“Just remember that your ideas last longer than people or things. Your ideas will go further if you don’t insist on going with them.” From Start Up, A Silicon Valley Adventure, by Jerry Kaplan.

My first thought when reading this sentence is that most historic ideas are associated strongly with names: Plato… Newton… Marks …Darwin.. Freud… Einstein… Keynes, and that this linkage has never stopped those thinkers having followers and disciples who develop the idea further. But of course, the famous thinkers in this list were academic types who worked alone for the most part.

I can see that within a company there can be a desire for an idea to not belong to one person, but to take on a life of its own, and to grow and develop among those that work there, and be transformed, perhaps, into something rather different. I know that Exbiblio is in this latter camp.

Jerry Kaplan’s idea, by the way, was for a hand-held computer with a pen instead of a keyboard. He came up with the idea when he watched Mitchell Kapor, the founder of Lotus, get frustrated while his laptop powered up so he could take notes and organise his thoughts. But Kaplan’s invention was before its time, and his company ended up being liquidated in 1994, chair by chair, at an auction.

So, here is my un-staged desk as of 5 min ago (for scientific observation).

The are 5 types of documents that I notice at first glance.

• Digital documents on my screen (web site, e-mail, etc…)
• Printed web pages (technical tutorial from stepwise.com
• Printed PDF manual (from Apple)
• A Post-it with some to-do items
• A book (Practical C Programming)

What kinds of documents on your desk right now?

This is a little out-of-date, but very pertinent to a company like Exbiblio that puts values at the top of its agenda. In May, the IABC Research Foundation published a report saying that less than half of companies encouraged staff to discuss ethical dilemmas.

I wonder, have there been any interesting dilemmas at Exbiblio? How were they resolved?

(Link via Neville Hobson who has also been writing about Exbiblio here.)

Sand Storm is the latest literary blogger to predict the end of the book as we know and love it. He also points out that according to the International Digital Publishing Forum, some $11 million of digital books were sold last year. There are some other useful links in his post related to this topic.

I think that reports of the book’s demise have been exaggerated. Sand Storm compares the digital book to the iPod. It’s true that music downloads are giving the CD sellers a hard time, but then again, CDs haven’t been around for centuries. Books are deeply ingrained in our culture. They are going to be tough to dislodge from our shelves and our hearts.

For the foreseeable future, digital books will supplement print. You can search digital texts, annotate them, copy them, and share them easily. Exbiblio plans to closely integrate the print and online experience. But I don’t think you can write the obituary of the book just yet.

Martin King writes: Hugh’s post “Mortality” gave me serious pause. For a short time I changed the WordPress state of this post to “private” – but then we restored it.

One of the guidelines we established in deciding to blog about Exbiblio was that we must reserve the privacy of exbiblio’s employees (of which I am one). There’s nothing actually wrong with Hugh’s post, no major inaccuracies – I just felt it was way too personal. But (of course) this turns out to be my fault, not Hugh’s. Here is the background:

Until very recently Exbiblio’s website described me as a “wacky inventor.”

So one of my “wacky” ideas was that we should write a book about Exbiblio, which book (as was suggested by several people) would employ Exbiblio’s technology – i.e., would be the first truly
interactive paper document, have numerous markup layers of comments, personal experiences, photos, etc. for each of Exbiblio’s employees (including me), etc. This imagined book would tell the story of our radical, values-first company – and might come bundled with one of the oPen scanners we are building. This imagined book would also essentially tell the the story of itself being written, maybe with a last chapter describing us shipping off the paper manuscript plus a scanner to various publishers…

Wacky, but by no means too wacky for me. And, a bit to my surprise, others at Exbiblio also thought this book idea was at least worth exploring. So on a Sunday afternoon last May I posted this to the Seattle Craigslist:

——–
Experienced and Accomplished Author Near Seattle
Reply to: job-160751628@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-05-14, 1:48PM PDT

Experienced and accomplished author near Seattle with technical depth – to write a sequel to Kidder’s “Soul of a New Machine” – but where the context and story are far, far more interesting.

