Community is a funny ol’ word. In recent years our humble nine-letter friend has come to mean many things to many people. No longer merely the domain of charity groups and overtly friendly neighbors, community has gone on to be the talk of technologists, businesspeople, politicians, students, welfare groups, and just about anyone who has connected to the Internet. Throughout this explosive community lovefest, a minor detail has been omitted in all the excitement: how on earth do we build an inspiring, engaging, and enjoyable community in our own walk of life?
Toward the end of summer 2008 I received a phone call from Andy Oram, a well-respected author and editor at O’Reilly. Although at the start of the call Andy was soliciting advice for building community in the educational world, the call ended by sowing the seeds for The Art of Community.
Andy’s interest in putting together this book was intriguing, but it could not have come at a more complicated time. My days were hectic as the Ubuntu community manager, leading my team to grow, refine, and optimize the global Ubuntu community; I was in the midst of recording a solo metal album as part of a new Creative Commons project called Severed Fifth; I was coorganizing LugRadio Live 2008, recording and producing LugRadio shows every two weeks; and I was making plans to relocate to California. I had written three books before and I was intimately aware of just how incredibly time-consuming the process can be. Writing a book is like having a baby: it requires care and attention, and typically results in late nights, lack of sleep, and heartburn. Consequently, my best friend (who is also an author) and I had struck a no-more-books pact.
Despite all of this, I was intrigued. Community and the skills involved in motivating, building, and inspiring it were rampantly undocumented, and much of my own skills had been developed through trial and error, exposing myself to different communities and observing how they worked. I was fortunate enough to have cut my teeth in community in some compelling environments, and I had always wanted to write a book on the topic.
Fortunately none of these aforementioned challenges made any difference when I talked it through with my best friend, Stuart. He and I have been discussing, debating, and at times arguing about community since 1999, and he knows my views, perspectives, drive, and ambitions about community better than anyone. What’s more, he had been wittering on about me writing something down about community, despite our no-more-books pact. Ten minutes with that ginger ball of fury and my mind was made up: it was time to buy some antiheartburn pills and get some coffee in....
Part of my initial hesitation in writing a book on community was that I knew it was going to be a tough one to write. In my talks at conferences I often referred to my role as “herding cats.” Much of the art of community is subtle, undocumented, and unwritten, and much of my own approach was largely the product of feeling my way around in the dark and learning from what I found. I knew that to write this book I would need to think carefully about not only how to articulate these topics, but also how to handle the more complex challenge of structuring this stream of consciousness into a consistent read that, y’know, actually makes sense.
With this I wrote the first edition and I was proud of the results. The book brought together many of the primary elements involved in building a productive, collaborative community. To do this I distilled my own experiences and insight along with wisdom from others and illustrated these topics using a wealth of examples, stories, and anecdotes. The book started by taking a high-level view of how communities work at a social science level, and then delved straight into topics such as strategic planning, communicating well, building effective and nonbureaucratic processes and infrastructure, creating buzz and excitement, handling conflict and burnout, measuring community, creating and managing governance, organizing events, and even how to hire a community manager.
When I released the first edition in 2009 I was terrified of how it would be received. The first edition presented a book about a topic that few other books had covered, was a challenge to structure in a logical way (community management topics all intermingle like a spider web), and I wasn’t sure if I had hit the right mark with the content. With a nervous twitch I watched it go to press.
Fortunately the book did well. It netted positive reviews and my original worries were alleviated. As the book started to spread I was delighted to see reader feedback, opinions, and ideas shared with me across the various social networks and over email. I continued to push and promote the book, and particularly that the content could be shared freely, and it was wonderful to see various communities and their leaders enjoying the book and finding the content empowering.
Over the next few years I continued doing what I was doing; my Ubuntu community management team grew, Severed Fifth started taking off, I started doing the Shot Of Jaq podcast, and I got the Community Leadership Summit up and running. Across these various projects and spending time with the folks involved I continued to learn more and more about community management and leadership.
As time went on my pride of the first edition was increasingly augmented with a list of things I wanted to add to it—exciting new approaches, ideas, and topics that I had learned and developed that I wanted to share with the readers who had been so generous in their feedback about the first edition. As such, I wrote to Andy Oram to suggest the idea of a second edition. As ever, Andy was supportive and I started putting together content for the book you hold here in your hand (or computer, tablet, or phone).
For this fully revised second edition, I have been through the entire text and added various additional pieces of information, clarified certain points, and refined and updated the content. I have also added a number of new big pieces of content. This includes three new chapters:
- Chapter 6, Social Media
With the advent and popularity of social media this new chapter covers the major social media networks (Twitter, Facebook, and Google+) and the different strategic and day-to-day approaches to harnessing social media for your community.
