Introducing the BIF Bookclub

Posted by Saul Kaplan on February 17, 2009

My motive for starting a BIF Book Group is selfish. I like good books and talking about them with people who are smarter than me. Our BIF community of innovators loves to read, write, and share ideas about good books. It is that simple. We are also blessed with many authors in the BIF community. At BIF-4 last year, we had a table overflowing with books authored by summit storytellers and BIF research advisors. We will need a bigger table for BIF-5 in October.

 Book groups are famous for starting out strong and then losing steam. They tend to bring together people with scarily similar experiences and than exclude those that don’t know the secret code. They don’t scale well. They tend to be less and less about the books over time. How many book group meetings have you shown up at where it seems that you are the only one who has actually read the book? I like the perfunctory wine, cheese, and crackers but with the smart, irreverent, and eclectic innovators in the BIF community, there must be a better way to run a book group.

We plan to give it the ole college try. The BIF Book Group will be simple. We're going to create a home for our group to interact virtually on the BIF site. Suggestions for books will come from our community. New members will always be welcome. We will rotate facilitation responsibility to any member interested and enable all members to pose questions and share ideas with the group. We will start with a simple facilitated message board approach so that you can visit and post comments at your convenience. Later, if the group wants to interact in real time, we can do that too.

When possible, we will interact directly with the author. Our first book, The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson, gives us that opportunity. Steven is a friend of BIF and a past storyteller at BIF-3 Summit. He'll be back at BIF in Providence on March 16th to discuss his new book with our local community. If you are in the area you will want to join us in person. If you are not, we are planning a couple of ways for out-of-town book group members to participate. We will be polling our book group for the questions that we want to ask Steven directly on March 16th and posting his answers on the book group site. We will also be tweeting live from the event on Twitter to enable anyone who is interested in participating directly.

Lets get started and in true BIF fashion we will innovate as we go. To begin, start reading The Invention of Air. Through a little-known historical story, Steven explores very BIF-like themes that have long engaged him: how innovative ideas emerge and spread in a society. The book chronicles the efforts of 18th century scientist and philosopher Joseph Priestly. A protégé of Benjamin Franklin, friend of Thomas Jefferson and radical thinker who played key roles in the invention of ecosystem science, the discovery of oxygen, the founding of the and the intellectual development of the United States, Priestly exerted profound influence on the shape and course of America's great experiment in nation-building.

Registration details for our virtual book club will be available in early March. In the meantime, if you would like to be part of the group or have suggestions on its structure, drop me a line. I look forward to learning from you.

RELATED

Register to attend the Steven Johnson book discussion here at our BIF offices on March 16th

Watch Steven Johnson talk about another one of his great books, Ghost Map, at the BIF-3 Summit

Learn more about Steven Johnson

Get the book The Invention of Air