It was an unexpected and heartfelt invitation from my friend and colleague Holger Scholz last year:  "Let's do something together!".  And somewhat later on:  "I've really been feeling that we need to focus on what is underneath all the tools and methods.  I think our retreat should be called THE ART OF HOSTING YOURSELF."  And that opened a deep and fluid inquiry between us into the heart of what it means to be a practitioner, a leader and a host.  And over the time we spent together, we became a circle of 12 holding this focus between us in a four day retreat earlier this month.

Holger and I have known each other for more than 10 years now.  We have taken our facilitation practices in different directions, but somehow the core of what we are most interested in has created an ongoing conversation between us.  What does it mean to be a practitioner?  What is at the core of deeply masterful, humanly focused leadership -- whether that is in...

The pieces:  3 co-editors based in three different timezones, 45 co-authors located all over the globe, more than 600 pages of written material, 3 days, the dream of creating a book that will impact and uplift a field of practice, 1 host.

The result:  A vibrant, connected, innovative and inspired body of material ready to become a best seller called The Visual Facilitation Field Guide and a group of participants fired up about what they learned and where they could take it.

How it worked:  This was the second time I hosted a booksprint.  I fell into the first one, invited by a group of people who wanted to put their talents to work in a different way than simply writing a report to close their two years of researching together.  What I experienced there led me to believe that there is both a strength and little bit of magic to hothousing a collaborative project together. 

When I met Jeroen Blijsie at the International Forum of Visual Practitioners (IFVP...