Michael Mandiberg just posted on his blog about a newly completed book:
In five days, six core authors, one programmer, and a handful of additional local and remote contributors collaboratively wrote, edited, and published Collaborative Futures, a book on collaboration. We started Monday morning with only two words: the title of the book. As we raised a toast to our success with the festival director Stephen Kovats at 10PM Friday, we sent the book to the printer. It is due back on Wednesday.
It’s not the first “booksprint” produced by Transmediale, but there’s a lot about this one that makes it unique. The description of the process (both at Michael’s blog and included in the book itself) is enthralling – it’s like a lan party for arts/tech writing. I mean, it’s work, but the energy presented by the collaborators reminds me more of spiderwebbing cables in basements to play Quake 2 back in the day then it does of any business meeting or conference I’ve been to lately.
And the result, so far, is more than a stunt creation – it’s seems genuinely intelligent and well crafted, with a bit of wiki flavor to it. I’m not too far in, since I’m hoping to get a print version that I don’t have to print out myself (You can find the entire book in one continuous page here), but it’s worth checking out.