The Art of Community
Building the New Age of Participation (Theory in Practice)
by Jono Bacon · first published 2009
71% recommend29% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Practical guide to building and running open source and online communities, drawn from the author's experience leading the Ubuntu community; suggested for anyone starting a project who wants to attract contributors.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
This book guides its readers through the theory and practice of helping a community (with a focus on open source software communities) to achieve its goals. This advice is distilled from Jono Bacon's personal experiences with founding and building the LugRadio podcast / community / live events, the Jokosher audio editor project, and of course his current role as the Ubuntu Community Manager, with plenty of personal anecdotes that provide the rationale for his suggestions.
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…the boards now. I'm working on building a community around a yet unreleased but announced open source project myself (http://famo.us/) and I'm in the early stages of planning everything. Check out The Art of Community by Jono Bacon, the guy who was responsible for the Ubuntu community. That book has a lot of good stuff. http://www.artofcommunityonline.org
on “Parallella reached $750k funding goal” ↗"The Art of Community" by Jono Bacon "Building Successful Online Communities", by Kraut & Resnik
on “Ask HN: What's the best book or advice on building online community?” ↗Jono Bacon has a couple books on this: People Powered and Art of Community https://www.jonobacon.com/books/artofcommunity/
on “Ask HN: How do you create a successful community from zero?” ↗My only suggestion right now mitght be to read my friend Karl's book. "Producing Open Source Software", which has a bunch on community. Or Jono Bacon's book "The Art of Community" is also good. One thing you may find, sadly, is that with SOO many projects out there, yours might not get a lot of fellow developers. But this sounds like a wonderful idea for a project!
on “The Search for a Free/Open Source Mobile Operating System” ↗You are asking the wrong question: How do they Find you?! Make your projects easy to join and contribute. And do Some marketing. Check e.g. the great book The Art of Community, cc licensed so you can check the pdf on https://www.jonobacon.com/books/artofcommunity/
on “Ask HN: How do you find developers with same interests, for side projects?” ↗In retrospective I wish I had read more this year. - The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation - Foundation series (Foundation, 2nd Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Foundations Edge, Foundation and Earth) - Three Body Problem (trilogy) - Artemis
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation by Jono Bacon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008224FMC
on “Ask HN: How are online communities established?” ↗