Books

Did you know 64% of Gen Zers and millennials feel better understood by the specialized online communities than by their family and real-world friends? Today, more people seek connection online, but not every online group flourishes. As a community builder, you can’t just throw people in a group chat and hope community will magically form. Digital communities are like gardens that need careful tending; one results in beautiful flowers and the other offers a space where members are understood, nurtured and embraced. Tending communities is no easy task. It requires time, energy, and hard work but, like gardening, it’s a skill that can be learned. Cultivate Community explains the step-by-step process for how anyone can create digital spaces they need and want to see. In this book, you will explore: Why digital-first communities are necessary complements to in-person ones What structures, processes, and cultures the best communities share, including provocations like “lead with love,” “decentralize power,” and community as a garden How you start your own community or help existing groups become more community-spirited Ashley Lin’s Cultivate Community reminds us that we all have the ability to create flourishing digital-first communities in our own lives—and discover our power to change the world.

Millions of Americans yearn for a lost sense of community, for the days when neighbors looked out for one another and families were stable and secure. The 1950s are regarded as the golden age of community, but 1960s rebellion and 1980s nostalgia have blurred our view of what life was really like back then. In The Lost City, Alan Ehrenhalt cuts through the fog, immersing us in the sights, sounds, and rhythms of life in America forty years ago. He takes us down the streets and into the homes, schools, and shops of three neighborhoods in one quintessentially American city: Chicago. In St. Nicholas of Tolentine parish on the Southwest Side, we see how the local Catholic church served as the moral and social center of community life. In Bronzeville, the heart of the black South Side, we meet the civic leaders who offered hope and role models to people hemmed in by poverty and segregation. And in Elmhurst, a commuter suburb bursting with new subdivisions, we witness the culture of middle-class conformity and the ways in which children and adults bent to the rules of the majority culture. Through evocative stories and incisive analysis, Ehrenhalt shows that the glue holding each neighborhood together was an unstated social compact under which people accepted limits in their lives and deferred to authority figures to enforce those limits—a compact destroyed by the baby boomers' rejection of authority in the 1960s. Since that time, an entire generation has come to believe that personal choice is the most important of life's values. But Ehrenhalt argues that if we truly wish to balance the demands of modern life with a feeling of community, we have a great deal to learn from the ”limited” life of the 1950s. The Lost City reveals the price we must pay to restore community in our lives today and the values that will make such a restoration possible.

An innovator in contemporary thought on economic and political development looks here at decline rather than growth. Albert O. Hirschman makes a basic distinction between alternative ways of reacting to deterioration in business firms and, in general, to dissatisfaction with organizations: one, “exit,” is for the member to quit the organization or for the customer to switch to the competing product, and the other, “voice,” is for members or customers to agitate and exert influence for change “from within.” The efficiency of the competitive mechanism, with its total reliance on exit, is questioned for certain important situations. As exit often undercuts voice while being unable to counteract decline, loyalty is seen in the function of retarding exit and of permitting voice to play its proper role. The interplay of the three concepts turns out to illuminate a wide range of economic, social, and political phenomena. As the author states in the preface, “having found my own unifying way of looking at issues as diverse as competition and the two-party system, divorce and the American character, black power and the failure of ‘unhappy’ top officials to resign over Vietnam, I decided to let myself go a little.”

he rise of the internet has brought with it an inexorable, almost shockingly persistent drive toward community. From the first social networks to the GameStop trading revolution, engaged communities have shown the ability to transform industries. Businesses need to harness that power. As business community expert David Spinks shows in The Business of Belonging: How to Make Community your Competitive Advantage, the successful brands of tomorrow will be those that create authentic connection, giving customers a sense of real belonging and unlocking unprecedented scale as a result. In his career of over 10 years in the business of building community, Spinks has learned what a winning community strategy looks like. From the fundamental concepts—including how community drives measurable business value and what the appropriate metrics are—to high-level community design and practical engagement techniques, The Business of Belonging is an epic journey into the world of community building. This book is for decision makers who want to better understand the value and opportunity of community, and for community professionals who want to level up their strategy. Featuring a foreword by Startup Grind and Bevy cofounder Derek Andersen, it will give you a step-by-step model for strategically planning, creating, facilitating, and measuring communities that drive business growth. Attracting and retaining community members who are also loyal customers, brand evangelists, and leaders—that’s the goal for today’s connected businesses, and this book is the map to getting there.

Yale professor Marissa King shows how anyone can build more meaningful and productive relationships based on insights from neuroscience, psychology, and network analytics. Conventional wisdom says it's the size of your network that matters, but social science research has proven there is more to it. King explains that the quality and structure of our relationships has the greatest impact on our personal and professional lives. As she shows, there are three basic types of networks, so readers can see the role they are already playing: Expansionist, Broker, or Convener. This network decoder enables readers to own their network style and modify it for better alignment with their life plans and values. High-quality connections in your social network strongly predict cognitive functioning, emotional resilience, and satisfaction at work. A well-structured network is likely to boost the quality of your ideas, as well as your pay. Beyond the office, social connections are the lifeblood of our health and happiness. The compiled results from dozens of previous studies found that our social relationships have an effect on our likelihood of dying prematurely—equivalent to obesity or smoking. Rich stories of Expansionists like Vernon Jordan, Brokers like Yo-Yo Ma, and Conveners like Anna Wintour, as well as personal experiences from King's own world of connections, inform this warm, engaging, revelatory investigation into some of the most consequential decisions we can make about the trajectory of our lives.

Networking is often considered a necessary evil for all working professionals. With social media platforms like Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at our disposal, reaching potential investors or employers is much easier. Yet, these connections often feel transactional, agenda-driven, and dehumanizing, leaving professionals feeling burnt out and stressed out. Instead, we should connect on a human level and build authentic relationships beyond securing a new job or a new investor for your next big idea. To build real and meaningful networking contacts, we need to go back to basics, remembering that technology is a tool and more than just a means to an end. We need to tap into our humanity and learn to be more intentional and authentic. As a “serial connector” and communications expert, Susan McPherson has a lifetime of experience building genuine connections in and out of work. Her methodology is broken down into three simple steps: Gather: Instead of waiting for the perfect networking opportunity to come to you, think outside the box and create your own opportunity. Host your own dinner party, join a local meet-up group, or volunteer at your neighborhood food pantry. Ask: Instead of leading with our own rehearsed elevator pitches asking for help, ask to help, opening the door to share resources, experience, contacts, and perspectives that add diversity to your own vision. Do: Turn new connections into meaningful relationships by taking these newly formed relationships deeper. Follow through on the promises you made and keep in touch. Woven together with helpful tips and useful advice on making the most out of every step, this book draws on McPherson’s own experience as a renowned “serial connector,” as well as the real life success stories of friends and clients. Filled with humor, humility, and wisdom, The Lost Art of Connecting is the handbook we all need to foster personal and professional relationships that blur the lines between work and play―and enrich our lives in every way.

If “violent” means acting in ways that result in hurt or harm, then much of how we communicate—judging others, bullying, having racial bias, blaming, finger pointing, discriminating, speaking without listening, criticizing others or ourselves, name-calling, reacting when angry, using political rhetoric, being defensive or judging who’s “good/bad” or what’s “right/wrong” with people—could indeed be called “violent communication.” What is Nonviolent Communication? Nonviolent Communication is the integration of four things: • Consciousness: a set of principles that support living a life of compassion, collaboration, courage, and authenticity • Language: understanding how words contribute to connection or distance • Communication: knowing how to ask for what we want, how to hear others even in disagreement, and how to move toward solutions that work for all • Means of influence: sharing “power with others” rather than using “power over others” Nonviolent Communication serves our desire to do three things: • Increase our ability to live with choice, meaning, and connection • Connect empathically with self and others to have more satisfying relationships • Sharing of resources so everyone is able to benefit

The sustainability challenges of yesterday have become today’s resilience crises. National and global efforts have failed to stop climate change, transition from fossil fuels, and reduce inequality. We must now confront these and other increasingly complex problems by building resilience at the community level. But what does that mean in practice, and how can it be done in a way that’s effective and equitable? The Community Resilience Reader offers a new vision for creating resilience, through essays by leaders in such varied fields as science, policy, community building, and urban design. The Community Resilience Reader combines a fresh look at the challenges humanity faces in the 21st century, the essential tools of resilience science, and the wisdom of activists, scholars, and analysts working with community issues on the ground. It shows that resilience is a process, not a goal; how resilience requires learning to adapt but also preparing to transform; and that resilience starts and ends with the people living in a community. Despite the formidable challenges we face, The Community Resilience Reader shows that building strength and resilience at the community level is not only crucial, but possible. From Post Carbon Institute, the producers of the award-winning The Post Carbon Reader, The Community Resilience Reader is a valuable resource for students, community leaders, and concerned citizens.

