Cohousing-L Mailing List: Forthcoming Book: The Art Of Community

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

A while back I got a message that said in part:

 We're looking for your stories on building community

 We're working on a new book called the "The Art Of Community: The Book
 On Building Community" by author Jono Bacon and we need your help.

 Get your community featured in The Art Of Community!
 ----------------------------------------------------

 Jono explains:

 "Hi everyone! I am really excited about making The Art Of Community a
 diverse, wide-ranging guide to building strong community. I am really
 excited about hearing community stories from a range of areas, inside
 and outside of Open Source, Technology and Media. If you have
 interesting (and possibly amusing) stories that you feel illustrate
 interesting examples of building processes, setting up infrastructure,
 creating buzz and excitement, managing conflict, organizing events,
 communicating effectively, scaling up community, measuring your work or
 anything else, I would love to hear your story. Simply send me an email
 to jono [at] jonobacon.org with a short Bio of yourself and your story. If
 it fits well in the book, I will be sure to add it. Thanks everyone!"

 So there you have it: get your community featured in the hot new
 community book from Jono Bacon. Jono is busily writing, so send your
 stories in as soon as possible!

-- end excerpt --

You may have wondered what the reference to:
 "inside and outside of Open Source, Technology and Media." referred to.
This message came to me over a mailing list related to the free / open
source Ubuntu Linux Operating system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu

It turns out that this book is related to a significantly different
perspective on "community building", namely amongst people involved with
the cooperative development of software - a movement that is known by
various terms but probably most often "Open Source". See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

The similarity of the language to that used in the Cohousing and
Intentional Communities movement led me to correspond with
Jono, the writer.  He responded:

> Your community sounds really interesting - I was not
> familiar with cohousing, but it looks fascinating. I am really keen to
> include some non-Open Source community content in the book, and this
> looks fantastic! :)

> Also, would you mind telling your community about the Art Of Community
> book? I think it could be of interest, particularly as it will be
> available in print and also under a free Creative Commons license. If
> you could just point your community to the website at
> http://www.artofcommunityonline.org that would be great - I update
> that site regularly with news about the book. :)

It seems to me that it may be useful to build bridges between diverse
forms of community building. So I encourage you to check this out and
maybe submit and idea for his book.

The original message continued:

Related Links:
--------------

* Art Of Community website - http://www.artofcommunityonline.org/
* Twitter Updates - http://www.twitter.com/jonobacon
* identi.ca Updates - http://identi.ca/jonobacon
* Art Of Community Facebook Page -
    http://www.facebook.com/pages/Art-of-Community/58251029357
* Jono Bacon's Website - http://www.jonobacon.org/


Read on for more information about the book--

Every software project, online site, or company has to manage the
community of interested people surrounding it. The community is the
source of new ideas, a reliable support network, and the best marketing
tool. When money is tight, making the best use of the community is even
more critical.

Author Jono Bacon <http://www.jonobacon.org/> has been building and
managing communities for over a decade, particularly in areas of Open
Source software such as KDE and Ubuntu. He is currently Community
Manager for Ubuntu, probably the largest community in the Open Source
software area. His experience and his relationships with other
communities and leaders provide a rich and deep well of expertise for
this book.

In The Art of Community you'll experience the broad range of talents
required to recruit members, motivate them, manage them, and make them
happy to be part of your community, online or otherwise. Bacon takes you
through the different stages of community and covers the information
you'll need, ranging from software tools to conflict resolution skills.
The Art Of Community underlines and illustrates this large body of
knowledge with a compendium of stories, anecdotes and tales that bring
the concepts to life. Bacon's amusing and witty writing style makes the
Art Of Community a fun read that is sure to help you build strong,
effective and engaging communities.

As Bacon writes The Art Of Community, a new community is gathering
around the book at http://www.artofcommunityonline.org where he is
regularly providing writing updates, sneak peeks of the content, news
and discussion about building strong community.

The Art Of Community will be published by O'Reilly and also available
online under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial ShareAlike license.

Fred

--
Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411  USA        (near north Mpls)
Communications for Justice -- Free, superior listserv's w/o ads:
http://justcomm.org      My Link Pg: http://fholson.cohousing.org
612-588-9532 (7am-10pm CST/CDT)   Email: fholson at cohousing.org