This book will be about a truly extraordinary Seattle technology start-up company with a grand vision of the future – and it will be about (and written in collaboration with) the remarkable group of people who are pursuing this vision.

…
——-

And I also reached out directly to several established authors – including Hugh’s business partner Matthew Lynn (at the time I was reading Matthew’s “Birds of Prey” – which is wonderfully written). This is how we eventually get to Hugh (in London) blogging about Exbiblio (in Seattle).

A few weeks ago, at Exbiblio’s invitation, Hugh came to Seattle to see what we were doing and to discuss a possible book. But shortly after he arrived I steered our discussions and efforts to blogging for the company – not least because I wasn’t at all sure I was going to be willing to give up my treasured (and much defended and long preserved) privacy if we ever did decide to do a book.

So Exbiblio engaged Hugh to help with our blog – but Hugh and I also continued to discuss the potential to do a book, and the material it might contain. Indeed, as Hugh and I were sitting in Seattle’s fabulous SeaTac International Airport, with two hours before his return flight to London, I brought our conversation back to this maybe, sometime, probably-never-happen book. Or I thought I did anyway. Hugh thought we were still discussing the Blog.

So I am telling Hugh some of the background behind Exbiblio, my motivations, and a bunch of personal stuff – thinking this is possible material for the book, should we in fact ever decide to do a book.

And Hugh, who is thinking blog, keeps saying things like, “You know, everything you say will look different in print…” and, “You really won’t have a problem if these things are published?”

A few weeks later (as in last night) key parts of this conversation showed up on our blog. Hugh was sound asleep eight time zones away (unfortunately, not exactly “Near Seattle”). So I took his post off the site for 12 hours (hey, it was about me) until I could reach Hugh to discuss it. At which point we discovered some slight differences in how we understood our conversation at the airport. And I realized his post was here to stay.

Welcome to the future of book technology! In this blog entry we will show hackers like yourself how to build your very own interactive book using supplies that are probably already in your home or office. Let’s get started.

Step 1 – Upgrading an Existing Book

Because interactive books are a cutting edge technology, books published with interactivity built in can be very hard to find at your local book store. However, this fact will not discourage the enterprising hacker from upgrading their own books (also known as “modding” a book).

First, find a black permanent pen (Sharpies are a hacker favorite). Then write “Interactive Book” on the cover of the book you would like to upgrade.

Warning: Be careful to use proper penmanship and spelling as the pen you are using is PERMANENT!

That’s it! Now your book is interactive! To make the best use of your interactive book you will want to gather some useful accessories including:

• Highlighter Pen
• Comfortable writing utensil.
• Small pad of paper (Post-Its work too).

When your kit is assembled, you are ready to begin interacting with your book.

Step 2 – Select Some Text

Start by reading the book. When you come across a phrase that you would like to make interactive, highlighting the phrase.

If you have more than one interactive phrase on a page, use a pen to write a unique number next to the phrase. These numbers only need to be unique to the page, because the page number can also help identify a phrase (for example: page 42, #1)

Step 3 – Adding Annotations

To add an annotation or comment, simply write your text in the margin of the page. If the margin does not leave enough room or you would like to attach multimedia content (like a photo), add your comment to a separate piece of paper and staple or paperclip your annotation to the page, as shown below.

Write your initials, date, and page number on all annotations. This will give important context to all future readers.

QUICK TIP: Good annotations will be useful to all future readers. For example, related URLs, insightful comments, or questions are all useful annotations.

As your book gathers more meta-data, it may be full of clippings and marks. Do not worry, this is a sign that your book is becoming more valuable! If the interactive elements make it difficult to read the original text, you may want to purchase a non-interactive book to use in parallel with the interactive version.

Step 4 – Publishing your Annotations

The most important capability of any interactive book is its use as a collaborative medium. Good annotations will breed other good annotations and fruitful discussions may be a positive side effect of well considered questions. To publish your interactive book, hand deliver or mail the book to other readers. It may be helpful to send them a link to this tutorial as a primer if this is their first foray into interactive literature.

