{"id":7,"date":"2011-07-29T12:40:07","date_gmt":"2011-07-29T07:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/books\/unconference\/?page_id=5"},"modified":"2016-03-10T17:56:33","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T12:26:33","slug":"making-of-the-book","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/unconference\/making-of-the-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Story behind the book"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2004, I came across\u00a0FooCamp<\/a>, an invite-only, camping style meetup of great minds in Sebastapool, California. The event was restricted to the who\u2019s who of the brilliant people doing cutting edge work. Its an event that I can only dream to be part of. \u00a0However, I fell in love with the format of casual networking and learning from each other.<\/p>\n

In 2005, when I began to hear about\u00a0BarCamp<\/a>\u00a0and how it aimed to do a more democratic, inclusive version of FooCamp, I was fascinated. The fact that anyone who has the interest can organize one without the need for licensing caught my fancy.<\/p>\n

I took up the initiative to organize\u00a0BarCamp Chennai<\/a>\u00a0in 2006 along with other passionate volunteers (who have now become very good friends). The success and the joy of organizing this event totally changed my perspective of events. \u00a0Some of the best talks at the event did not come from CXOs but from youngsters who would never have stood a chance to talk at any major conference. Everyone had a role to play in the event. People took up responsibilities. There were not attendees. They were participants. They felt ownership towards the event.. I\u2019ve organized many events but never felt the joy I felt at this event. To me, this was an eye-opener.<\/p>\n

One day, I went to Amazon.com looking for books on unconference and to my surprise there was none. At a time when unconference were a rage around the world, I was surprised there was not a single book on this subject.<\/p>\n

I sensed an opportunity here. I always wanted to author a book and here was a subject that I loved. \u00a0A great combination. I could finally strike out one from my\u00a0bucket list<\/a>.\u00a0 However, back then, I didn\u2019t have the confidence of authoring an entire book on my own. \u201cI figured why not use the very principles of Unconferencing to author the book\u201d. It made perfect sense to walk the talk.<\/p>\n

And so, with much gusto, I started the project in 2007. Bought a domain name. Created a website. Opened up a wiki. Started a\u00a0Google group<\/a>. Spread the word around. Wrote a\u00a0blog post<\/a>\u00a0about my mission. Did\u00a0podcast interview<\/a>\u00a0about the book. Found a\u00a0sponsor<\/a>. Even went ahead and designed the book cover.<\/p>\n

The response was great. Within a short time, I have over 170 people who had shown interest in collaborating the book. While some came forward to help with writing, a few others offered help in editing, proof reading, wiki gardening and designing.<\/p>\n

We were off to a great start. But pretty soon, I realized the impact of the 80-20 rule. 20% of the people had to do 80% of the work. While there was a lot of buzz and interest, over a period of time, the interest waned. A few months passed. Me and a few others who took on leadership roles, got busy and soon the book project went to the back burners. I learnt an important lesson that not all tasks can be crowdsourced.<\/p>\n

Nothing happened for the next three and half years. Meanwhile, I went on to author three other books. Even helped my 8 year old daughter publish her short\u00a0story.\u00a0 Then a turning point happened.\u00a0 I went to Amazon.com casually and searched for books on unconference. To my utter surprise, there still weren\u2019t too many books on unconference. This woke me up. I told myself that this is my chance.<\/p>\n

I restarted this book project. Nearly 3.5 years after it was originally started. This time I was absolutely committed to see this book through.<\/p>\n

The book that you are seeing now is a dream turned reality.<\/p>\n

– By Kiruba Shankar<\/p>\n

Check out the link for\u00a0Book Covers<\/a><\/h3>\n

– Credits<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2004, I came across\u00a0FooCamp, an invite-only, camping style meetup of great minds in Sebastapool, California. The event was restricted to the who\u2019s who of the brilliant people doing cutting edge work. Its an event that I can only dream to be part of. \u00a0However, I fell in love with the format of casual networking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/unconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/unconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/unconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/unconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/unconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/unconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiruba.com\/unconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}