Name that book about user communities

September 29, 2010 3:19 AM

Please help me find this book that was mentioned on one of my technical writers mailing lists that dealt with user communities, listening (maybe), social media and perhaps technical communication.

I think it's been around for a 2-3 years and written by a woman. It's not a stuffy textbook or academic treatise; it's more in the vein of creating passionate users (sadly no longer active).

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, but you do have recommendations for books or websites about using social media to foster user communities and user-generated content, please go ahead.

posted by l'esprit d'escalier to computers & internet (4 answers total)

I think the book you're referring to is this - Conversation and Community by Anne Gentle. I believe you can purchase it from her blog also.
posted by ralan at 3:50 AM on September 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

That's it! Thank you so much.

Still open to suggestions for other good reads, though.
posted by l'esprit d'escalier at 4:10 AM on September 29, 2010

Sarah Maddox often has entries related to technical writing and social media on her blog - http://ffeathers.wordpress.com/. I also follow the #techcomm hashtag on twitter, and some of the people posting there are also interested and involved in the intersection of social media and technical writing.
posted by ralan at 5:06 AM on September 29, 2010

If you want to read the grand-daddy of community theory, you might want to check out Communities of Practice by Etienne Wenger. It was based on studies done quite a while ago on workplace groups and it was the theories that spawned a lot of modern day theories on community.
posted by ninjakins at 9:41 AM on September 29, 2010