The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation (Theory in Practice)

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. - Publisher 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; and get your community to scale This book guides its readers through the theory and practice of helping a community (with a focus on open source software communities) to achieve its goals. This advice is distilled from Jono Bacon's personal experiences with founding and building the LugRadio podcast / community / live events, the Jokosher audio editor project, and of course his current role as the Ubuntu Community Manager, with plenty of personal anecdotes that provide the rationale for his suggestions. 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. This book helps you 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 art of community Planning your community Communicating clearly Processes: simple is simple Supporting workflow with tools Building buzz Measuring community Governance Handling conflict Creating and running events Hiring a community manager Index From ants to anteaters, bees to beekeepers, community is a fundamental part of our life on the planet.