Robert A. Ferguson investigates the nature of loneliness in American fiction, from its mythological beginnings in Rip Van Winkle to the postmodern terrors of 9/11. At issue is the dark side of a trumpeted American individualism. The theme is a vital one because a greater percentage of people live alone today than at any other time in U.S. history. The many isolated characters in American fiction, Ferguson says, appeal to us through inward claims of identity when pitted against the social priorities of a consensual culture. They indicate how we might talk to ourselves when the same pressures come our way. In fiction, more visibly than in life, defining moments turn on the clarity of an inner conversation. Alone in America tests the inner conversations that work and sometimes fail. It examines the typical elements and moments that force us toward a solitary state―failure, betrayal, change, defeat, breakdown, fear, difference, age, and loss―in their ascending power over us. It underlines the evolving answers that famous figures in literature have given in response. Figures like Mark Twain’s Huck Finn and Toni Morrison’s Sethe and Paul D., or Louisa May Alcott’s Jo March and Marilynne Robinson’s John Ames, carve out their own possibilities against ruthless situations that hold them in place. Instead of trusting to often superficial social remedies, or taking thin sustenance from the philosophy of self-reliance, Ferguson says we can learn from our fiction how to live alone.

Lead Together teaches you key principles and proven methods to transform models of top-down leadership into dynamic human systems of shared responsibility and accountability, through the concepts of self-organizing and self-management. You’ll hear from the leaders of more than sixty scaling businesses at the vanguard of this movement about the on-the-ground challenges and rewards of adopting a new paradigm for work.

A hopeful and empowering vision for how to reconnect with each other and heal our divides. Even before a global pandemic introduced us to terms like social distancing, loneliness was already becoming the defining condition of the twenty-first century. But it's also one we have the power to reverse. Combining a decade of research with first-hand reporting, Noreena Hertz takes us from a 'how to communicate in real life' class for smartphone-addicted university students to bouncy castles at Belgian far-right gatherings, from 'renting a friend' and paying for cuddles in the U.S. to nursing home residents knitting bonnets for their robot caregivers in Japan. Packed with bold solutions that we can apply at home, at work and in our neighbourhoods, and with a clear vision for what businesses and governments must do, she explores how our increasing dependence on technology, radical changes to the workplace and decades of policies that have placed self-interest above the collective good, are making us more isolated than ever before. Noreena Hertz helps us to understand why this is the lonely century, how we got here and what each of us can do to help reduce loneliness for ourselves and our communities.

A sparklingly strange odyssey through the kaleidoscope of America's new spirituality: the cults, practices, high priests and prophets of our supposedly post-religion age. Fifty-five years have passed since the cover of Time magazine proclaimed the death of God and while participation in mainstream religion has indeed plummeted, Americans have never been more spiritually busy. While rejecting traditional worship in unprecedented numbers, today's Americans are embracing a kaleidoscopic panoply of spiritual traditions, rituals, and subcultures -- from astrology and witchcraft to SoulCycle and the alt-right.As the Internet makes it ever-easier to find new "tribes," and consumer capitalism forever threatens to turn spirituality into a lifestyle brand, remarkably modern American religious culture is undergoing a revival comparable with the Great Awakenings of centuries past. Faith is experiencing not a decline but a Renaissance. Disillusioned with organized religion and political establishments alike, more and more Americans are seeking out spiritual paths driven by intuition, not institutions. In Strange Rites, religious scholar and commentator Tara Isabella Burton visits with the techno-utopians of Silicon Valley; Satanists and polyamorous communities, witches from Bushwick, wellness junkies and social justice activists and devotees of Jordan Peterson, proving Americans are not abandoning religion but remixing it. In search of the deep and the real, they are finding meaning, purpose, ritual, and communities in ever-newer, ever-stranger ways.

A close friendship is one of the most influential and important relationships a human life can contain. Anyone will tell you that! But for all the rosy sentiments surrounding friendship, most people don’t talk much about what it really takes to stay close for the long haul. Now two friends, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, tell the story of their equally messy and life-affirming Big Friendship in this honest and hilarious book that chronicles their first decade in one another’s lives. As the hosts of the hit podcast Call Your Girlfriend, they’ve become known for frank and intimate conversations. In this book, they bring that energy to their own friendship—its joys and its pitfalls. Aminatou and Ann define Big Friendship as a strong, significant bond that transcends life phases, geographical locations, and emotional shifts. And they should know: the two have had moments of charmed bliss and deep frustration, of profound connection and gut-wrenching alienation. They have weathered life-threatening health scares, getting fired from their dream jobs, and one unfortunate Thanksgiving dinner eaten in a car in a parking lot in Rancho Cucamonga. Through interviews with friends and experts, they have come to understand that their struggles are not unique. And that the most important part of a Big Friendship is making the decision to invest in one another again and again. An inspiring and entertaining testament to the power of society’s most underappreciated relationship, Big Friendship will invite you to think about how your own bonds are formed, challenged, and preserved. It is a call to value your friendships in all of their complexity. Actively choose them. And, sometimes, fight for them.

A practical guide for community builders on building and scaling professional communities that thrive and transform the lives of the people within them through virtual and in-person events. Community is a hot topic in 2020. Enterprises, startups, investors, entrepreneurs, and creators are all jumping on board launching communities or building products for communities. This is especially timely given a global pandemic that has left people longing for human connection. And then there are the people like Mark Birch who just wanted to bring salespeople together. When Mark started the Enterprise Sales Forum, he did not have a big vision; it was just his way to convince salespeople and startup founders to meet and help each other. What started in a sweaty conference room for 50 people six years ago eventually blossomed into a community of 25,000 members across 20 cities globally. Community-in-a-Box is a how-to guide into building and scaling a community from the ground up or reinvigorating existing communities. From the experiences of the Enterprise Sales Forum and other communities he launched, Mark weaves those stories into a book that leads you past the minefields and mistakes so you can confidently launch and grow a healthy community. Even though we all come to community building with our own motivations, the end result is a labor of love that positively impacts the lives of many. Through this book, you will also feel the impact of the power of community and what it takes to grab the spark and start a movement!

The world needs a new approach to building communities—one based on relationships, trust, and belonging. Community building must be “hacked.” In Hacking Communities, Laís de Oliveira examines how we can renew our shared sense of belonging. Drawing on her own personal struggle with loneliness, as well as academic research and her professional experience in building communities with nonprofits, startups, and public organizations, she provides frameworks and methodologies to build stronger and more diverse communities. Hacking Communities aims to empower anyone to start and grow a community, making the case that everyone is a potential community builder.

The New York Times bestselling author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality returns with thought-provoking work to challenge our preconceptions about dishonesty and urge us to take an honest look at ourselves. Does the chance of getting caught affect how likely we are to cheat? How do companies pave the way for dishonesty? Does collaboration make us more honest or less so? Does religion improve our honesty? Most of us think of ourselves as honest, but, in fact, we all cheat. From Washington to Wall Street, the classroom to the workplace, unethical behavior is everywhere. None of us is immune, whether it's the white lie to head off trouble or padding our expense reports. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, award-winning, bestselling author Dan Ariely turns his unique insight and innovative research to the question of dishonesty. Generally, we assume that cheating, like most other decisions, is based on a rational cost-benefit analysis. But Ariely argues, and then demonstrates, that it's actually the irrational forces that we don't take into account that often determine whether we behave ethically or not. For every Enron or political bribe, there are countless puffed résumés, hidden commissions, and knockoff purses. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, Ariely shows why some things are easier to lie about; how getting caught matters less than we think; and how business practices pave the way for unethical behavior, both intentionally and unintentionally. Ariely explores how unethical behavior works in the personal, professional, and political worlds, and how it affects all of us, even as we think of ourselves as having high moral standards. But all is not lost. Ariely also identifies what keeps us honest, pointing the way for achieving higher ethics in our everyday lives. With compelling personal and academic findings, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty will change the way we see ourselves, our actions, and others.

In our ever-increasing pressure-filled and competitive workforce, most business philosophies have been about nose to the grindstone. “Get ’er done, whatever it takes!” has become our daily mantra. But is pushing everyone harder truly the best path to productivity? Does a stressful culture equal a successful company? The alarmingly low employee-engagement numbers would say no. Supported by the latest research, The Optimistic Workplace argues that our best work is the product of a positive environment. Advocating a steward model of management, this eye-opening book reveals how to:• Explore personal and organizational purpose--and align them for astonishing results• Overcome resistance and skepticism from corporate managers pressing for results• Build camaraderie and deepen loyalty among team members• Increase intrinsic motivation• Help your team find meaning in their work• And moreWith practical 30-, 60-, and 90-day plans designed to focus your actions, as well as examples from companies large and small that demonstrate how this people-centric focus has already ignited employee potential, increased innovation, and catapulted many organizations to new levels of performance, The Optimistic Workplace is your complete guide to aligning personal purpose with professional success.

In Collaboration, author Morten Hansen takes aim at what many leaders inherently know: in today's competitive environment, companywide collaboration is an imperative for successful strategy execution, yet the sought-after synergies are rarely, if ever, realized. In fact, most cross-unit collaborative efforts end up wasting time, money, and resources. How can managers avoid the costly traps of collaboration and instead start getting the results they need?

