sprint together with the center’s staff, and together they not only wrote but also explored and decided effective workflows in the four days.
Book Design: Julien Taquet
Clean up: Raewyn Whyte
Language: English

CISCO
Milpitas, USA, September 2015
Facilitated by Laia Ros
For the third Book Sprint with Cisco in 2015 we returned to the Cisco campus in Milpitas in Silicon valley. During five days, ten Cisco engineers produced the “Programmability and Automation with Cisco Open NX-OS” guide which was made available online here and was also printed.
Illustrations: Henrik van Leeuwen
Book Design: Julien Taquet
Clean up: Raewyn Whyte
Language: English

International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA)
Stockholm, Sweden, October 2015
Facilitated by Faith Bosworth
The second Book Sprint with IDEA focused on certification of ICTs in elections. It took place in a beautiful castle close to Stockholm belonging in part to the royal Swedish family where all the participants stayed and worked together during the five days. It was launched at a conference and made available here.
Language: English
Clean up: Raewyn Whyte (NZ)

Cost of Freedom
La Provence, France, October 2015
Facilitated by Barbara Rühling
For this Book Sprint, free culture activists and researchers came together to write a book about the “Cost of Freedom” as part of the #FREEBASSEL campaign for the release of imprisoned Syrian internet activist Bassel Khartabil. The participants stayed together in a large house in the countryside outside the small village Pourrières in southern France, prepared delicious meals in the family kitchen, tasted the local wine and worked long hours to complete the book in five days.
Book Design: Julien Taquet
Clean up: Raewyn Whyte
Language: English

F5
Tel Aviv, Israel, November 2015
Facilitated by Barbara Rühling

Although we have done two Book Sprints with F5 before, this one was especially exciting because it took place in the F5 offices in Tel Aviv! In the 31st floor with a view from the ocean to the mountains, 16 participants from Israel, Canada, USA, and Germany wrote an extensive operations guide for the F5 BIG-IP Application Security Manager (ASM).
Illustrations: Henrik van Leeuwen
Book Design: Julien Taquet
Clean up: Raewyn Whyte
Language: English

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)
Lake Kivu, Rwanda, November 2015
Facilitated by Laia Ros and Faith Bosworth
On the shore of Lake Kivu in Rwanda, experts from all of the continent came together and wrote the first Blue Economy Policy Handbook for Africa in five days.
Illustrations: Henrik van Leeuwen
Book Design: Julien Taquet
Clean up: Raewyn Whyte
Language: English

Aotaroa Digital Arts Network (ADA)
Christchurch, New Zealand, November 2015
Facilitated by Adam Hyde

As a response to the earthquake in Christchurch, a group of artists came together and wrote “Space, Network, Memory: Media Art and the Transitional City.”
Language: English

Transparency International
Berlin, Germany, December 2015
Facilitated by Barbara Rühling
Participants from ten different country chapters of Transparency International came together for four days to write about their experiences of planning and implementing Integrity Pacts for large procurement projects.
Illustrations: Henrik van Leeuwen
Book Design: Julien Taquet
Clean up: Raewyn Whyte
Language: English

CISCO
Raleigh, USA, December 2015
Facilitated by Faith Bosworth
Cisco’s fourth Book Sprint, and our last one for this year, took place in North Carolina in the beginning of December. The participants produced an Operations and Troubleshooting guide for Virtual Managed Services.
Illustrations: Henrik van Leeuwen
Book Design: Julien Taquet
Clean up: Raewyn Whyte
Language: English

COMING UP IN EARLY 2016

January 20-24: Book Sprint with Ashoka, USA
February 22-24: Book Sprint with USAID, Morocco
February: Book Sprint with F5, USA
March: Book Sprint with the GIZ in Bamako, Mali