- Chapter 8, Measuring Community
This entirely new chapter presents approaches and techniques for tracking the work your community or team commits to and methods of keeping this work on track. This is important in delivering value to your community, particularly within the context of volunteers working together effectively to deliver projects.
- Chapter 14, Community Case Book
This book is all about stories and using stories to share experiences and lessons to help you develop your skills as a community manager. This chapter provides a collection of interviews with established community leaders such as Linus Torvalds (creator of Linux), Tim O’Reilly (founder of O’Reilly Media), Mike Shinoda (cofounder of Linkin Park), Mary Colvig (community leader at Mozilla), and many others. I hope you find these stories as inspiring as I did.
There has also been a wealth of additional content draped throughout the existing chapters. This includes:
A discussion in Chapter 2 of methods for generating revenue to financially support your community
Additions to Chapter 7 for how to coordinate event attendance, create effective presentations, and deliver great talks
A discussion in Chapter 8 about how to react to community concerns in a structured and feedback-oriented way
Several additional conflict and relationship scenarios in Chapter 11 and how to handle them
A significant addition to Chapter 12 for how to create a community summit, using the Ubuntu Developer Summit as an outline
Of course, there are many additional sidebars, clarifications, notes, and other pieces hidden throughout the book, too.
While this edition provides a solid map for the road ahead, I am a firm believer that the road map will continue to expand and take on color and texture through further editions. Community leadership is still very much a young science, and this book is still very much on that journey.
Where much of this insight will continue to grow is on the book’s website at http://www.artofcommunityonline.org and at the annual community leadership event that I organize, the Community Leadership Summit. I would like to invite all of you good people to first enjoy The Art of Community and to then provide your own feedback, stories, and experiences to guide future editions.
This book was written to be open and applicable to a wide range of communities. While O’Reilly is traditionally a computer book publisher, The Art of Community is not specifically focused on computing communities, and the vast majority of its content is useful for political groups, digital rights, knitting, and beyond.
Within this wide range of possible communities, this book will be useful for a range of readers:
- Professional community managers
If you work in the area of community management professionally
- Volunteers and community leaders
If you want to build a strong and vibrant community for your volunteer project
- Commercial organizations
If you want to work with, interact with, or build a community around your product or service
- Open source developers
If you want to build a successful project, manage contributors, and build buzz
- Marketeers
If you want to learn about viral marketing and building a following around a product or service
- Activists
If you want to get people excited about your cause
Every chapter in this book is applicable to each of these roles. While technology communities provide many examples throughout the book, understanding these examples requires little technical knowledge.
Throughout this book we are going to delve into the wide range of topics that face those of us who want to build and inspire great communities. Page after page we are going to weave an intricate web of the concepts, skills, and approaches involved in energizing a vibrant community and helping the members of that community to energize themselves.
This book is divided into 15 chapters, with each building on what went before. Let’s take a quick glance at the road ahead:
- Chapter 1, The Art of Community
We begin the book with a bird’s-eye view of how communities function at a social science level. We cover the underlying nuts and bolts of how people form communities, what keeps them involved, and the basis and opportunities behind these interactions.
- Chapter 2, Planning Your Community
Next we carve out and document a blueprint and strategy for your community and its future growth. Part of this strategy includes the target objectives and goals and how the community can be structured to achieve them.
- Chapter 3, Communicating Clearly
At the heart of community is communication, and great communicators can have a tremendously positive impact. Here we lay down the communications backbone and the best practices associated with using it.
- Chapter 4, Processes: Simple Is Sustainable
We then move on to focus on putting the facilities in place for your community to do great things. In this chapter we build simple, effective, and nonbureaucratic processes that enable your community to conduct tasks, work together, and share their successes.
- Chapter 5, Supporting Workflow with Tools and Data
We continue our discussion of community facilities to build workflows that are driven by accessible, sensible, and rock-solid tools that enable your contributors to do great work quickly and easily.
- Chapter 6, Social Media
We now take a look at social networking, what it is, how it can help us, how to avoid the hype, and how to harness it in our communities.
- Chapter 7, Building Buzz
With a solid foundation in place, we move on to build excitement and buzz around your community and encourage and enthuse every man and his dog to get involved and participate.
- Chapter 8, Measuring Community
Although many consider community touchy-feely and unmeasurable, this chapter confronts the myth and guides you in tracking, monitoring, and otherwise measuring the work going on in the community so that it can be optimized and simplified.
- Chapter 9, Managing and Tracking Work
Continuing on from measuring our community, we now explore methods by which you can ensure that your community projects and participants stay on track and deliver great results.
- Chapter 10, Governance
Our next stop is the wide-ranging and seemingly complex topic of governance. We explore what options are available for a low-friction, capable, and representative governance strategy for your community.