A paradigm-shifting book in the vein of Sapiens that brings a crucial Indigenous perspective to historical and cultural issues of history, education, money, power, and sustainability―and offers a new template for living. As an indigenous person, Tyson Yunkaporta looks at global systems from a unique perspective, one tied to the natural and spiritual world. In considering how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation, he raises important questions. How does this affect us? How can we do things differently? In this thoughtful, culturally rich, mind-expanding book, he provides answers. Yunkaporta’s writing process begins with images. Honoring indigenous traditions, he makes carvings of what he wants to say, channeling his thoughts through symbols and diagrams rather than words. He yarns with people, looking for ways to connect images and stories with place and relationship to create a coherent world view, and he uses sand talk, the Aboriginal custom of drawing images on the ground to convey knowledge. In Sand Talk, he provides a new model for our everyday lives. Rich in ideas and inspiration, it explains how lines and symbols and shapes can help us make sense of the world. It’s about how we learn and how we remember. It’s about talking to everyone and listening carefully. It’s about finding different ways to look at things. Most of all it’s about a very special way of thinking, of learning to see from a native perspective, one that is spiritually and physically tied to the earth around us, and how it can save our world.

A diverse workforce is a business imperative. Without it, companies are made up of employees who come from the same background and have the same skills and, therefore, the same blind spots. A diverse workforce brings together different strengths, a variety of experiences, a huge breadth of knowledge and a wealth of creative problem-solving techniques. However, in order to leverage the benefits of this diverse workforce, businesses must be inclusive. Inclusion ensures that employees feel supported, are treated fairly and are therefore happier, more engaged and more productive. Building an Inclusive Organization is a practical guide to creating an environment of real inclusion. It explains how to remove unconscious bias from company processes including recruitment and selection, how to make the case for diversity and inclusion to all stakeholders and how to embed inclusion into an organization's culture and overall business strategy. Packed with case studies from organizations including KPMG, Uber, Salesforce, Harvard University and the UK National Health Service (NHS), Building an Inclusive Organization shows how to implement robust processes and policies to foster diversity and inclusion in organizations of any size, and in all sectors, including the creative industry, finance, tech, and academia and foundations. Guidance and advice is also provided on how to use 'nudges' to change behaviours and overcome bias, how to achieve transparency and accountability, and how to measure, review and evaluate inclusion.

What do Amazon's product reviews, eBay's feedback score system, Slashdot's Karma System, and Xbox Live's Achievements have in common? They're all examples of successful reputation systems that enable consumer websites to manage and present user contributions most effectively. This book shows you how to design and develop reputation systems for your own sites or web applications, written by experts who have designed web communities for Yahoo! and other prominent sites. Building Web Reputation Systems helps you ask the hard questions about these underlying mechanisms, and why they're critical for any organization that draws from or depends on user-generated content. It's a must-have for system architects, product managers, community support staff, and UI designers. Scale your reputation system to handle an overwhelming inflow of user contributions Determine the quality of contributions, and learn why some are more useful than others Become familiar with different models that encourage first-class contributions Discover tricks of moderation and how to stamp out the worst contributions quickly and efficiently Engage contributors and reward them in a way that gets them to return Examine a case study based on actual reputation deployments at industry-leading social sites, including Yahoo!, Flickr, and eBay

What if you discovered a blueprint that could grow your brand’s reputation and loyalty, dramatically reduce customer service issues, produce content and technology, and cement a powerful, lasting relationship between you and your customers? Communities have been a popular topic since the rise of the Internet and social media, but few companies have consistently harnessed their power, driven tangible value, and effectively measured their return on investment (ROI) like: Salesforce.com has seen tremendous results with their community network of over 2 million members advocating for, supporting, and integrating Salesforce.com products Star Citizen used Kickstarter to raise over $150 million to build their new video game and a community of over 2 million players. Red Hat collaborated with their community to build industry-leading technology, which led to a $34 billion acquisition by IBM Companies such as PayPal, Facebook, Bosch, Microsoft, CapitalOne, and Google, have also built communities inside their organizations, which have fostered innovation, broken down silos, and helped their organizations to operate more efficiently and collaboratively. People Powered helps C-suite leaders, founders, marketers, customer advocates, and community leaders gain a competitive advantage by answering the following questions: What is the key value proposition of building a community? What kind of community do we need and how do we build and integrate it into our organization? How do we incentivize and encourage people to get involved, build reliable growth, and keep community members engaged? How do we develop authentic, productive relationships with community members both online and in person? How do we get departmental buy-in, hire effectively, and create consistent, reliable community engagement skills in our organization? What are the strategic and tactical pitfalls and roadblocks we need to avoid? How do we make sure that our community continues to grow with us—and more importantly, how do we make sure that we continue to grow with them? People Powered pulls together over 20 years of pragmatic experience into a clear, simple methodology and blueprint to not just answer these questions, but deliver results. It also includes contributions from industry leaders including Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Emmy-award winning actor), Peter H. Diamandis (Founder of XPRIZE, Singularity University), Jim Zemlin (Executive Director, The Linux Foundation), Mike Shinoda (Co-Founder, Linkin Park), Jim Whitehurst (CEO, Red Hat), and more. Don’t get left behind—become an industry trailblazer and ensure your company’s longevity by tapping into the most dynamic force both outside and inside your organization: the people.

From one of the world’s leading data scientists, a landmark tour of the new science of idea flow, offering revolutionary insights into the mysteries of collective intelligence and social influence. If the Big Data revolution has a presiding genius, it is MIT’s Alex “Sandy” Pentland. Over years of groundbreaking experiments, he has distilled remarkable discoveries significant enough to become the bedrock of a whole new scientific field: social physics. Humans have more in common with bees than we like to admit: We’re social creatures first and foremost. Our most important habits of action - and most basic notions of common sense - are wired into us through our coordination in social groups. Social physics is about idea flow, the way human social networks spread ideas and transform those ideas into behaviors. Thanks to the millions of digital bread crumbs people leave behind via smartphones, GPS devices, and the Internet, the amount of new information we have about human activity is truly profound. Until now, sociologists have depended on limited data sets and surveys that tell us how people say they think and behave, rather than what they actually do. As a result, we’ve been stuck with the same stale social structures - classes, markets - and a focus on individual actors, data snapshots, and steady states. Pentland shows that, in fact, humans respond much more powerfully to social incentives that involve rewarding others and strengthening the ties that bind than incentives that involve only their own economic self-interest. Pentland and his teams have found that they can study patterns of information exchange in a social network without any knowledge of the actual content of the information and predict with stunning accuracy how productive and effective that network is, whether it’s a business or an entire city. We can maximize a group’s collective intelligence to improve performance and use social incentives to create new organizations and guide them through disruptive change in a way that maximizes the good. At every level of interaction, from small groups to large cities, social networks can be tuned to increase exploration and engagement, thus vastly improving idea flow. Social Physics will change the way we think about how we learn and how our social groups work - and can be made to work better, at every level of society. Pentland leads listeners to the edge of the most important revolution in the study of social behavior in a generation, an entirely new way to look at life itself.

Muhammad Yunus, the practical visionary who pioneered microcredit and, with his Grameen Bank, won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, has developed a visionary new dimension for capitalism which he calls “social business.” By harnessing the energy of profit-making to the objective of fulfilling human needs, social business creates self-supporting, viable commercial enterprises that generate economic growth even as they produce goods and services that make the world a better place. In this book, Yunus shows how social business has gone from being a theory to an inspiring practice, adopted by leading corporations, entrepreneurs, and social activists across Asia, South America, Europe and the US. He demonstrates how social business transforms lives; offers practical guidance for those who want to create social businesses of their own; explains how public and corporate policies must adapt to make room for the social business model; and shows why social business holds the potential to redeem the failed promise of free-market enterprise.

In A Hidden Wholeness, Parker Palmer reveals the same compassionate intelligence and informed heart that shaped his best-selling books Let Your Life Speak and The Courage to Teach. Here he speaks to our yearning to live undivided lives—lives that are congruent with our inner truth—in a world filled with the forces of fragmentation.

The most startling thing about disasters, according to award-winning author Rebecca Solnit, is not merely that so many people rise to the occasion, but that they do so with joy. That joy reveals an ordinarily unmet yearning for community, purposefulness, and meaningful work that disaster often provides. A Paradise Built in Hell is an investigation of the moments of altruism, resourcefulness, and generosity that arise amid disaster's grief and disruption and considers their implications for everyday life. It points to a new vision of what society could become-one that is less authoritarian and fearful, more collaborative and local.

In A Religion of One’s Own, bestselling author and former monk Thomas Moore explores the myriad possibilities of creating a personal spiritual style, either inside or outside formal religion.

