The plan · editor

From the talk to the book in four days

The talk was given at 19:00 on Thursday 29 October 2026. The work ended before it: the last change landed at 18:46 (release v0.1.209), and the editor's merge to main at 23:19 published it as v0.2.0 without changing it. The book is analysis written with hindsight, not a dump of the record: what was achieved, in what order, why it worked, what it cost, what went wrong, and what it means. Every chapter ends with where it came from.

The dates

• Friday 30 October

  Round 0: the team stands up

  Repositories up, keys published, the schedule running, the Leanpub book created and the build producing a PDF. The blind repository's agents fired.

• Monday 2 November

  First edition on sale on Leanpub

  The release candidate, the editor's sign-off, on sale. KDP submitted the same day.

• Monday 9 November

  Web Summit opens

  Web Summit runs 9 to 12 November. By then: on Amazon too (KDP review takes up to 72 hours) and a paperback proof ordered. The paperback is the stretch goal.

The rounds

From the conductor's brief. Each round closes with its deliverables in the repository and a release of this site.

1. Round 0 · Friday 30 October, daytime

   Stand up

   • Both repositories up, keys published, the schedule running
   • The Leanpub book created and the build producing an empty PDF
   • The librarian's index started
   • The blind repository's agents fired

2. Round 1 · Friday night

   Index, timeline, controls, plan

   • The librarian's index of the source
   • The historian's timeline of 29 October, with the turning points marked
   • The security member's control register
   • The storyteller's chapter plan, with word budgets
   • The editor signs the plan and the title

3. Round 2 · Saturday 31 October

   Draft

   • Chapters drafted from the plan, each from the record, analysis first
   • The market stream reports: readers and positioning

4. Round 3 · Sunday 1 November

   Read and correct

   • The editor reads on paper; synthetic readers read the draft
   • Corrections; the cover chosen
   • The blind repository's findings compared with the book's own, the differences written up as a chapter

5. Round 4 · Monday 2 November

   Release

   • Release candidate and the editor's sign-off
   • On sale on Leanpub; KDP submitted

6. The week · To Monday 9 November

   Amazon and paper

   • Amazon live
   • The paperback proof
   • The town-planner list started: what a publisher's edit would change

The book names its own phases

• Explorer: the night of the talk: the team that built it, in nineteen hours
• Villager: this edition: the book of the record, written with hindsight in four days
• Town planner: a publisher's edit, later

Source: the conductor's brief, the rounds.