BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS 2020 WINNER

People Powered Logo

How communities can supercharge your business, brand, and teams.

Discover and harness the potential of communities for your organization.

BEST SELLER

BEST SELLER

The Art of Community

Online communities provide a wide range of opportunities for supporting a cause, marketing a product or service, or building open source software. The Art of Community helps you recruit members, motivate them, and manage them as active participants.

Discover how your community can become a reliable support network, a valuable source of new ideas, and a powerful marketing force. The expanded second edition shows you how to keep community projects on track, make use of social media, and organize collaborative events.

 

The Art of Community is also available freely under a Creative Commons license. Feel free to share it with your friends.

PACKED WITH VALUABLE CONTENT:

Build Community Strategy

Build an effective strategic plan the focusing on growth, collaboration, and meeting stakeholder requirements.

Create Awesome Collaboration

Coverage of infrastructure, communication, processes and building an effective collaborative on-ramp.

Build Excitement and Participation

Learn how to get people excited and motivated about your community and goals using a variety of approaches, techniques, and media.

Use Social Media Effectively

Use social media to grow awareness and active involvement, while avoiding the pitfalls of this growing trend.

Get People Together To Create

Learn how to organize and run community events, including conferences, summits, and sprints.

Solidify Capable Governance

Discover how to plan your governance infrastructure, codify it, and ensure your leaders are motivated and effective.

Effective Community Management

Learn how to hire a community manager, plan their work, and ensure they are reliable yet inventive at building stunning community.

Learn From The Best

The book also includes interviews with established community leaders across a range of disciplines and industries.

FEATURING INTERVIEWS WITH:

Linus Torvalds

Linus Torvalds

Creator of Linux

James Spafford

James Spafford

Media Molecule

Carolyn Mellor

Carolyn Mellor

PayPal

Mike Shinoda

Mike Shinoda

Founder of Linkin Park

Dries Buytaert

Dries Buytaert

Founder, Drupal and Acquia

Mark Bussler

Mark Bussler

Creator, Classic Game Room

Tim O'Reilly

Tim O'Reilly

Founder of O'Reilly Media

Mary Colvig

Mary Colvig

Mozilla

Ilan Rabinovitch

Ilan Rabinovitch

Co-Creator, SoCal Linux Expo

Mårten Mickos

Mårten Mickos

CEO of MySQL

Richard Esguerra

Richard Esguerra

Humble Indie Bundle

Mike Linksvayer

Mike Linksvayer

CTO, Creative Commons

Become a Member

Joining as a member is FREE. Get updates directly to your inbox, access to exclusive content, win prizes and free 1-on-1 workshops, and more.

Completely free. No spam. Leave whenever you like.

Learn More

PRAISE FOR THE ART OF COMMUNITY:

“The Internet provides the potential to separate us into a cacophony of discordant voices or to congregate us as purpose-driven communities. Jono Bacon, in his insightful The Art of Community, teaches the latter path, detailing the principles of successful community-building in a way that will appeal to both neophyte and expert alike. Given the increasingly critical role of community managers in the technology industry and beyond, The Art of Community should find a place on any businessperson’s bookshelf, not to mention that of the PTA president, book club organizer, or union activist. Yes, it’s that good.”

Matt Asay

Alfresco and C|NET

“The success of the open source software movement demonstrates that no obstacle is insurmountable when people come together around a shared vision. In The Art of Community, Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon gives readers a profound glimpse into his hands-on experience as the orchestrator of one of the movement’s most powerful communities. His book offers valuable lessons on effective leadership and community building. Its compelling combination of useful theory, real-world best practices, and instructive personal anecdotes make it a richly comprehensive guide for both aspiring and experienced community leaders.”

Ryan Paul

Writer at ArsTechnica

“Jono Bacon truly understands communities, and, more importantly, how to build communities that thrive. This is the definitive guidebook to building successful communities—definitive because it is based on Jono’s extensive experience as community manager for Ubuntu, a product that inspires an Apple-esque devotion in very large part because of its vast and dedicated community. For developers and entrepreneurs who want to learn how to tap into the power of community, as Ubuntu has done so masterfully, this book is a must-read.”

Ian Murdock

Founder of Debian and VP Emerging Platforms and Sun

“Communities are very complex ecosystems of human beings. Cultivating, growing, shaping, and guiding the community to make it productive is definitely as much (or even more) art as science. In The Art of Community, Bacon does an excellent job of explaining in detail the considerations for managing and cultivating a healthy open source community. He provides a blueprint for developing and maintaining an open source community in a programmatic way, and his attention to detail and understanding of the dynamics of communities make this book an invaluable resource for anyone looking to build and maintain a community. Drawing from his own extensive experience, Bacon does a great job of explaining how to help foster a community, and provides great advice, ranging from choosing infrastructure, measuring growth, and even hiring a community manager. All in all a must-read for any community manager.”

Mark Hinkle

VP Community at Zenoss

“One thing that’s impressed me about Jono Bacon—something one can notice back when he and others were building a community around their pioneering Linux podcast—is that he simply gets the concept of community. It comes out in most everything he says and most every decision he makes. This is the kind of a person you want writing a book on the topic. Open source community building cannot be boiled down to a formula. It’s a constant effort, a soft science, an art, and Bacon is an ideal art teacher.”

Dan Goldstein

Prof. Marketing at London Business School

“Jono Bacon has long been an insightful voice for the open source community. Now his artful stories distilling the ethos of organizing people and activities on the Net, at conferences, and in our daily routines provide a framework for successful, community-building strategies.”

Pete Kronowitt

Linux and Open Source Strategist at Intel