Affinity Online considers how young people have found new opportunities for expanded learning in the digital age. These cases reveal the shared characteristics and unique cultures and practices of different online affinity networks, and how they support “connected learning”—learning that brings together youth interests, social activity, and accomplishment in civic, academic, and career relevant arenas. Although involvement in online communities is an established fixture of growing up in the networked age, participation in these spaces show how young people are actively taking up new media for their own engaged learning and social development.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump proclaimed, “The American Dream is dead,” a message that resonated across the country. Washington Examiner editor Timothy Carney traveled Middle America, pored over county-level maps and data, and sorted through sociological studies, and had a startling revelation: Donald Trump is right, but the death of the American Dream is a social phenomenon, not an economic one.

Awakening Together combines the intimately personal, the Buddhist and universal into a loving, courageous, important work that will benefit all who read it. For anyone who longs to collaborate and create a just and inclusive community, Larry provides a brilliant guidebook.

In Becoming Wise, Krista Tippett has created a master class in living for a fractured world. Fracture, she says, is not the whole story of our time. The enduring question of what it means to be human has become inextricable from the challenge of who we are to one another. She insists on the possibility of personal depth and common life for this century, nurtured by science and “spiritual technologies,” with civility and love as muscular public practice. And, accompanied by a cross-disciplinary dream team of a teaching faculty, she shows us how.

With her signature depth and eloquence, Toko-pa maps a path to Belonging from the inside out. Drawing on myth, stories and dreams, she takes us into the origins of our estrangement, reframing exile as a necessary initiation into authenticity. Then she shares the competencies of belonging: a set of ancestral practices to heal our wounds and restore true belonging to our lives and to the world.

Better Together examines how people across the country are inventing new forms of social activism and community renewal. An arts program in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, brings together shipyard workers and their gentrified neighbors; a deteriorating, crime-ridden neighborhood in Boston is transformed by a determined group of civic organizers; an online "virtual" community in San Francisco allows its members to connect with each other as well as the larger group.

Once we bowled in leagues, usually after work—but no longer. This seemingly small phenomenon symbolizes a significant social change that Robert Putnam has identified in this brilliant volume, which The Economist hailed as “a prodigious achievement.”

A timely and important new book that challenges everything we think we know about cultivating true belonging in our communities, organizations, and culture, from the #1 bestselling author of Rising Strong, Daring Greatly, and The Gifts of Imperfection.'True belonging doesn't require us to change who we are. It requires us to be who we are.? Social scientist Brene Brown, PhD, LMSW has sparked a global conversation about the experiences that bring meaning to our lives - experiences of courage, vulnerability, love, belonging, shame and empathy.

Top tier organizations, whether non-profit, political, faith-based or commercial, know that meaningful connections unlock unprecedented outcomes. But too many brands mistakenly rely on superficial transactional relationships to connect with partners, employees, and customers. In this especially lonely era, people want something deeper. Carrie Melissa Jones and Charles Vogl reveal how to build authentic brand communities, where members grow mutual concern, share personal values, and gather in meaningful experiences, both online and off. Successful communities help members grow into who they want to be. An authentic brand community is far more than a group working alongside one another or a list of customers connected to a brand on social media. Carrie Melissa Jones and Charles Vogl present practices used by global brands like Yelp, Twitch, Salesforce, Airbnb, Sephora, Patagonia and others to meaningfully connect with the people critical for their success. Building Brand Communities distills key lessons to create engaged and effective communities by growing mutual concern, expressing common values, and sharing experiences. Success can develop fiercely loyal collaborator and customer relationships. The authors articulate how authentic communities can serve organizational goals in seven different areas: innovation, talent recruitment, customer retention, marketing, customer service, creating community forums and building transformational movements. They also reveal principles to grow a new brand community to critical mass. This is a comprehensive guide to a crucial differentiator that gives organizations access to untapped enthusiasm and engagement.

Connecting with other people, finding a sense of belonging and the need for support are natural human desires. Employees who don't feel supported at work don't stay around for long - or if they do, they quickly become unmotivated and unhappy. At a time when organisational structures are flattening and workforces are increasingly fluid, supporting and connecting people is more important than ever. This is where organisational communities of practice come in.

How insights from the social sciences, including social psychology and economics, can improve the design of online communities. Online communities are among the most popular destinations on the Internet, but not all online communities are equally successful. For every flourishing Facebook, there is a moribund Friendster―not to mention the scores of smaller social networking sites that never attracted enough members to be viable. This book offers lessons from theory and empirical research in the social sciences that can help improve the design of online communities.

Buzzing Communities cuts through the fluff to offer a clear process for creating thriving online communities. This book combines a century of proven science, dozens of real-life examples, practical tips, and trusted community-building methods. This step-by-step guide includes a lifecycle for tracking your progress and a framework for managing your organization's community efforts.

by Etienne Wenger. This book presents a framework for doing that, with a social theory of learning that is ground-breaking yet accessible, with profound implications not only for research, but also for all those who have to foster learning as part of their responsibilites at work, at home, at school.

What makes a Web site a Web community? How have sites like Yahoo, iVillage, eBay, and AncientSites managed to attract and maintain a loyal following? How can Web developers create growing, thriving sites that serve an important function in people's lives? Community Building on the Web introduces and examines nine essential design strategies for putting together vibrant, welcoming online communities.

Through seven London case studies of communities opposing social housing demolition and/or proposing community-led plans, Community-Led Regeneration offers a toolkit of planning mechanisms and other strategies that residents and planners working with communities can use to resist demolition and propose community-led schemes. The case studies are Walterton and Elgins Community Homes, West Ken and Gibbs Green Community Homes, Cressingham Gardens Community, Greater Carpenters Neighbourhood Forum, Focus E15, People’s Empowerment Alliance for Custom House (PEACH), and Alexandra and Ainsworth Estates. Together, these case studies represent a broad overview of groups that formed as a reaction to proposed demolitions of residents' housing, and groups that formed as a way to manage residents' homes and public space better.

by Peter Block. Modern society is plagued by fragmentation. The various sectors of our communities--businesses, schools, social service organizations, churches, government--do not work together. They exist in their own worlds. As do so many individual citizens, who long for connection but end up marginalized, their gifts overlooked, their potential contributions lost. This disconnection and detachment makes it hard if not impossible to envision a common future and work towards it together.

Today's economy is fueled by knowledge. Every leader knows this to be true, yet few have systematic methods for converting organizational knowledge into economic value. This book argues that communities of practice--groups of individuals formed around common interests and expertise--provide the ideal vehicle for driving knowledge-management strategies and building lasting competitive advantage. Written by leading experts in the field, Cultivating Communities of Practice is the first book to outline models and methods for systematically developing these essential groups.

Cyber Racism and Community Resilience demonstrates how the social sciences can be marshalled to delineate, comprehend and address the issues raised by a global epidemic of hateful acts against race. Authored by an inter-disciplinary team of researchers based in Australia, this book presents original data that reflects upon the lived, complex and often painful reality of race relations on the internet. It engages with the various ways, from the regulatory to the role of social activist, which can be deployed to minimise the harm often felt.

In this new book, Brown uses research, stories, and examples to answer these questions in the no-BS style that millions of readers have come to expect and love.

Inspired by Octavia Butler's explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. This is a resolutely materialist “spirituality” based equally on science and science fiction, a visionary incantation to transform that which ultimately transforms us.

Prescriptive and unique, Emotional First Aid is essential reading for anyone looking to become more resilient, build self-esteem, and let go of the hurts and hang-ups that are holding them back.

Great things don't happen in a vacuum. But creating an environment for creative thinking and innovation can be a daunting challenge. How can you make it happen at your company? The answer may surprise you: gamestorming. This book includes more than 80 games to help you break down barriers, communicate better, and generate new ideas, insights, and strategies. The authors have identified tools and techniques from some of the world's most innovative professionals, whose teams collaborate and make great things happen. This book is the result: a unique collection of games that encourage engagement and creativity while bringing more structure and clarity to the workplace. Find out why -- and how -- with Gamestorming. Overcome conflict and increase engagement with team-oriented games Improve collaboration and communication in cross-disciplinary teams with visual-thinking techniques Improve understanding by role-playing customer and user experiences Generate better ideas and more of them, faster than ever before Shorten meetings and make them more productive Simulate and explore complex systems, interactions, and dynamics Identify a problem's root cause, and find the paths that point toward a solution

Get Together is a practical and heartfelt guide to cultivating a community. Whether starting a run crew, connecting with fans online, or sparking a movement of K-12 teachers, the secret to getting people together is this: build your community with people, not for them.

For generations, we have focused on the individual drivers of success: passion, hard work, talent, and luck. But in today’s dramatically reconfigured world, success is increasingly dependent on how we interact with others. In Give and Take, Adam Grant, an award-winning researcher and Wharton’s highest-rated professor, examines the surprising forces that shape why some people rise to the top of the success ladder while others sink to the bottom. Praised by social scientists, business theorists, and corporate leaders, Give and Take opens up an approach to work, interactions, and productivity that is nothing short of revolutionary.

Corporate executives are struggling with a new trend: people using online social technologies (blogs, social networking sites, YouTube, podcasts) to discuss products and companies, write their own news, and find their own deals. This groundswell is global, it s unstoppable, it affects every industry and it's utterly foreign to the powerful companies running things now.