QUICK TIP: Choose carefully who you send your valuable book to. A good collaborator will add great value to the book, a bad one won’t read your book, and might not even return it! However, no great reward was ever gained without great risk. Go ahead and send you book to friends, family, strangers you meet on the bus and people you admire (authors may be good collaborators).

Finally, remember to affix the correct postage to your interactive book!

Step 5 – Hacking the Hack

For those who are not afraid of living on the cutting edge. There are even more daring experiments that haven’t been tried yet. You are encouraged to think of your own variations, but here are a few ideas to get you started.

• Make a newspaper interactive
• Send your book to a celebrity
• Begin a relationship by giving an interactive book to an attractive stranger (not recommended for those in committed relationships)
• Start a web site dedicated to interactive books
• Build multi-national business to serve the needs of interactive book enthusiasts.

There is one fact about Exbiblio that it is impossible to get away from: Martin King, the founder, was diagnosed last year with a fatal illness called Multiple Myeloma.

You would not guess that this is a man who has been given a short time to live. He looks well, he discusses many topics with great vigour, and retains the passionate enthusiasm of extreme youth. The only outward sign of anything untoward with his health is his inability to carry a weight above 10LB. Even his beloved Mac Powerbook gives him some discomfort when he brings it to work.

His demeanor shows no trace of fear or self pity. He cheerfully states that his illness will turn his bones into something like Swiss Cheese. The first time he mentioned this to me, he prefaced it by saying that his illness was “fascinating.” He takes large doses of steroids every other day, and these lead to powerful fluctuations in mood, with “up” days and “down” days – but he hides these fluctuations well.

The courage of the man strikes me as quite remarkable, though he modestly states that he is not brave, he merely has no fear at the moment.

“Bravery is about confronting fear. Those who aren’t fearful aren’t brave,” he says.

“Isn’t it natural to be afraid of the unknown?” I ask.

“Or Excited” he reposts – but I think this is just for the sake of argument.

He is willing to approach any subject, even his own demise, with intellectual curiosity. He has come up with a creative way to end things early, if the need arises.

I hope this gives just a little flavour of the man. But obviously this situation has a great bearing on Exbiblio. There is a sense of urgency about Exbiblio’s mission, which might not be quite so intense under other circumstances. Time is really short to get things done. There is also an immediate need to find a new CEO, and that has to be somebody who shares Martin’s values and approach to life, as well as his technical abilities. It’s a tall order.

—————

An Inline Comment From Martin

Not my favorite post – it offends my false sense of modesty. My
fault, not Hugh’s. If anyone cares to know more, I have explained in a seperate post.

There are plenty of books around the Exbiblio offices, including a good selection of classic novels. This is quite natural, as the technology Exbiblio is building has a great deal to do with books. There is also a small selection of business books which seem to have inspired some of the company’s values. One of them is called, The Corporate Mystic. A sentence from near the beginning reads:

“Imagine the power of an organization where everyone was empowered to be a visionary?”

My question is whether this is a recipe for productive and creative chaos, or just chaos?

Values are very important at Exbiblio. The website as it currently stands ranks them as the second tab after “home,” coming before what the company makes or does. The aim of recruitment at the company is to collect together a set of people with values that match Exbiblio’s values.

I’m told that job interviews begin with the question, “Tell me, what is the appropriate response when a pan-handler (a “beggar” in UK speak) asks you for money in the street?” Apparently, there is no single correct answer.

It’s also important that people coming to Exbiblio understand the implications of getting involved in a start-up and that it means a seamless integration between work and personal life. The theory runs that if people make the distinction between work life and personal life, then there is something very wrong going on.

It’s not an aggressive interview by any means. The approach is that Exbiblio is applying to be the employer, but Martin, the founder, admits that he is looking first and foremost for people he would enjoy working with. The conclusion that I draw from this is that the “personal” element is unavoidable in business as elsewhere in life.