Bacon - The art of community: [building the new age of participation]

Copyright 2009 Jono Bacon

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Community is a funny ol word. In recent years our humble nine-letter friend has gone on to mean many things to many people. No longer merely the domain of charity groups and overtly friendly neighbors, community has gone on to be the talk of technologists, business-people, politicians, students, welfare groups, and just about anyone who has connected to the Internet. Throughout this explosive community love-fest, a minor detail has been omitted in all the excitement: how on earth do we built an inspiring, engaging, and enjoyable community in our own walk of life?

Toward the end of Summer 2008 I received a phone call from Andy Oram, a well-respected author and editor at OReilly. Although at the start of the call Andy was soliciting advice for building community in the educational world, the call ended by sowing the seeds for The Art of Community .

Andys interest in putting together this book was intriguing, but it could not have come at a more complicated time. My days were hectic as the Ubuntu community manager, leading my team to grow, refine, and optimize the global Ubuntu community; I was in the midst of recording a solo metal album as part of a new Creative Commons project called Severed Fifth; I was coorganizing LugRadio Live 2008, recording and producing LugRadio shows every two weeks; and I was making plans to relocate to California. I had written three books before and I was intimately aware of just how incredibly time-consuming they are. Writing a book is like having a baby: it requires care and attention, and typically results in late nights, lack of sleep, and heartburn. Consequently, my best friend (who is also an author) and I had struck a no-more-books pact.

Despite all of this, I was intrigued. Community and the skills involved in motivating, building, and inspiring it were rampantly undocumented, and much of my own skills had been developed through trial and error, exposing myself to different communities and observing how they worked. I was fortunate enough to have cut my teeth in community in some compelling environments, and I had always wanted to write a book on the topic.

Fortunately none of these aforementioned challenges made any difference when I talked it through with my best friend, Stuart. He and I have been discussing, debating, and at times arguing about community since 1999, and he knows my views, perspectives, drive, and ambitions about community better than anyone. Whats more, he had been wittering on about me writing something down about community, despite our no-more-books pact. Ten minutes with that ginger ball of fury and my mind was made up: it was time to buy some anti-heartburn pills and get some coffee in....