Evaluates the significant role being played by technological advances on the formation and experience of modern group dynamics, citing such examples as Wikipedia and MySpace to demonstrate the Internet's power in bridging geographical and cultural gaps.

This is a book about working in groups, based on 8 years experience in community projects and startups. I’m not so interested in what you’re working on together, I’m just going to focus on how you do it. To my way of thinking, it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to build a better electric vehicle, or develop government policy, or blockade a pipeline; whenever you work with a group of people on a shared objective, there’s some stuff you’re going to deal with, some challenges. How do we decide what we’re working on? who does what? who can join our team? what are our expectations for each other? what happens when someone doesn’t fulfil those expectations? what do we do with disagreement? how do decisions get made? I’m convinced there is not a “one size fits all” recipe, a management structure that you can take off the shelf and install in your collective or your company. But my hypothesis is that there are patterns: common design elements you can draw on as you construct a recipe that’s right for you. Each pattern in this book names a challenge that you are likely to face, and offers tools and techniques you can try in response to that challenge. This is a book for community organisers, leaders, managers, consultants, coaches, facilitators, founders... if you work with groups of humans, these patterns apply to you.

Community is almost always invoked as an unequivocal good, an indicator of a high quality of life, caring, selflessness, belonging. Into this common portrayal, Against the Romance of Community introduces an uncommon note of caution, a penetrating, sorely needed sense of what, precisely, we are doing when we call upon this ideal. Miranda Joseph explores sites where the ideal of community relentlessly recurs, from debates over art and culture in the popular media, to the discourses and practices of nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations, to contemporary narratives of economic transformation or "globalization." She shows how community legitimates the social hierarchies of gender, race, nation, and sexuality that capitalism implicitly requires. Joseph argues that social formations, including community, are constituted through the performativity of production. This strategy makes it possible to understand connections between identities and communities that would otherwise seem to be disconnected: gay consumers in the U.S. and Mexican maquiladora workers; Christian right "family values" and Asian "crony capitalism." Exposing the complicity of social practices, identities, and communities with capitalism, this truly constructive critique opens the possibility of genuine alliances across such differences. Miranda Joseph is associate professor of women's studies at the University of Arizona.

You are already changing the world. It's time to deepen your impact. With conscious culture design, you can amplify your powerful work to a more diverse audience and breathe easy knowing your platform is speaking authentically to the people you want to serve. While we all share the same innate drives and gifts, humans are different. From race to gender to class to personality, everyone has a different story, and everyone experiences the world differently. Right now, our world is in a moment of difference breakdown. We see it in the headlines, and we feel it in our guts. It’s time to transform difference from a source of stress and division into a catalyst for connection, collaboration, and collective success. Here’s how to get started!

The New York Times bestseller from the author of Chasing the Scream, offering a radical new way of thinking about depression and anxiety. There was a mystery haunting award-winning investigative journalist Johann Hari. He was thirty-nine years old, and almost every year he had been alive, depression and anxiety had increased in Britain and across the Western world. Why?

John T. Cacioppo’s groundbreaking research topples one of the pillars of modern medicine and psychology: the focus on the individual as the unit of inquiry. By employing brain scans, monitoring blood pressure, and analyzing immune function, he demonstrates the overpowering influence of social context—a factor so strong that it can alter DNA replication. He defines an unrecognized syndrome—chronic loneliness—brings it out of the shadow of its cousin depression, and shows how this subjective sense of social isolation uniquely disrupts our perceptions, behavior, and physiology, becoming a trap that not only reinforces isolation but can also lead to early death. He gives the lie to the Hobbesian view of human nature as a “war of all against all,” and he shows how social cooperation is, in fact, humanity’s defining characteristic. Most important, he shows how we can break the trap of isolation for our benefit both as individuals and as a society.

Learn to manage, grow, and communicate with your online community Online community management is a growing profession and companies are investing in online communities in order to gain consumer insights into products and to test new products. An effective and dedicated community manager is essential to engage and manage a successful online consumer community. This straightforward-but-fun guide shows you how to effectively manage, grow, and communicate with your online community. Clear coverage shares tips for dealing with customers and fans through Twitter, Facebook, forums, and blogs.

You're an organizational leader or digital marketer who believes they want to build an online community to grow your business -- or you're thinking about it -- but you need more information on the why and the how of creating and managing branded communities online.

Now in its fourth edition, here is the comprehensive manual for grassroots organizers working for social, racial, environmental and economic justice at the local, state and national levels. Since 1973 the Midwest Academy has trained more than 30,000 activists in progressive organizations, unions, and faith-based groups. This Midwest Academy Manual for Activists is central to its training programs and seminars, and it provides an invaluable reference source for organizers throughout their careers. Also included are anecdotes about a wide variety of real organizations working on issues concerning labor, the environment, health care, racism, immigration, peace, religion, energy, public campaign financing and more. Whatever the progressive cause, this is the manual that can help guide organizers and ensure that they continue to reach their goals with efficiency and dignity. USE IT AND ORGANIZE!

The Peers Incorporated model combines two powerful forces. On one side, we have industrial strengths: companies, governments, and institutions (i.e., the "Inc.") that apply significant resources, talent, and money to simplify the complex, apply standards and consistency, deliver economies of scale, and create global brands. On the other we have individual-strengths: autonomous individuals and small companies (i.e., the "Peers") engaged in local, small scale, customized, and specialized efforts to create just-right unique goods and services, often tapping into their own social networks to promote and distribute them.

In this book, Philip Weinmeister, a Salesforce MVP and the first-ever recipient of the “Community Cloud MVP” Trailblazer award, leads you through the ins and outs of Salesforce communities and provides you with an array of best practices to deliver top-notch business portals on the Salesforce platform.

by Frederic Laloux, Etienne Appert. The uplifting message of Reinventing Organizations has resonated with readers all over the world, and they have turned it, one conversation at a time, into a word-of-mouth phenomenon. The book has helped shift the conversation from what’s broken with management today to what’s possible. It is inspiring thousands of organizations—corporations and nonprofits, schools and hospitals—to adopt radically more powerful, soulful, and purposeful practices.

Rituals for Work shows us how creative rituals can make our personal and business lives more meaningful and rewarding. Rituals are powerful tools: they reinforce good habits, motivate personal and professional achievement, create a common bond between co-workers and build shared values; they can transform an organization’s culture and provide a foundation to achieve common goals. Focusing on real-world examples, this book takes a practical approach to the power and benefits of workplace rituals. This insightful guide presents 50 creative rituals, from business and management to design and personal development. Specific case studies highlight the use of rituals and their positive impact to real-world organizations, while vivid visuals allow us to feel their energy and emotion.

This Handbook exists to bridge the gap between social activism and personal transformation work. In it you will find practical steps for connecting to your own life’s purpose and making a bigger impact in the world.

This book is an all-in-one primer for anyone aiming to build on-line communities. It covers the theory of Social Architecture, and the tools you need to build a community. It explains the ZeroMQ community in detail, including its collaboration process (C4). This is a powerful book for anyone building an Open Source community, or an on-line community in other areas.

An essential guide to building supportive entrepreneurial communities "Startup communities" are popping up everywhere, from cities like Boulder to Boston and even in countries such as Iceland. These types of entrepreneurial ecosystems are driving innovation and small business energy. Startup Communities documents the buzz, strategy, long-term perspective, and dynamics of building communities of entrepreneurs who can feed off of each other's talent, creativity, and support.

Swarmwise (2013) is a tactical guide to changing the world using cost-efficient swarm methodology. It is a leadership handbook that outlines how the Swedish Pirate Party was able to beat the political competition on less than one percent of their budget, and shows how any cash- and time-strapped executive or manager can use swarm methodologies, whether the goal is business, social, or political.

Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope - a powerful, visionary work that will enrich our teaching and our lives. Combining critical thinking about education with autobiographical narratives, hooks invites readers to extend the discourse of race, gender, class and nationality beyond the classroom into everyday situations of learning. bell hooks writes candidly about her own experiences. Teaching, she explains, can happen anywhere, any time - not just in college classrooms but in churches, in bookstores, in homes where people get together to share ideas that affect their daily lives.

Team Human is a manifesto―a fiery distillation of preeminent digital theorist Douglas Rushkoff’s most urgent thoughts on civilization and human nature. In one hundred lean and incisive statements, he argues that we are essentially social creatures, and that we achieve our greatest aspirations when we work together―not as individuals. Yet today society is threatened by a vast antihuman infrastructure that undermines our ability to connect. Money, once a means of exchange, is now a means of exploitation; education, conceived as way to elevate the working class, has become another assembly line; and the internet has only further divided us into increasingly atomized and radicalized groups.

This book explores the weird and mean and in-between that characterize everyday expression online, from absurdist photoshops to antagonistic Twitter hashtags to deceptive identity play.

In The Anatomy of Loneliness, Teal identifies the three pillars or qualities of loneliness: Separation, Shame and Fear and goes on to share her revolutionary technique; The Connection Process, a form of intuitive journeying, usually involving two people a ‘receiver’ and a ‘journeyer’. Through a series of exercises each person experiences ‘walls’ and ‘blockages’ as they move through the process both participants face their fears learning from these to reach a place of unconditional love and acceptance.

