Art & Science. The 2015 Betaworks Shareholders’ Book.

A year has passed since we printed the first Shareholders’ Book. Our original idea was to gather some of our thoughts about the products we had made and the patterns we had seen in the previous year and commit them to paper. As a prototype the book seemed to work well. So here we are again.

Last year the book was 140 pages. A sort of in-joke on my part. I used to say that I couldn’t explain betaworks in 140 characters so I tried 140 pages. This year we are clocking in at 196 pages. So we have put on some weight but hopefully it’s all muscle.

The book is divided into three sections; Boundary Issues on the Digital Frontier, Betaworks, behind the Plywood Curtain and Peeling Back the Media Skin.

We open with a review of the past year and a somewhat deeper dive into our investments. In a world of very little transparency we thought it would be interesting to be more open about our numbers. John goes into some detail in the book and in this post. TL:DR; over the last six years we have invested $13m receiving a return of $71m. Not too shabby.

In the first section we cover some of the interesting technology shifts we have noted such as Augmented Intelligence (a piece that is featured in Medium’s Backchannel) and how to curate attention.

In the second section we look at our products and ask the good people at betaworks to write about what makes New York a great place to live and some of the things that keep them sane outside of work.

And in the third part we captured some thoughts on media including media hacking, where people are using social media to usurp traditional media for propagandist purposes, what happens when you buy 5000 fake twitter followers and why brands are like religion.

Some great guest writers were kind enough to cover topics such as internet art, meditation and the WNYC Bored and Brilliant campaign — thank you to them.

Each year we collaborate with an artist. One of the things that we feel makes betaworks different is the commitment to fusing art and science. We hope all of our products come from creative thoughts but are built upon a rock-solid foundation of code and hard-core data.

With that in mind when I saw the illustrations of Henry McCausland on tumblr I thought he would be perfect as a collaborator. Henry has a unique style that perfectly combines nature — often with the use of brushstrokes — and technology.

Henry was supposed to visit us to get the betaworks vibe but his flight was cancelled due to that snowstorm that never really happened. One instance where technology and nature failed to sync up. Thankfully, he seemed to grasp what we are all about and day-after-day another amazing illustration appeared in my inbox. So a huge thanks to Henry.

We deliberately kept the print run small last year. We wanted the book to have value. This year although the print run is the same we are looking into ways of publishing the content as an app. Make sure to sign up for OpenBeta — our weekly newsletter — if you would like to know more about when that comes out.

Now to crack open all those cases, inhale the aroma of fresh print and hope a copy makes it onto the hotdudesreading instagram feed.

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