The #badversion of Augmented Collaboration is the final stage of a year-long co-creation, and the moment we open the project up to everyone else.
When we decided to publish this book, we made a decision that goes against everything traditional publishing teaches you. We are doing one print run of Augmented Collaboration before it is fully finished, in a limited working edition we have stamped #badversion on the cover. 500 copies. 250 of those go directly to the co-creators of the book, the people who spent a year building it with us. The other 250 go on sale to the world.
If you have not heard of a #badversion before, I want to take a moment to explain what we mean by it, why we are doing this at all, and why the timing matters.
What a #badversion actually is
A #badversion is exactly what it sounds like. A working edition of a book, printed before everything is polished, resolved, and safely locked away. As we put it in the book itself, it captures the thinking as it stands now. Close but still open. Shaped but still moving. Useful but not yet complete. It is a deliberate step in the process, not a preview or a placeholder.
A #badversion is also not a marketing decision. The book itself, in Part III, argues that teams should share "Bad versions" of their own work as a deliberate innovation practice. Sharing the bad version, the book says, encourages early exposure of thinking, lets feedback arrive before conclusions harden, and changes the role of leadership inside collaboration. By printing our own book as a #badversion, we are doing the thing the book argues for. The book is the proof of its own argument.
Why we are doing this at all
The book argues, throughout, that the best work emerges from groups thinking together, around the same problem, in the same shared space. It would have been strange to write that book in private and unveil it as a polished, finished object. So we did the opposite. We released it early. We made it physical. We let it move into people's hands while there was still time for the work to keep changing.
This is what we have learned in the past year about why early sharing works. Ideas become stronger when they are exposed to friction. Arguments sharpen when they are challenged. Gaps become visible when others read the work, question it, and disagree. We were not looking for polite approval. We were looking for useful tension, the kind of feedback that improves the work and forces better decisions.
The 500-copy print run
This is the practical part. We are doing one print run of the #badversion. 500 copies. That is the entire run. 250 of those copies are going directly to the 250 co-creators of the book, the people who spent a year shaping the argument with us. That leaves 250 #badversion copies available to the world, on sale now.
Once those 250 public copies are gone, that is it. The next time this book is on paper will be the final, polished version on 1 September 2026. If you want to be part of the second wave of readers, the wave that holds the working edition in their hands, this is the only window. There will not be another print run of the #badversion.
The final version arrives 1 September 2026
The final version of Augmented Collaboration arrives on 1 September 2026. It will be the polished, completed book. Each tool will sit behind a QR code on the page that opens a matching live Miro template, so teams can move directly from the book into their own canvases. Everything that has changed during the #badversion period will be reflected in the final pages.
Between now and then, every conversation, comment, and reaction the team receives has a real chance of shaping what the final book becomes. That is the point of the #badversion. The book stops being ours and starts being shared.
How to take part
Whether you have been following this project for a year or this is the first you have heard of it, the #badversion is open to you in two forms. A softcover copy from the limited run of 250 available to the public, while they last. A digital edition, immediately available, with no limit on copies. The final version, with QR codes linking each tool to a live Miro template, arrives on 1 September 2026 and can be pre-ordered today. If reading it sparks a reaction you want to share, get in touch or reply to any of our posts. We are listening to everything between now and the final version.
This is the publishing decision most teams would never make. We are confident enough in the argument inside the book to put the book itself through the same practice.
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