Art Of Community Online

Hi everyone, I have a few exciting updates.

A little while back I posted the first few pages of the introductory first chapter. Now I want to share with you the main section headings:

• The Art Of Community
• The Essence Of Community
  • Building Belonging Into The Social Economy
  • The Basis of Communication
• Unwrapping Opportunity
• Becoming The Community
  • Cracking Open The Personality
  • Trust Is Everything
  • Avoid Ego, Or Others Will Avoid You
  • Theory vs. Action. Action Wins
  • Becoming Yourself
• Moving Forward

Weighing in at around 15 pages, the chapter sets the story for the rest of the book.

While we are on the subject of the broad introduction to the book, I am going to take another snippet from the book, this time from the Trust Is Everything section in this first chapter:

Trust Is Everything

At the heart of this enablement is trust. As we have already discussed, community is fundamentally a social economy, and its participants build up social capital via their contributions. With social capital being, by its very nature, a product of social interaction, trust is critical. If people in a community don’t trust you, you will be met with caution and you will struggle to build your social capital.

This is true for participants, but for community leaders and managers, trust is a whole new ball game. Trust in leadership is essential. Earlier, we explored the example of Barack Obama stepping forward to enthuse a nation in turbulent times. Part of the reason why those times were turbulent was a significant lack of trust in President George W. Bush. When trust vanishes, words and promises lose their meaning. When trust is present, words and promises flourish in a world where they have purpose and potential.

Trust, though, is not something you can learn. You are either trusted or you are not. As my father in law said to my family one evening over dinner, “live your life honestly – if you don’t, you always have to remember to not be yourself”. His words teach an important lesson – when trust is implicit in every step you take, you can always be confident in the transparency and openness of your actions. This is the most important aspect of community management, and of life itself.

Part of the reason why trust is so critical is that, as a community manager, you want to be emotionally close to everyone in your community. You want everyone in that community to think of you as an accessible, approachable, sensitive person, and trust is required for any of these roles. People will approach you for advice, for guidance, to discuss personal issues, to handle conflict, and more. Many of these situations will be complex, and will require a significant level of sensitivity and confidence.

Part of achieving that sense of trust and confidence is having a firm foundation of understanding and patience. You should be aware right now that some people are going to frustrate you. Some people will be too quick to act and opine on a subject, and some will be too timid and reluctant to put their head above the pulpit. Some people will obsess about the wrong things and regularly produce what appears to be a tempest in a teacup.

But then again, some people will inspire you with their sense of responsibility, their ability to react to situations with grace and elegance, and their willingness to care for the community. As a community manager you will experience all sides of human nature, from strength and innovation to weakness and uncertainty. Whatever you hear from your community, you should endeavor to be the best listener that you can.

When you can demonstrate trust and the capability to listen, your community will develop respect for you. They will be there to listen to you, work with you, to stand side-by-side with you in your battles and become a large extended family that you can rely on.

This respect has an important function in re-enforcing belief in your community. When community members have responsive positive interactions with community leaders, it makes the community feel more inclusive, which generates belief and importantly, belonging.

Respect is a wonderful gift, and you should cherish it and protect it at all costs. Getting that respect back after you lose it is a near-impossible task.

Well, with the project officially announced, I think it may be time for a sneak peek. What better to kick off a sneak peek than to share with you the very first two pages of the book, lovingly reproduced here for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Chapter 1

The Art Of Community

“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent Van Gogh

As my watch ticked over to 6pm, I knew I was in trouble. First of all, I was late, and not fashionably late either. In fact, at the time, I was about as unfashionable as you could get for someone staring 18 down the barrel. Long hair, Iron Maiden t-shirt, baggy camouflage trousers and a thumping-great leather jacket. I left my parents house and got into my small van, adorned with oversized speakers and a tree shaped air freshener. It was time to roll.

“Rolling” was optimistic. Instead, I sat in bumper-to-bumper in traffic with half of Southern England, all joined in curiosity about whether or not that film with Michael Douglas could become a reality on this cold English day.

This wasn’t helping my nerves. As a fairly outgoing angsty teen, nerves were not usually my bag but tonight, I was dining on them.