"Dale Hunter has done it again! She has taken what was already a 'must-read' for our industry, updated it, transformed it, and produced both a road map for aspiring facilitators and a value-added toolbox for crafty veterans. The Making Intervention and Processes chapters alone contain more insights than most books in their entirety." ―Michael Wilkinson, author, The Secrets of Facilitation This thoroughly revised edition of the classic book on facilitation offers the most current research available on the topics of facilitation and group dynamics. A comprehensive resource for facilitators, trainers, HR professionals, and consultants, The Art of Facilitation describes the profession of group facilitation and the role of a facilitator, and outlines the key elements of facilitation. The book also examines the most common challenges that facilitators face, as well as the ethical issues that pertain to the facilitation process. Written by Dr. Dale Hunter―acclaimed facilitator, mediator, and coach―this revised edition includes new information on facilitation in organizations, sustainability, therapeutic group work, and online facilitation. The book also includes an examination of the wide range of approaches and methods that have emerged in the field in recent years. In addition to providing an updated guide to the topic, the book contains a training program that can be used by a group of aspiring facilitators as a peer learning framework. It also includes fifty-two processes that are useful for both facilitators and facilitation educators alike.

In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive--which they don't have to be. We rely too much on routine and the conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved. At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Parker sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play. Drawing on her expertise as a facilitator of high-powered gatherings around the world, Parker takes us inside events of all kinds to show what works, what doesn't, and why. She investigates a wide array of gatherings--conferences, meetings, a courtroom, a flash-mob party, an Arab-Israeli summer camp--and explains how simple, specific changes can invigorate any group experience. The result is a book that's both journey and guide, full of exciting ideas with real-world applications. The Art of Gathering will forever alter the way you look at your next meeting, industry conference, dinner party, and backyard barbecue--and how you host and attend them.

Discover the true value of Developer Relations as you learn to build and maintain positive relationships with your developer community. Use the principles laid out in this book to walk through your company goals and discover how you can formulate a plan tailored to your specific needs.

This short Guidebook is an exploration of ‘Communities’. It considers the key capabilities of the Social Leader as a Community Builder. It’s about the communities that we build for Social Learning, that we engage with as Social Leaders, and that we will rely upon as we build our more Socially Dynamic Organisation. It is intended to be both a space for thoughtful exploration, and a practical guide as to how you do it in practice. I’ve written it to help you to create the ‘Conditions for Community’: to support your work, whether it be to build new communities, to help existing ones grow and thrive, or to ensure that all of our communities are inclusive and interconnected. ‘Interconnectivity’ is a core feature of the Socially Dynamic Organisation. The context of this work is the Social Age: the evolved ecosystem in which we live (and the subject of another of these Guidebooks). Broadly speaking, the Social Age sees the rise of collectivism beyond traditional Organisational structures, facilitated by emergent and pervasive social collaborative technology, at radical scale, and existing outside the hierarchy of any formal organisational structure or rules. The communities that I describe here are not formal structures; they exist within the Social aspect of the Organisation.

Where does great culture come from? How do you build and sustain it in your group or strengthen a culture that needs fixing? In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle goes inside some of the world's most successful organizations - including Pixar, the San Antonio Spurs, and the US Navy's

In The Indispensable Community, FeverBee’s Richard Millington explains how top community professionals have stopped chasing engagement and instead built communities neither they, nor their members, can live without. These communities save their companies millions of dollars, keep their customers fiercely loyal, and help design game-changing new products.

A sparklingly strange odyssey through the kaleidoscope of America's new spirituality: the cults, practices, high priests and prophets of our supposedly post-religion age. Fifty-five years have passed since the cover of Time magazine proclaimed the death of God and while participation in mainstream religion has indeed plummeted, Americans have never been more spiritually busy. While rejecting traditional worship in unprecedented numbers, today's Americans are embracing a kaleidoscopic panoply of spiritual traditions, rituals, and subcultures -- from astrology and witchcraft to SoulCycle and the alt-right.As the Internet makes it ever-easier to find new "tribes," and consumer capitalism forever threatens to turn spirituality into a lifestyle brand, remarkably modern American religious culture is undergoing a revival comparable with the Great Awakenings of centuries past. Faith is experiencing not a decline but a Renaissance. Disillusioned with organized religion and political establishments alike, more and more Americans are seeking out spiritual paths driven by intuition, not institutions. In Strange Rites, religious scholar and commentator Tara Isabella Burton visits with the techno-utopians of Silicon Valley; Satanists and polyamorous communities, witches from Bushwick, wellness junkies and social justice activists and devotees of Jordan Peterson, proving Americans are not abandoning religion but remixing it. In search of the deep and the real, they are finding meaning, purpose, ritual, and communities in ever-newer, ever-stranger ways.

Companies like Netflix, Spotify, and Salesforce are just the tip of the iceberg for the subscription model. The real transformation--and the real opportunity--is just beginning. Subscription companies are growing nine times faster than the S&P 500. Why? Because unlike product companies, subscription companies know their customers. A happy subscriber base is the ultimate economic moat. Today's consumers prefer the advantages of access over the hassles of maintenance, from transportation (Uber, Surf Air), to clothing (Stitch Fix, Eleven James), to razor blades and makeup (Dollar Shave Club, Birchbox). Companies are similarly demanding easier, long-term solutions, trading their server rooms for cloud storage solutions like Box. Simply put, the world is shifting from products to services. But how do you turn customers into subscribers? As the CEO of the world's largest subscription management platform, Tien Tzuo has helped hundreds of companies transition from relying on individual sales to building customer-centric, recurring-revenue businesses. His core message in Subscribed is simple: Ready or not, excited or terrified, you need to adapt to the Subscription Economy -- or risk being left behind. Tzuo shows how to use subscriptions to build lucrative, ongoing one-on-one relationships with your customers. This may require reinventing substantial parts of your company, from your accounting practices to your entire IT architecture, but the payoff can be enormous. Just look at the case studies: * Adobe transitions from selling enterprise software licenses to offering cloud-based solutions for a flat monthly fee, and quadruples its valuation. * Fender evolves from selling guitars one at a time to creating lifelong musicians by teaching beginners to play and keeping them inspired for life. * Caterpillar uses subscriptions to help solve problems -- it's not about how many tractors you can rent, but how much dirt you need to move. In Subscribed, you'll learn how these companies made the shift, and how you can transform your own product into a valuable service with a practical, step-by-step framework. Find out how you can prepare and prosper now, rather than trying to catch up later.

Swarmwise (2013) is a tactical guide to changing the world using cost-efficient swarm methodology. It is a leadership handbook that outlines how the Swedish Pirate Party was able to beat the political competition on less than one percent of their budget, and shows how any cash- and time-strapped executive or manager can use swarm methodologies, whether the goal is business, social, or political.

How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true? Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world.

Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope - a powerful, visionary work that will enrich our teaching and our lives. Combining critical thinking about education with autobiographical narratives, hooks invites readers to extend the discourse of race, gender, class and nationality beyond the classroom into everyday situations of learning. bell hooks writes candidly about her own experiences. Teaching, she explains, can happen anywhere, any time - not just in college classrooms but in churches, in bookstores, in homes where people get together to share ideas that affect their daily lives.

Team Human is a manifesto―a fiery distillation of preeminent digital theorist Douglas Rushkoff’s most urgent thoughts on civilization and human nature. In one hundred lean and incisive statements, he argues that we are essentially social creatures, and that we achieve our greatest aspirations when we work together―not as individuals. Yet today society is threatened by a vast antihuman infrastructure that undermines our ability to connect. Money, once a means of exchange, is now a means of exploitation; education, conceived as way to elevate the working class, has become another assembly line; and the internet has only further divided us into increasingly atomized and radicalized groups.

The New York Times bestselling author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality returns with thought-provoking work to challenge our preconceptions about dishonesty and urge us to take an honest look at ourselves. Does the chance of getting caught affect how likely we are to cheat? How do companies pave the way for dishonesty? Does collaboration make us more honest or less so? Does religion improve our honesty? Most of us think of ourselves as honest, but, in fact, we all cheat. From Washington to Wall Street, the classroom to the workplace, unethical behavior is everywhere. None of us is immune, whether it's the white lie to head off trouble or padding our expense reports. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, award-winning, bestselling author Dan Ariely turns his unique insight and innovative research to the question of dishonesty. Generally, we assume that cheating, like most other decisions, is based on a rational cost-benefit analysis. But Ariely argues, and then demonstrates, that it's actually the irrational forces that we don't take into account that often determine whether we behave ethically or not. For every Enron or political bribe, there are countless puffed résumés, hidden commissions, and knockoff purses. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, Ariely shows why some things are easier to lie about; how getting caught matters less than we think; and how business practices pave the way for unethical behavior, both intentionally and unintentionally. Ariely explores how unethical behavior works in the personal, professional, and political worlds, and how it affects all of us, even as we think of ourselves as having high moral standards. But all is not lost. Ariely also identifies what keeps us honest, pointing the way for achieving higher ethics in our everyday lives. With compelling personal and academic findings, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty will change the way we see ourselves, our actions, and others.

