Chapter 13. Hiring a Community Manager

“I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”

Jerome K. Jerome

Like many folks, I have had the good fortune and opportunity to do my fair share of travel to conferences as part of my work. As a result, I have been able to experience many of the conferences I once dreamed of attending, but there were still some I never quite had a chance to get to.

One such show was Ohio Linux Fest, a midsize community-run conference devoted to all things Linux and open source. I had always heard great things about the show from a member of my team and members of the community, but for some reason the Fates always conspired against me and I was busy every time the show was scheduled: I was either traveling, in meetings, on vacation, or otherwise unable to get out to Ohio.

Back in early 2008, though, I received an email about the show inviting me to speak. Knowing full well that something was going to get in the way at some point in the future, I slam-dunked the dates into my calendar with a little note next to them:

MAKE IT HAPPEN THIS TIME.

I responded to the email expressing interest, and the organizers kindly offered me the keynote speech. Somewhat flattered at the invitation, I happily accepted.

As time meandered on toward the show, I started working on the keynote and created a presentation that would eventually become the foundation for writing The Art of Community. It was that talk specifically that inspired much of the thinking behind ...

Get The Art of Community, Second Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.