@thomasknoll

books on community

Brainstorming titles of books on community with @communitygirl:

  • “Community: All is Fair in Love and War”
  • “Community: These People Kill Me”
  • “Community: Love Scales”

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Community: All is Fair in Love and War
Community is not all peaches and ponies. It is hard work and messy and beautiful and creative and draining. People are mean. And people are inspiring. The only thing harder about dealing with a person, is to deal with a lot of persons. But, but, but, it is always worth the journey. So, how can we learn the rules of love AND the rules of war and bring a whole group of people along for the ride.

Community: These People Kill Me
Cultivating a community a lot of work. The kind of work that can kill you. No, seriously, stress causes heart attacks. Heart attacks kill people. On the other end, there are so many (SOOOOO many) stories that come out of community life. Heartbreaking, wonderful, beautiful things, that only surface when people crash into one another around things they love, or hate, or are passionate about. (Or, are bored.) Interesting how the same people who make you want to die, can also make you laugh so hard it feels like you are dying.

Community: Love Scales
So many things related to the business of interacting with customers do not scale. Every company, at some point has so many customers that they simply can no longer engage with them on a one-to-one level. This is sad. This is also life. When companies and organizations learn how to cultivate a community of customers (or communities of customer groups) they give birth to something that can scale. Make it easy for your customers to love you, and then they might fight for the chance to do your marketing, pr, customer service, evangelism, and sales FOR YOU.

What would you title your book on community?

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Comments

19 responses to “books on community”

  1. Angela Connor Avatar
    Angela Connor

    One idea certainly goes a long way! I love it. As I told you on Twitter, I like the second won because I've felt close to death of late! Seriously though, I'm working in a proposal for my second book that will take a much deeper look at community and I appreciate what you are bringing to the table!

    Reply
  2. Ricardo Nunez Avatar
    Ricardo Nunez

    Number three is my choice, is the philosophy of all my work and when you said “they might fight for the chance to do……..FOR YOU.” is true and this also required a lot of effort, nothing comes free.

    Reply
  3. Michael Scepaniak Avatar
    Michael Scepaniak

    I think “Love Scales” is the best. It's more positive than the other two choices and it has a nice dichotomy between personal and business, emotional and technical, etc.

    Reply
  4. thomasknoll Avatar
    thomasknoll

    I really do believe there is going to be a need for more resources discussing the sustainability of community management when the emotional weight is put all on one person. Ideally, the emotion (passion, concern, heart-break, and joy) would be distributed throughout the company. But, it will take time and more stories from the front-lines to make that happen.

    I would definitely love to hear more about the process and progress if you're willing to share. =)

    Reply
  5. thomasknoll Avatar
    thomasknoll

    Thank you! I would love to hear more about the “efforts” if you're willing to share?

    Reply
  6. thomasknoll Avatar
    thomasknoll

    'Love Scales' is my personal favorite as well. (Want to write it with me?)

    However, as I was saying to Angela, someone will eventually need to address the issues of burnout, recovery, sustainability, and shared-responsibility.

    Reply
  7. Ricardo Nunez Avatar
    Ricardo Nunez

    When you start a business and you are trying to build a community the effort is small. but when you start to grow it gets harder and more difficult to please, to engage and to help everybody. but soon as you do it (and if you do it well from the beginning) also, the community maintains it self. The problem is to go from start and to the community maintain itself. I think I'm going out of topic here, anyway. Happy Sunday everyone.

    Reply
  8. thomasknoll Avatar
    thomasknoll

    No! I *love* it! I'm wondering if you have any stories about the transition from “engage and help everybody” to “the community maintaining itself”? Actually, I think I'll go start a new discussion about this. Thank you for the inspiration! I hope you'll jump in that thread with your stories?

    Reply
  9. Ricardo Nunez Avatar
    Ricardo Nunez

    Well. I'll post some stuff. I working on that in my business, but I did it already with a linux community. My best advise is love and help, do it because you love it, and help everybody. We started with 27 visitors per month. Now we have like 3k unique visitors without any SEO (or website is very bad right now). But we didn't care in the beginning because we love what we were doing, we helped a lot of people and believe me, Linux 8 years ago was in a lot of need of help. People was grateful and they helped us after three years doing it our self.

    Reply
  10. Ric Nunez Avatar
    Ric Nunez

    Number three is my choice, is the philosophy of all my work and when you said “they might fight for the chance to do……..FOR YOU.” is true and this also required a lot of effort, nothing comes free.

    Reply
  11. Michael Scepaniak Avatar
    Michael Scepaniak

    I think “Love Scales” is the best. It’s more positive than the other two choices and it has a nice dichotomy between personal and business, emotional and technical, etc.

    Reply
  12. thomasknoll Avatar
    thomasknoll

    I really do believe there is going to be a need for more resources discussing the sustainability of community management when the emotional weight is put all on one person. Ideally, the emotion (passion, concern, heart-break, and joy) would be distributed throughout the company. But, it will take time and more stories from the front-lines to make that happen.

    I would definitely love to hear more about the process and progress if you’re willing to share. =)

    Reply
  13. thomasknoll Avatar
    thomasknoll

    Thank you! I would love to hear more about the “efforts” if you’re willing to share?

    Reply
  14. thomasknoll Avatar
    thomasknoll

    ‘Love Scales’ is my personal favorite as well. (Want to write it with me?)

    However, as I was saying to Angela, someone will eventually need to address the issues of burnout, recovery, sustainability, and shared-responsibility.

    Reply
  15. Ric Nunez Avatar
    Ric Nunez

    When you start a business and you are trying to build a community the effort is small. but when you start to grow it gets harder and more difficult to please, to engage and to help everybody. but soon as you do it (and if you do it well from the beginning) also, the community maintains it self. The problem is to go from start and to the community maintain itself. I think I’m going out of topic here, anyway. Happy Sunday everyone.

    Reply
  16. thomasknoll Avatar
    thomasknoll

    No! I *love* it! I’m wondering if you have any stories about the transition from “engage and help everybody” to “the community maintaining itself”? Actually, I think I’ll go start a new discussion about this. Thank you for the inspiration! I hope you’ll jump in that thread with your stories?

    Reply
  17. lauraglu Avatar
    lauraglu

    I like the first one because it touches on both the positive and negative.
    -laura

    Reply
  18. Ric Nunez Avatar
    Ric Nunez

    Well. I’ll post some stuff. I working on that in my business, but I did it already with a linux community. My best advise is love and help, do it because you love it, and help everybody. We started with 27 visitors per month. Now we have like 3k unique visitors without any SEO (or website is very bad right now). But we didn’t care in the beginning because we love what we were doing, we helped a lot of people and believe me, Linux 8 years ago was in a lot of need of help. People was grateful and they helped us after three years doing it our self.

    Reply
  19. lauraglu Avatar
    lauraglu

    I like the first one because it touches on both the positive and negative.
    -laura

    Reply

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