Art Of Community Online

To keep you good folks abreast on the latest updates about the new second edition that I am writing, I am going to start doing some video updates. Here is the first one:

Do let me know what you think in the comments.

With the second edition writing process planned I started by writing the first big new chapter addition; Managing and Tracking Work.

After a fairly ferocious writing period the chapter is now looking pretty good and weighing in currently at around 35 pages. This figure will likely change as we get into the editing process and start refining the raw material there.

The chapter talks about the importance of being able to structure your work in such a way that you can track progress at the project level, work unit level, and work item level. The chapter outlines approaches for how to develop this work plan, execute it, visualize progress, and how to communicate effectively to different stakeholders (such as your community, and for professional community managers, how to communicate to management and senior management). The chapter also talks about how to align your progress tracking with the needs of other stakeholders as well as how to track growth and decline and general community health.

This is very much a first cut of the chapter and I am now giving it a first proof edit. Things are looking pretty solid.

I am keen to learn more from you folks about your experiences of how you track your work and progress and communicate this to different stakeholders. What are your approaches and what do you feel are the most important elements of tracking progress and accomplishments in your work?

Be sure to follow @artofcommunity on Twitter to keep up to date with the latest second edition news!

Forewords are an important consideration when writing any kind of book. The foreword should set the stage for the body of work, and the author passes a strong endorsement for the book.

For the first edition of The Art of Community, Leo Laporte, founder and chief broadcaster for the TWiT Network provided the foreword. Leo’s foreword was personal, spoke well to the subject, and was a great start for the book. Leo set the stage perfectly for the goals of the first edition and what we were striving to accomplish.

When the second edition was confirmed I started thinking who I would like to approach for a new foreword. There was always a first choice in mind, and that person was Chris Anderson.

Chris is the current editor of Wired magazine, winning the National Magazine Award for general excellence three times as part of his tenure. He is also the author of the New York Times best-seller The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. Chris also wrote Free: The Future of a Radical Price and has also been part of The Economist, Nature, and Science. Outside of writing he is actively involved in DIYDrones.

Chris highlighted the first edition of The Art of Community as a book he was enjoying when talking about what he reads in an interview with The Atlantic Wire. I am delighted that he will be setting the stage for the second edition in his unique style.

In August 2009, my book, The Art of Community was published. After a rigorous writing schedule I was delighted to see it finally hit the (real and e-) bookshelves.

As part of the agreement with O’Reilly, I was keen for the book to be released in both print form and under a free Creative Commons license, and O’Reilly happily agreed (they have been releasing many of their books for free for many years). I believe that community management and best practice should be available to all, and not just those with a wallet full of notes, and I can’t think of a better publisher to support this ethos.

If trying to write a great book about your profession was not worrying enough, the really worrying period came next. Would people like it, and would it help them build communities? I wanted to ensure everyone who believed in the book were satisfied when it finally came out.

I worried myself senseless.

This guy got it and likes to read it in front of webcams,

Fortunately, the reception was really quite positive. It was rated #2 in the Top 10 must-have social media books by Mashable, received favourable reviews in the press, and has netted 4 1/2 stars on Amazon USA and Amazon UK, and 4 stars on Amazon Canada. It started being referred to as the leading book on community management and spawned translated editions in Japanese and other languages.

Naturally I was stoked with the reception. Fortunately, the book has sold decently, showing O’Reilly that the Creative Commons approach is good for business, and also that people will indeed buy print copies of media they could get for free. Thankyou to everyone who bought or download the book, and thankyou for your support.

The Second Edition

I few weeks ago I tweeted:

Getting the itch to write a 2nd edition of The Art of Community – would you folks be interested in it? #artofcommunity #oreilly #community

After an eager response I contacted the always awesome Andy Oram from O’Reilly (who was responsible for the first edition happening), and he was interested. I fleshed out some plans, put together a proposal and sent it over. Last week it got approved and this week we finalized the contract.

So, I am delighted to announce that I have started work on a second edition of The Art of Community. I can’t confirm a publishing date yet, but stay tuned.

Keeping Up To Date

Speaking of staying tuned, like with the first edition, I will be blogging throughout the writing process and providing plenty of updates, news, competitions, and features as it continues. You can keep up to date on the official blog, by following the brand new @artofcommunity on Twitter, and on the Facebook page.

When I started work on The Art of Community I was really keen that it should be a body of work that all communities have access to. My passion behind the book was to provide a solid guide to building, energizing and enabling pro-active, productive and enjoyable communities. I wanted to write a book that covered the major areas of community leadership, distilling a set of best practices and experiences, and illustrated by countless stories, anecdotes and tales.

But to give this book real value, I was keen to ensure the book could be freely accessed and shared. I wanted to not only break down the financial barrier to the information, but also enable communities to share it to have the content be as useful as possible in the scenarios, opportunities and problems that face them. To make this happen O’Reilly needed to be on board to allow the book to be freely copied and shared, in an era in which these very freedoms threaten the publishing world.

But they came through. Thanks to the incredible support of Andy Oram, my founding editor for the book, O’Reilly were hugely supportive of the project and our desire to break down these barriers.

Today I am pleased to announce the general availability of The Art Of Community under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

With this license that the book is under you have the following freedoms with the entire content:

• to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
• to Remix — to adapt the work

…with a few requirements:

• Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
• Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
• Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

While the book is ready to download right now, the book is available to buy in print, on Kindle, and other electronic book formats and I would like to encourage you to buy a printed copy of the book for a few reasons:

• Firstly, buying a copy sends a tremendous message to O’Reilly that they should continue to publish books (a) about community and (b) under a Creative Commons license.
• Secondly, it will encourage O’Reilly to invest in a second edition of the book down the line, which will in turn mean that communities around the world will have a refreshed and updated edition that is available to them.
• Thirdly, aside from the voting-with-your-feet side of things, it is just a really nice book to own in print. It is really well made, looks stunning and feels great to curl up with in a coffee shop or on the couch.

The book is available to buy on all the major Amazon sites:

• Canada
• France
• Germany
• Japan
• United States
• United Kingdom

Even if you don’t buy it, I would be hugely grateful that if you like it, please go and review it on Amazon. This is a hugely contribution. Thanks!

You can download the The Art of Community here.