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