The Guild Awakens

(Originally posted by Nathan K. Finney on January 16, 2016)

Grabbing drinks can be a powerful tool for collaboration. This has been written about fairly recently by quite a few people, including Doctrine Man, John Silk, and others (I even jumped into the ring discussing the “Cigars, Scotch, & Strategy” group I started in DC). The same dynamic still rings true even if it’s just a one-on-one gathering to catch up.

A little over a year ago I was bouncing around the idea of trying to amplify the work of the growing group of military writers I was continually running into (and collaborating with) online. Twitter [was] a phenomenal tool for colliding with people of similar interests — especially if they’re prolific writers/tweeters — and have quick conversations, but much harder to create a shared space among strangers. Enter a social call with Ori Brafman at the Willard Hotel.

I’ve known Ori for years — since his work with the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command following the publication of his book Starfish and the Spider. If you know Ori, you know there were about a thousand ideas he and I threw back and forth…but the one that jumped out at me was a group he was forming called the Silicon Guild. The intent of that group, started by Ori and Peter Sims, another prolific business-world idea man, was to gather those like-minded writers to amplify their work on trends in business and society. The next day I went in search of said guild and found this phenomenal post about the power of guild-like organizations in a disaggregated world (a world like that we are continually seeing created by the internet).

Empowered by this idea, I shot a note to a handful of the most solid, energetic writers I knew in the military space (ultimately becoming the founding members)…paying close attention to cover the majority of the military services and even the defense industrial base. We batted around a few ideas, created a logo, developed a website, and wrote a charter. We had a guild.

Now what?

I’ll let our members speak for themselves. From peer-reviewed journals to short stories and books, our members have helped define the military and veteran writing space [since] 2015.

Find out more about our members’ work, our programs, and how to become a member.