You see, tonight was different. Tonight I was doing something unusual, something that had seemed like a great idea…when I wasn’t running 30minutes late, hammering my way down the motorway, with my Number Of The Beast cassette ritualistically sacrificed to the gods of hi-fi just for good measure.

Thankfully, the world’s longest mechanical conga line decided to crank it up a notch. Before I knew it I found myself on a street I had never been to, in a city I had never been to, about to head into a room full of people I had never met before, all united by one simple symbol…

…a penguin.

An hour ago that penguin had seemed so inviting and friendly. It was a symbol that encompassed everything about the movement it represented: a movement that came together in spirit and mind to build a system that drove a new generation of technology and freedom…a movement that celebrated this drive by forming user groups in unknown streets, in unknown cities and with unknown people.

But as I stood there, doorbell already pressed, none of that was even close to my conscious thoughts. Instead, the brain of one Jonathan E J Bacon was buttoning down the hatches, preparing for ultimate, unparalleled discomfort as I walked into a place where I both did and didn’t want to be at the same time.

Then, the door opened and a rather nice chap called Neil welcomed me into his home.

Community is a funny beast. Most people– the kind who watch talent shows on television and occasionally dip bread in oil in an expensive restaurant– don’t understand people like Neil. Why on earth would this guy decide to open his home, free of charge, to a collection of strangers who met on the Internet?

Why would he want to spend an evening drinking tea and making jokes about something called ‘emacs’? And why would he fund online resources like fliers, a mailing list, and a website from his own pocket, start a book lending service for the group–and even shell out for tea and biscuits?

One person who really didn’t seem to understand was Neil’s wife. Somewhat bemused, and referring to us as his ‘Internet friends’, Neil’s significant other decided tonight was the night for visiting a long lost (or possibly ignored) relative, rather than sticking around and faking interest.

But Neil is not unusual. At least, not in the Open Source, Free Software, Libre and Free Culture world. There are many Neils all over the world: organising groups, setting up mailing lists, scheduling meetings and coming together to share the ethos.

In the last ten to fifteen years, we have seen Free Culture in technology, art and media explode into our consciousnesses. The entire machine is driven by people like Neil: people who volunteer themselves to the concepts of community and togetherness wrapped around an ethos.

There are Neils outside the Free world, too. They’re in church groups, helping the poor and unfortunate; in Neighborhood Watch and Meals on Wheels campaigns, reaching out to those around them; and in public art installations, political groups, and craft fairs. They volunteer, perform, and share their opinions and creativity on anything from aerobics to knitting to yoga.

What intrigued me when I first walked into Neil’s living room was the concept of a collaboration driven ethos, although at the time I had no idea what those words meant. What that experience taught, and what that evening inspired in me, was an excitement about what is possible when you get a group of people together who share a common ethos and a commitment to furthering it.

In my world, that ethos has thus far been Free Culture, Free Software, digital rights, and breaking down the digital divide, but it can be as critical as solving world peace or as fanciful as sharing photos of kittens playing guitars on the Internet. The importance of community is not in the crusade, but in how you unify people to march forward together, side by side.

At its heart, the Art Of Community is a distilled set of approaches and thoughts about how to build community. The book is a collection of experiences, observations, and thoughts from my career and elsewhere. My aim is to bring this grab-bag of concepts and curiosities together into one consistent text.

Although I am confident in my approach, I am conscious that we seek to frame the essence of community and community building with a strong sense of realism. I don’t want you to blindly follow my guidance, but to use these concepts as a foundation for your own ideas. As we will discuss later in this book, experience is the real magic that we want to create, with theory merely the glittery jacket and spinning bow tie.

Community is fundamentally a soft science. Compare it with, for example, programming. If you want to write a computer software application, you write it in a programming language. These synthetic languages are vessels of logic. They live and breathe in a world where the answer to a question is yes or no. There is no maybe. In a world where maybe does not exist, you can plan ahead for an answer.. With community, the importance and diversity of the question is equally essential.

Within the Art Of Community we are going to explore a range of very specific areas in the area of community management.

More to come soon!