The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation

Online communities offer a wide range of opportunities today, whether you're supporting a cause, marketing a product or service, or developing open source software. The Art of Community will help you develop the broad range of talents you need to recruit members to your community, motivate and manage them, and help them become active participants.

Author Jono Bacon offers a collection of experiences and observations from his decade-long involvement in building and managing communities, including his current position as manager for Ubuntu, arguably the largest community in open source software. You'll discover how a vibrant community can provide you with a reliable support network, a valuable source of new ideas, and a powerful marketing force.

The Art of Community will help you:

• Develop a strategy, with specific objectives and goals, for building your community
• Build simple, non-bureaucratic processes to help your community perform tasks, work together, and share successes
• Provide tools and infrastructure that let contributors work quickly
• Create buzz around your community to get more people involved
• Track the community's work so it can be optimized and simplified
• Explore a capable, representative governance strategy for your community
• Identify and manage conflict, including dealing with divisive personalities

Building communities is vital today, whether it's to support a software project, an online site, or a company. Online communities not only provide a reliable support network, but also a source of ideas, and a powerful marketing tool — especially when money is tight. In The Art of Community, you'll learn about the broad range of talents required to recruit members, motivate and manage them, and make them happy to be part of your community. The book takes you through each stage of community building, from software tools to conflict resolution skills, and teaches you how to:

• Establish sustainable processes for management
• Acquire useful tools and infrastructure
• Build buzz around your project
• Measure aspects of community success
• Handle conflict management
• Manage live events
• Get your community to scale

Author Jono Bacon has been building and managing communities for a decade, particularly in areas of open source software, such as KDE and Ubuntu. Currently, he's the Community Manager for Ubuntu, arguably the largest community in the open-source software arena. His experience and his relationships with other community managers provide a rich and deep well of expertise for The Art of Community.

Jono Bacon is an award-winning leading community manager, author and consultant. Currently the community manager for the worldwide Ubuntu community, Bacon is a regular keynote speaker, has also authored four books and acted as a consultant to a range of technology companies. Bacon's weblog (http://www.jonobacon.org/) is one of the widest read Open Source weblogs and he writes regularly about community management.

ForewordPrefaceChapter 1: The Art of CommunityChapter 2: Planning Your CommunityChapter 3: Communicating ClearlyChapter 4: Processes: Simple Is SustainableChapter 5: Supporting Workflow with ToolsChapter 6: Building BuzzChapter 7: Measuring CommunityChapter 8: GovernanceChapter 9: Handling ConflictChapter 10: Creating and Running EventsChapter 11: Hiring a Community ManagerColophon