My name is Jono Bacon, and I have been building communities for twenty years. I used to lead community for Canonical, GitHub, and XPRIZE, and I work with companies as a consultant to help them build their own communities. This includes clients including Microsoft, Intel, Santander, HackerOne, and others. I have written for Forbes and Harvard Business Review.

I wrote ‘People Powered’ for one primary reason. In recent years, we have seen an explosion of growth in communities. Salesforce, Fitbit, Harley Davidson, and many others have driven enormous value in connecting customers together to provide support, create content, build technology and more. With the growth of the Internet and mobile devices, and young people growing up with connected social technology, communities are in high demand.

‘People Powered’ delivers three things.

First, it provides a crisp introduction to the value of communities, what mechanics generate this value, and what kind of communities readers may want to build.

Secondly, it provides a comprehensive framework for how to create a community strategy, build clear objectives, and shape onboarding, infrastructure, effective growth and engagement, incentives, events, and more.

Thirdly, it covers how to integrate this strategy into a business. This includes how to hire well, building cross-team collaboration, a clear set of maturity models, and more.

I believe the book provides a pragmatic, accessible blueprint for harnessing this new, connected era of business. It has a foreword by Peter Diamandis, includes contributions from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jim Whitehurst, and many others, has over 30 endorsements, and a raft of examples.

It has been a thrill to see the book published. The response and reviews have been fabulous, and many readers have shared their stories of how they are innovating in community a broad range of markets. This in turn is continuing to evolve my thinking and experience, as we build this new, connected future of communities and collaboration.

I recently co-authored a Harvard Business Review piece which has been getting some great traction.