Synopses & Reviews
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
Synopsis
Building communities is vital today, whether it's to support a software project, an online site, or a company. With The Art of Community, you'll discover how online communities can provide you with a reliable support network, a valuable source of new ideas, and a powerful marketing tool -- important commodities at any time, but especially when money is tight. 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 acquiring the right software tools to learning 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 Make your community scalable
In this book, author Jono Bacon offers a collection of experiences, observations, and thoughts from his decade-long involvement in building and managing communities for open source software. Currently, he's the Community Manager for Ubuntu, arguably the largest community in the open source software arena. His relationships with other community managers, along with his own experience, provide a rich and deep well of expertise for The Art of Community.
Synopsis
This inspirational book explains how to create a community around a project by drawing people to it, motivating them to contribute, and getting the most from them. Building communities is vital today, whether it's to support a software project, an online site, or a company. Communities provide a reliable support network, a source of ideas, and a powerful marketing tool. "The Art of Community" explains the broad range of talents required to recruit, motivate, and manage community members, covering topics ranging from software tools to conflict resolution skills.
About the Author
Jono Bacon is an established writer, developer, and musician. Jono has been working as a full-time writer and technology consultant/developer since 2000, for a variety of publishers and companies. They include Linux Format, Linux Pro, Linux Magazine, Linux User & Developer, Linux Journal, PC Plus, MacFormat, MacTech, Digital Home, Newsforge, Sitepoint, and ContentPeople. Jono has also worked as a writer/consultant/developer for Trolltech, Apple, theKompany.com, the University of Wolverhampton, Delta Institute, and others. In addition to this work, Jono has been a part of the Linux community since 1998 and has worked for various free software projects including KDE and Kafka, and he founded Linux UK, the KDE Usability Study, KDE::Enterprise, and the Infopoint Project. He currently works on various free software projects, as well as for OpenAdvantage in Birmingham, UK, as a professional open source consultant.
Table of Contents
Foreword; Preface; Documenting the Undocumented; Who Is This Book For?; The Road Ahead; If You Like (or Don't Like) This Book; License; Join Our Community; Typographical Conventions Used in This Book; How to Contact O'Reilly; Safari® Books Online; Acknowledgments; Chapter 1: The Art of Community; 1.1 Collaboration-Driven Ethos; 1.2 The Essence of Community; 1.3 The Basis of Communication; 1.4 Unwrapping Opportunity; 1.5 A Community Manager: Becoming the Community; 1.6 Moving Forward; Chapter 2: Planning Your Community; 2.1 Planning for Success; 2.2 Teams: The Building Blocks of Belonging; 2.3 Designing Your Community; 2.4 Filling Out the Plan; 2.5 Pulling Together the Threads; 2.6 Documenting Your Strategy; 2.7 Wrapping Up; Chapter 3: Communicating Clearly; 3.1 He Said, She Said; 3.2 Building Your Communication Channels; 3.3 Leading by Example; 3.4 Summary; Chapter 4: Processes: Simple Is Sustainable; 4.1 Eyes on the Prize; 4.2 Building Great Processes; 4.3 Assessing Needs; 4.4 Getting Buy-In for Your Processes; 4.5 Process Reassessment; 4.6 Moving On; Chapter 5: Supporting Workflow with Tools; 5.1 Understanding Your Workflow; 5.2 Building Great Infrastructure; 5.3 Avoiding Resource Fetishism; 5.4 Technical Considerations; 5.5 Building and Maintaining Transparency; 5.6 Regular Workflow Assessment; 5.7 Moving On; Chapter 6: Building Buzz; 6.1 Mindshare; 6.2 The Building Blocks of Buzz; 6.3 Setting Up Your Base; 6.4 The Buzz Cycle; 6.5 Buzz Targets; 6.6 Building Alliances; 6.7 Summary; Chapter 7: Measuring Community; 7.1 Community Self-Reflection; 7.2 The Foundations of Feedback; 7.3 Hooks 'n' Data; 7.4 Anonymity and Privacy; 7.5 Moving On; Chapter 8: Governance; 8.1 Accountability; 8.2 Governance Does Not Suck; 8.3 Governance and Community; 8.4 The Case for Governance; 8.5 Learning from the Leaders; 8.6 Setting Up a Community Council; 8.7 Ubuntu Governance Example; 8.8 Expanding Governance; 8.9 Summary; Chapter 9: Handling Conflict; 9.1 The Nature of the Beast; 9.2 The Calm Before the Storm; 9.3 The Conflict Resolution Process; 9.4 Dealing with Burnout; 9.5 Summary; Chapter 10: Creating and Running Events; 10.1 Building Family Values; 10.2 Events; 10.3 Getting Organized; 10.4 Organizing Physical Events; 10.5 Getting Sponsorship; 10.6 Organizing Online Events; 10.7 Summary; Chapter 11: Hiring a Community Manager; 11.1 Why Community Building Has Become a Big Business; 11.2 The Role of a Community Manager in the Corporation; 11.3 Managing Your Community Manager; 11.4 Summary; 11.5 End of Part One; Colophon;