This book explores the weird and mean and in-between that characterize everyday expression online, from absurdist photoshops to antagonistic Twitter hashtags to deceptive identity play.

In The Anatomy of Loneliness, Teal identifies the three pillars or qualities of loneliness: Separation, Shame and Fear and goes on to share her revolutionary technique; The Connection Process, a form of intuitive journeying, usually involving two people a ‘receiver’ and a ‘journeyer’. Through a series of exercises each person experiences ‘walls’ and ‘blockages’ as they move through the process both participants face their fears learning from these to reach a place of unconditional love and acceptance.

Online communities provide a wide range of opportunities for supporting a cause, marketing a product or service, or building open source software. The Art of Community helps you recruit members, motivate them, and manage them as active participants. Author Jono Bacon offers experiences and observations from his 14-year effort to build and manage communities, including his current position as manager for Ubuntu. Discover how your community can become a reliable support network, a valuable source of new ideas, and a powerful marketing force. This expanded edition shows you how to keep community projects on track, make use of social media, and organize collaborative events. Interviews with 12 community management leaders, including Linus Torvalds, Tim O’Reilly, and Mike Shinoda, provide useful insights. Develop specific objectives and goals for building your community Build processes to help contributors perform tasks, work together, and share successes Provide tools and infrastructure that enable members to work quickly Create buzz around your community to get more people involved Harness social media to broadcast information, collaborate, and get feedback Use several techniques to track progress on community goals Identify and manage conflict, such as dealing with divisive personalities

Strong cultures help people support one another, share their passions, and achieve big goals. And such cultures of belonging aren’t just happy accidents - they can be purposefully cultivated, whether they’re in a company, a faith institution or among friends and enthusiasts. Drawing on 3,000 years of history and his personal experience, Charles Vogl lays out seven time-tested principles for growing enduring, effective and connected communities. He provides hands-on tools for creatively adapting these principles to any group—formal or informal, mission driven or social, physical or virtual. This book is a guide for leaders seeking to build a vibrant, living culture that will enrich lives.

"Dale Hunter has done it again! She has taken what was already a 'must-read' for our industry, updated it, transformed it, and produced both a road map for aspiring facilitators and a value-added toolbox for crafty veterans. The Making Intervention and Processes chapters alone contain more insights than most books in their entirety." ―Michael Wilkinson, author, The Secrets of Facilitation This thoroughly revised edition of the classic book on facilitation offers the most current research available on the topics of facilitation and group dynamics. A comprehensive resource for facilitators, trainers, HR professionals, and consultants, The Art of Facilitation describes the profession of group facilitation and the role of a facilitator, and outlines the key elements of facilitation. The book also examines the most common challenges that facilitators face, as well as the ethical issues that pertain to the facilitation process. Written by Dr. Dale Hunter―acclaimed facilitator, mediator, and coach―this revised edition includes new information on facilitation in organizations, sustainability, therapeutic group work, and online facilitation. The book also includes an examination of the wide range of approaches and methods that have emerged in the field in recent years. In addition to providing an updated guide to the topic, the book contains a training program that can be used by a group of aspiring facilitators as a peer learning framework. It also includes fifty-two processes that are useful for both facilitators and facilitation educators alike.

In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive--which they don't have to be. We rely too much on routine and the conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved. At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Parker sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play. Drawing on her expertise as a facilitator of high-powered gatherings around the world, Parker takes us inside events of all kinds to show what works, what doesn't, and why. She investigates a wide array of gatherings--conferences, meetings, a courtroom, a flash-mob party, an Arab-Israeli summer camp--and explains how simple, specific changes can invigorate any group experience. The result is a book that's both journey and guide, full of exciting ideas with real-world applications. The Art of Gathering will forever alter the way you look at your next meeting, industry conference, dinner party, and backyard barbecue--and how you host and attend them.

Discover the true value of Developer Relations as you learn to build and maintain positive relationships with your developer community. Use the principles laid out in this book to walk through your company goals and discover how you can formulate a plan tailored to your specific needs.

he rise of the internet has brought with it an inexorable, almost shockingly persistent drive toward community. From the first social networks to the GameStop trading revolution, engaged communities have shown the ability to transform industries. Businesses need to harness that power. As business community expert David Spinks shows in The Business of Belonging: How to Make Community your Competitive Advantage, the successful brands of tomorrow will be those that create authentic connection, giving customers a sense of real belonging and unlocking unprecedented scale as a result. In his career of over 10 years in the business of building community, Spinks has learned what a winning community strategy looks like. From the fundamental concepts—including how community drives measurable business value and what the appropriate metrics are—to high-level community design and practical engagement techniques, The Business of Belonging is an epic journey into the world of community building. This book is for decision makers who want to better understand the value and opportunity of community, and for community professionals who want to level up their strategy. Featuring a foreword by Startup Grind and Bevy cofounder Derek Andersen, it will give you a step-by-step model for strategically planning, creating, facilitating, and measuring communities that drive business growth. Attracting and retaining community members who are also loyal customers, brand evangelists, and leaders—that’s the goal for today’s connected businesses, and this book is the map to getting there.

This short Guidebook is an exploration of ‘Communities’. It considers the key capabilities of the Social Leader as a Community Builder. It’s about the communities that we build for Social Learning, that we engage with as Social Leaders, and that we will rely upon as we build our more Socially Dynamic Organisation. It is intended to be both a space for thoughtful exploration, and a practical guide as to how you do it in practice. I’ve written it to help you to create the ‘Conditions for Community’: to support your work, whether it be to build new communities, to help existing ones grow and thrive, or to ensure that all of our communities are inclusive and interconnected. ‘Interconnectivity’ is a core feature of the Socially Dynamic Organisation. The context of this work is the Social Age: the evolved ecosystem in which we live (and the subject of another of these Guidebooks). Broadly speaking, the Social Age sees the rise of collectivism beyond traditional Organisational structures, facilitated by emergent and pervasive social collaborative technology, at radical scale, and existing outside the hierarchy of any formal organisational structure or rules. The communities that I describe here are not formal structures; they exist within the Social aspect of the Organisation.

The sustainability challenges of yesterday have become today’s resilience crises. National and global efforts have failed to stop climate change, transition from fossil fuels, and reduce inequality. We must now confront these and other increasingly complex problems by building resilience at the community level. But what does that mean in practice, and how can it be done in a way that’s effective and equitable? The Community Resilience Reader offers a new vision for creating resilience, through essays by leaders in such varied fields as science, policy, community building, and urban design. The Community Resilience Reader combines a fresh look at the challenges humanity faces in the 21st century, the essential tools of resilience science, and the wisdom of activists, scholars, and analysts working with community issues on the ground. It shows that resilience is a process, not a goal; how resilience requires learning to adapt but also preparing to transform; and that resilience starts and ends with the people living in a community. Despite the formidable challenges we face, The Community Resilience Reader shows that building strength and resilience at the community level is not only crucial, but possible. From Post Carbon Institute, the producers of the award-winning The Post Carbon Reader, The Community Resilience Reader is a valuable resource for students, community leaders, and concerned citizens.

Where does great culture come from? How do you build and sustain it in your group or strengthen a culture that needs fixing? In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle goes inside some of the world's most successful organizations - including Pixar, the San Antonio Spurs, and the US Navy's

The overall purpose of human communication is - or should be - reconciliation. It should ultimately serve to lower or remove the walls of misunderstanding which unduly separate us human beings, one from another. . ' Although we have developed the technology to make communication more efficient and to bring people closer together, we have failed to use it to build a true global community. Dr M. Scott Peck believes that if we are to prevent civilization destroying itself, we must urgently rebuild on all levels, local, national and international and that is the first step to spiritual survival. In this radical and challenging book he describes how the communities work, how group action can be developed on the principles of tolerance and love, and how we can start to transform world society into a true community.

A Transition Town group involved in preparations for peak oil and climate change; an intentional community, founded with the highest ideals; a nonprofit dedicated to social change—millions of such voluntary groups exist around the world. These collaborative organizations have the unique potential to harness their members' ideals, passions, skills, and knowledge—if they can succeed in getting along together. The Empowerment Manual is a comprehensive manual for groups seeking to organize with shared power and bottom-up leadership to foster vision, trust, accountability, and responsibility. This desperately needed toolkit provides keys to: Understanding group dynamics, Facilitating communication and collective decision-making, Dealing effectively with difficult people. Drawing on four decades of experience, Starhawk shows how collaborative groups can generate the cooperation, efficacy, and commitment critical to success. Her extensive exploration of group process is woven together with the story of RootBound—a fictional ecovillage mired in conflict—and rounded out with a series of real-life case studies. The included exercises and facilitator toolbox show how to establish the necessary structures, ground rules, and healthy norms. The Empowerment Manual is required reading for anyone who wants to help their group avoid disagreement and disillusionment and become a wellspring of creativity and innovation. Starhawk is the author of eleven previous books including the award-winning Webs of Power. A highly influential voice for global justice and the environment, she is deeply committed to bringing the creative power of spirituality to political activism.

