It’s a new year, and I’ve been participating in the typical new year rituals of editing and organizing. In attempt to wrangle some of my physical book collection, some of books I have naturally sort themselves into categories. These books have been super useful to me, so I’m going to share them.

I’ve worked in open source for a while now, and have read a lot of books related to the idea of building community. I say “related”, because they’re not necessarily just about building community specifically, but the things that also go into that.

  1. Working in Public by Nadia Eghbal
  2. Building Successful Communities of Practice by Emily Webber
  3. Inclusive Design Communities, by Sameera Kapila
  4. Approachable Open Source by Brian Muenzenmeyer
  5. Making Work Visible by Dominica DeGrandis
  6. Articulating Design Decisions by Tom Greever
  7. Make it Clear: Speak and Write to Persuade and Inform by Patrick Henry Winston
  8. How to Measure Anything by Douglas Hubbard
  9. Objections: The Art and Science of Getting Past No by Jeb Blount
  10. The Power of Digital Policy by Kristina Podnar

See what I mean? Some of them are about building community specifically, but others are related topics: how to measure what you’re doing. How to communicate what you’ve measured and what you’re doing. How to make your work more visible. Articulating those decisions and handling objections. These things all play an important role as pieces of the whole.

Kindness, clear purpose, and enthusiasm go a long way, of course. I have a few quips that I like to add, such as “be on purpose”, or “be so enthusiastic they can’t ignore you”. I do deeply believe these things and whatever success I’ve had in convincing other people to do anything probably sometimes comes from those things. There’s a point, however, when enthusiasm alone won’t get you to where you need to be; deeper learning is required. And there’s some great books for that!

Is there a book I missed? Let me know! I’m mostly chatting with folks on bluesky these days, you can find me there as @a11ymel.

Until next time. -M