A couple of weeks ago now I spent three full days in San Francisco at the Grove Consultants International offices in the Presidio engaged in the coolest thing ever – a “Book Sprint” to collaboratively create a Field Guide on Visual Facilitation. This project is a GLEN Collaboration – the GLEN (Global Learning Exchange Network) itself a fabulous new rising star in the innovation constellation which I will write more about.

The Collaboration is being coordinated by Jeroen Blijsie of The Visual Connection in The Netherlands, and the book is co-edited by Jeroen, Tim Hamons at Art of Awakening in Singapore and Rachel Smith of the Grove (US). The Book Sprint itself was hosted by the fabulous Mary Alice Arthur, who flew to the Netherlands to support the process.

There were 50+ co-authors (many of the chapters are co-written), spread out all over the world, working together to write and edit this massively ambitious book project. Even though much of my work is collaborative, I still can’t quite explain the excitement and stimulation I felt in response to this format, which also turned out to be enormously practical, efficient, and effective.

Several “pods” or “hubs” met in Asia, Europe and the US, ours with about 10 people in San Francisco. Each morning we started by “checking in” with other writers in compatible time zones around the world (morning in California is evening in Europe, but the middle of the night for Asia), although there were “drop-ins” from decidedly incompatible time zones at various times. Jeroen was seen sleepwalking once at 3am Central European Time, and Tim was there more than once at who knows what time in Singapore! After checking in, we were free to either work on our own chapters or start to read each other’s work and review/edit it. Everyone agreed to edit at least two chapters besides our own, and there was an ingenious “just in time” infrastructure being created to track all this as we went. Rachel Smith, who was holding down the fort in San Francisco, was key to the magic that happened behind the scenes to make all this possible. It was dizzying just to sit near her!

I found this model an incredibly stimulating way to work. As we began to wind up and move to checking out on the first day, I found myself almost done with the first draft of my own chapter on Visual Facilitation online, which had only been a brief summary and collection of notes at the beginning of the day. The writing flowed as I crafted a meta-perspective to share what I am learning about the power of working with visuals online, much of it in partnership with my partner in Earth+ Digital Wisdom, FireHawk Hulin.

I had been quite nervous about sharing my work. My work is rarely exposed to critique and to be honest I wasn’t sure why I’d been asked to contribute to this fieldbook for visual practitioners, but after I got a lovely supportive first edit, I felt liberated from my inhibition (and REALLY excited about being turned loose in the editing process myself). I found I enjoyed the editing almost as much as the writing, although I continued to add to and tweak my own work. The tweaks were in response to edits, but also just because my thinking process kept getting clearer and better as I was exposed to more and more of the high-caliber thinking around me.

I’d already had the honor (and pleasure) to have been asked to review a chapter for the book being written by Oshima Tomohide (or “Tommy”, as his friends call him). In it, he shares the story of the World Cafe’s 25th Anniversary Hybrid Impact Cafe hosted in 2015 by IAF Japan (International Association of Facilitators, Japan branch) and FAJ (Facilitation of Association of Japan). He asked me to read it because we worked together on this amazing event (me co-hosting and he overseeing and designing the graphic recording for the whole thing, which happened simultaneously in nine locations across Japan). It was a great pleasure to work with him to bring the story alive.

Over the next three days we lucky ducks in San Francisco were treated to little impromptu workshops offered by the co-authors. One in particular I LOVED was given by Jill Greenbaum, who had flown out from New York to join us for the week. Artfully integrating those of us in the room with others joining us on Zoom, Jill led us all through the process of creating Zentangles. Have a look at mine in this Beauty Dialogues post!)

Looking back, what I remember most about the Book Sprint experience was the wonderful sense of camaraderie with Rachel and the other authors, and the deep well of shared learning we tapped into together. Great new friendships started, others deepened, and all sorts of creative stimulation happened around the edges of the work – in conversation during breaks, as we took long walks and ate together, etc.

The work continues as the editors fine-tune the chapters and introduce a copy-editor into the mix. Next will come fundraising for publication costs and then we’ll start the promotional process. It’s a BIG DEAL to pull together a book of this size and scope. But it sure makes a difference when we do it together.