- Chapter 11, Handling Conflict and Relationships
One of the most sensitive topics in community leadership is handling conflict. In this chapter we explore how to identify, handle, and prevent irksome conflict; handle divisive personalities; and unblock problems.
- Chapter 12, Creating and Running Events
Events offer an excellent opportunity for your community to bond, be productive, and have fun, and this is where we cast our beady eye in this chapter.
- Chapter 13, Hiring a Community Manager
We now explore some advice and guidance for organizations that want to hire a community manager to conduct and implement the wide range of topics that we have discussed throughout the book.
- Chapter 14, Community Case Book
Next I present a fascinating collection of interviews from accomplished community builders about how they created their own inspirational communities to help round off your knowledge with the experiences of these leaders.
- Chapter 15, Onward and Upward
Finally, we close The Art of Community with some additional resources and events to continue your journey.
Each of these broad topics is a piece in the jigsaw puzzle, a note in the song, and a letter in the book. Step by step we will discuss these topics using a liberal supply of stories, anecdotes, and examples to illuminate the path ahead. As we continue throughout the book, more and more of the road will become clear, and you will begin to develop your own approaches, patterns, and methods of engaging your own community.
If you like—or don’t like—this book, by all means, please let people know. Amazon reviews are one popular way to share your happiness (or lack of happiness), or you can leave reviews at the site for the book:
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There’s also a link to errata there. Errata gives readers a way to let us know about typos, errors, and other problems with the book. That errata will be visible on the page immediately, and we’ll confirm it after checking it out. O’Reilly can also fix errata in future printings of the book and on Safari Books Online, making for a better reader experience pretty quickly.
This book was very carefully licensed to ensure that everyone has access to the content. O’Reilly and I believe that community and the skills that encompass the growth and management of community should be available to everyone. We don’t believe that only people who can afford to buy books should have access to this information. With this in mind, The Art of Community has been licensed in a way that ensures that everyone has access to the information.
The book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.
This license allows you to freely download the book and share it with your friends. The license also allows you to freely copy content from the book and share it with others or in other (noncommercial) documents under the requirement that you credit the work to The Art of Community (O’Reilly) by Jono Bacon. You are not allowed to commercially redistribute the book; if you want to discuss commercial redistribution or commercial opportunities, please contact O’Reilly.
Since I began working on The Art of Community, this book has developed its own community, which is primarily composed of those who are passionate about building strong and compelling communities.
The hub of this activity is at http://www.artofcommunityonline.org. The website has a range of features available at the time of this writing, and likely will have many more when you get there:
- Download the book
You can download the full version of the book, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.
- Stay up-to-date
Get updates on the book, and share and read about success stories of communities that are using the book.
- Discuss success stories
The website is filled with resources in which you can chat and talk about great community building with other readers.
- Learn more
Stories, case studies, and other content are regularly published to the site, to help build your knowledge.
- Provide feedback
The website is a great place to leave feedback about the book for future editions.
In addition to the main website, you can also keep up-to-date with news on the book and other community-building stories on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jonobacon.
The following typographical conventions are used in this book:
- Italic
Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, and directories.
Note
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This book was a long time coming, and I want to thank a number of people who directly and indirectly helped me to make this book a reality. First and foremost I want to thank my incredible family: my wonderful and hugely encouraging wife, Erica; my Mum and Dad; Martin and Simon; Grandad; Joe; Sue; Adam; and Emily. Thanks also to my best pal Aq for bullying me into writing this book; to the horsemen Daniel Holbach, Jorge Castro, David Planella, Michael Hall, and Nicholas Skaggs on my team at Canonical; and to Rick Spencer, Matt Zimmerman, Mark Shuttleworth, and the LugRadio Team (Adam, Chris, Ade, and Matt).
I also want to express huge thanks to the many people who contributed the stories and interview content that is featured in this book. Your contributions have added flesh to the bones and helped to illustrate the book so well. Thanks also to the many people who are featured in the book’s stories and examples; those experiences have taught me so much and allowed me to share this knowledge with my readers.
I also want to give my utmost thanks and gratitude to Andy Oram from O’Reilly for making this book happen, and to Simon St. Laurent and Isabel Kunkle for lending their editing prowess. Also, thanks to our fantastic team of review editors: Stephen Walli, Stuart Langridge, Amber Graner, and Erica Bacon.
Finally, huge thanks to everyone who has supported my work and the book on http://www.artofcommunityonline.org/ and http://www.jonobacon.org/, and to the hundreds of people who have spread the word through their blogs, podcasts, Twitter/identi.ca feeds, Facebook, and elsewhere. I appreciate every ounce of your support!
All right, ’nuff chatting. Let’s get started....
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