In review, 2016 was a year full of interesting Book Sprints and some changes to the management of Book Sprints Ltd.

Founder Adam Hyde is now the director of the board and appointed Barbara Rühling as CEO and Katerina Michailidi as COO of the company. The new management is based in Berlin, Germany. Our amazing team is based all around the world between New Zealand, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, USA, and Nicaragua.

The full team includes:

• Adam Hyde (NZ) – Founder and director
• Barbara Rühling (GER) – CEO
• Katerina Michailidi (GR)  – COO
• 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

Thank you all and a happy 2017 to everyone!

Book Sprints on four continents in 2016

2016 saw Book Sprints taking place on four continents. From east to west, we facilitated Book Sprints in Tokyo, Japan – Bern, Switzerland – Bad Honnef, Germany – Marrakesh, Morocco – several in Maryland, USA – Salt Lake City, Utah – and several in San Jose, California.

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

Change Maker Education

Ashoka Changemakers Book Sprint in Utah, January 2016

This Book Sprint, hosted by Ashoka, captured the wisdom of 12 highly inspired and passionate “ChangeMaker” educators. The book Changemakers: Educating with Purpose is a meaningful and usable guide for other educators wanting to implement similar practices in their schools. The book is available on Amazon: http://a.co/hq6jrEB

Power Purchase Agreements in Africa

Book Sprint on Understanding Power Project Financing in Marrakesh, February 2016

The second USAID Book Sprint produced Understanding Power Project Financing, a handbook that focuses on the financing challenges of power projects in Africa. It was later translated into French. Both English and French versions can be found here: http://cldp.doc.gov/programs/cldp-in-action/details/1603

F5 AFM Operations Guide

Book Sprint with F5 in San Jose, March 2016

In March, the fourth Book Sprint with F5 took place in San Jose. Eleven F5 Engineers, Technical Training Developers, Security Solution Architects and Sales Engineers worked together to write the F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) Operations Guide. You can download the guide here: https://devcentral.f5.com/articles/the-big-ip-afm-operations-guide-20511

Cisco VXLAN EVPN Guide

Book Sprint with Cisco in San Jose, April 2016

In April, another group of Cisco engineers from all over the US and Europe came together in California for the fifth Cisco Book Sprint. The wrote the guide A Modern, Open and Scalable Fabric: VXLAN EVPN. Available for download here: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/switches/nexus-9000-series-switches/products-configuration-examples-list.html

GIZ Treasure Hunt

Book Sprint with GIZ in Bad Honnef, May 2016

At the end of May, a group of ten contributors wrote the book Treasure Hunt – How Good Financial Governance can support resource-endowed countries in achieving the SDGs. GIZ (Germany’s agency for international development cooperation) has been doing extensive work on improving governance in the extractive sector, and used the Book Sprint to document and evaluate these strategies.

Tokyo Development Learning Center Operations Manual

Tokyo Development Learning Center Book Sprint in Tokyo, August 216

The Tokyo Development Learning Center came back for a second Book Sprint. In 4 days, they developed an operations manual for a new partnership program with the Government of Japan.

Handbook on Liquefied Natural Gas in Africa

Book Sprint with US Energy Association in Maryland, November 2016

In November, a group of experts organised by the US Energy Association and the Department of Energy created a handbook for African governments wanting to set up natural gas development projects. The first version of the book is available here: https://www.energy.gov/ia/downloads/understanding-natural-gas-and-lng-options

Guide for Managing and Mitigating Conflict Risks in Mining Contracts

Book Sprint with the World Bank in Maryland, November 2016

Also in November, the World Bank invited eleven experts of open contracting and mining contracts to Kent Island in Maryland. In three and a half days they designed a guide to prevent, mitigate and manage conflict risks through the mining contracting process.

Guide for the development of electoral codes of conduct

International IDEA and HDS Book Sprint in Bern, December 2016

At the initiative of the Human Security Department of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (HDS) and International IDEA, six participants came together in Bern in December. Collaboratively they wrote a book to guide domestic ‘honest brokers’ working in transitional contexts (facilitators such as party leaders, EMBs, peacebuilding experts, democracy assistance practitioners, etc.). The book draws on experiences from successful dialogues between political parties for the development of codes of conduct that contribute to the holding of peaceful elections.

You can find photos of all the Book Sprints here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/129798087@N03/

Testimonials by Book Sprint participants

Here are some of the things participants have said about Book Sprints in 2016.

This is my second Book Sprint experience and it left me even more enthused about the validity of Book Sprints as an effective knowledge management approach. – Phil Karp, The World Bank

Phil Karp on the QII Ops Manual Book Sprint.

It’s fun to work with other folks in the group because everyone brings in their own experiences and personalities and it is really an interesting experience. – Lilian Quan, Ciscoo

Overall I was pretty nervous, how are we going to get all this work done in five days? But after the first day I recognized, yes, we can absolutely get this done. – Jason Gmitter, Cisco

BS Cisco VXLAN Lilian Quan on Book Sprints.

BS Cisco VXLAN Jason Gmitter on Book Sprints.

I did not think it was possible to write a book in five days. I enjoyed working on something and having something to show for it in such a small amount of time… We have an end product that we can be proud of. – Vibhuti Jain, USAID

Vibhuti Jain on USAid and ALSF Book Sprint on Book Sprints.

It was a journey from the unkown to the known. We started of with barely nothing, just a couple of ideas, but as the week went by and after lots of discussions and lots of thinking it came to a result that is very good, the end result is actually something to be very proud of. – Lucy Chege, Development Bank of Southern Africa

Lucy Chege on USAid and ALSF Book Sprint on Book Sprints.