In The Indispensable Community, FeverBee’s Richard Millington explains how top community professionals have stopped chasing engagement and instead built communities neither they, nor their members, can live without. These communities save their companies millions of dollars, keep their customers fiercely loyal, and help design game-changing new products.

A hopeful and empowering vision for how to reconnect with each other and heal our divides. Even before a global pandemic introduced us to terms like social distancing, loneliness was already becoming the defining condition of the twenty-first century. But it's also one we have the power to reverse. Combining a decade of research with first-hand reporting, Noreena Hertz takes us from a 'how to communicate in real life' class for smartphone-addicted university students to bouncy castles at Belgian far-right gatherings, from 'renting a friend' and paying for cuddles in the U.S. to nursing home residents knitting bonnets for their robot caregivers in Japan. Packed with bold solutions that we can apply at home, at work and in our neighbourhoods, and with a clear vision for what businesses and governments must do, she explores how our increasing dependence on technology, radical changes to the workplace and decades of policies that have placed self-interest above the collective good, are making us more isolated than ever before. Noreena Hertz helps us to understand why this is the lonely century, how we got here and what each of us can do to help reduce loneliness for ourselves and our communities.

Networking is often considered a necessary evil for all working professionals. With social media platforms like Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at our disposal, reaching potential investors or employers is much easier. Yet, these connections often feel transactional, agenda-driven, and dehumanizing, leaving professionals feeling burnt out and stressed out. Instead, we should connect on a human level and build authentic relationships beyond securing a new job or a new investor for your next big idea. To build real and meaningful networking contacts, we need to go back to basics, remembering that technology is a tool and more than just a means to an end. We need to tap into our humanity and learn to be more intentional and authentic. As a “serial connector” and communications expert, Susan McPherson has a lifetime of experience building genuine connections in and out of work. Her methodology is broken down into three simple steps: Gather: Instead of waiting for the perfect networking opportunity to come to you, think outside the box and create your own opportunity. Host your own dinner party, join a local meet-up group, or volunteer at your neighborhood food pantry. Ask: Instead of leading with our own rehearsed elevator pitches asking for help, ask to help, opening the door to share resources, experience, contacts, and perspectives that add diversity to your own vision. Do: Turn new connections into meaningful relationships by taking these newly formed relationships deeper. Follow through on the promises you made and keep in touch. Woven together with helpful tips and useful advice on making the most out of every step, this book draws on McPherson’s own experience as a renowned “serial connector,” as well as the real life success stories of friends and clients. Filled with humor, humility, and wisdom, The Lost Art of Connecting is the handbook we all need to foster personal and professional relationships that blur the lines between work and play―and enrich our lives in every way.

Millions of Americans yearn for a lost sense of community, for the days when neighbors looked out for one another and families were stable and secure. The 1950s are regarded as the golden age of community, but 1960s rebellion and 1980s nostalgia have blurred our view of what life was really like back then. In The Lost City, Alan Ehrenhalt cuts through the fog, immersing us in the sights, sounds, and rhythms of life in America forty years ago. He takes us down the streets and into the homes, schools, and shops of three neighborhoods in one quintessentially American city: Chicago. In St. Nicholas of Tolentine parish on the Southwest Side, we see how the local Catholic church served as the moral and social center of community life. In Bronzeville, the heart of the black South Side, we meet the civic leaders who offered hope and role models to people hemmed in by poverty and segregation. And in Elmhurst, a commuter suburb bursting with new subdivisions, we witness the culture of middle-class conformity and the ways in which children and adults bent to the rules of the majority culture. Through evocative stories and incisive analysis, Ehrenhalt shows that the glue holding each neighborhood together was an unstated social compact under which people accepted limits in their lives and deferred to authority figures to enforce those limits—a compact destroyed by the baby boomers' rejection of authority in the 1960s. Since that time, an entire generation has come to believe that personal choice is the most important of life's values. But Ehrenhalt argues that if we truly wish to balance the demands of modern life with a feeling of community, we have a great deal to learn from the ”limited” life of the 1950s. The Lost City reveals the price we must pay to restore community in our lives today and the values that will make such a restoration possible.

The Modern Utopian is the definitive exploration of the alternative communities that fascinated a nation and redefined progressive culture in the ‘60s and ‘70s, documented by those who knew it and lived it. This photo-illustrated compilation of articles visits the fabled Drop City, Morningstar Ranch, Timothy Leary at Millbrook, Detroit’s Translove Energies, the still-thriving Twin Oaks and Stephen Gaskin’s Farm, and dozens of other across the nation.

The Online Community Blueprint is a practical guide to the plans and processes to put in place before launching a private and branded online community for your company.

In our ever-increasing pressure-filled and competitive workforce, most business philosophies have been about nose to the grindstone. “Get ’er done, whatever it takes!” has become our daily mantra. But is pushing everyone harder truly the best path to productivity? Does a stressful culture equal a successful company? The alarmingly low employee-engagement numbers would say no. Supported by the latest research, The Optimistic Workplace argues that our best work is the product of a positive environment. Advocating a steward model of management, this eye-opening book reveals how to:• Explore personal and organizational purpose--and align them for astonishing results• Overcome resistance and skepticism from corporate managers pressing for results• Build camaraderie and deepen loyalty among team members• Increase intrinsic motivation• Help your team find meaning in their work• And moreWith practical 30-, 60-, and 90-day plans designed to focus your actions, as well as examples from companies large and small that demonstrate how this people-centric focus has already ignited employee potential, increased innovation, and catapulted many organizations to new levels of performance, The Optimistic Workplace is your complete guide to aligning personal purpose with professional success.

The new virtual era is already here. We use the internet every day, to retrieve information, to purchase merchandise, and to connect with others. But do we really understand the psychology of the internet and how it affects our lives?In this book, Dr Haim Weinberg looks at cyberspace from a group analytic perspective, conceptualizing internet forums as large groups with the illusion of being small groups, and using his expertise as a group therapist to shed new light on internet connections.

In The Power of Ritual, ter Kuile invites us to deepen these ordinary practices as intentional rituals that nurture connection and wellbeing. With wisdom and endearing wit, ter Kuile’s call for ritual is ultimately a call to heal our loss of connection to ourselves, to others, and to our spiritual identities.

Full of practical advice for HR and other business professionals, The Social Organization is a clear guide to addressing the urgent need for companies to shift their focus from developing individuals to enabling networks and relationships between employees. Case studies from leading companies such as Whole Foods, P&G, The Cleveland Clinic, Spotify and Cisco illustrate how relationship-based strategies can be implemented successfully to increase organizational performance.

Rajan explained how the deterioration of support for people from their local communities, themselves left behind by markets and governments, has been the key reason for the rise in different varieties of populism, which he says now threaten capitalistic economic systems.

A sweeping new look at the unheralded transformation that is eroding the foundations of American exceptionalism. Americans today find themselves mired in an era of uncertainty and frustration. The nation's safety net is pulling apart under its own weight; political compromise is viewed as a form of defeat; and our faith in the enduring concept of American exceptionalism appears increasingly outdated.

An analysis of the Internet notes the many subjects its users can access, predicts its roles for the future, and describes the people behind its substantial development.

The Whuffie Factor provides businesspeople with a strategic map and specific tactics for the constantly evolving, elusive, and, to some, strange world of on­line communities. By connecting with your customers through community interaction, you’ll raise your social capital, create demand, and sell more product. Consumer loyalty is a direct result of whuffie. With great stories of online business successes and cautionary tales of major missteps–recording industry, anyone?–Tara Hunt reveals how social networking has more influence over buying decisions than any other marketing tool and how your business can tap into the vast world of Web 2.0 to build an unshakable foundation for twenty-first-century-style online success.

Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.

Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter, discusses the power of creativity and how to harness it, through stories from his remarkable life and career.

Every organization is composed of tribes – naturally occurring groups of between 20 and 150 people. Until now, only a few leaders could identify and develop their tribes, and those rare individuals were rewarded with loyalty, productivity, and industry-changing innovation. Tribal Leadership shows leaders how to assess, identify, and upgrade their tribes' cultures, one stage at a time. The result is an organization that can thrive in any economy.

We have a strong instinct to belong to small groups defined by clear purpose and understanding--"tribes." This tribal connection has been largely lost in modern society, but regaining it may be the key to our psychological survival. Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians-but Indians almost never did the same. Tribal society has been exerting an almost gravitational pull on Westerners for hundreds of years, and the reason lies deep in our evolutionary past as a communal species. The most recent example of that attraction is combat veterans who come home to find themselves missing the incredibly intimate bonds of platoon life. The loss of closeness that comes at the end of deployment may explain the high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by military veterans today. Combining history, psychology, and anthropology, Tribe explores what we can learn from tribal societies about loyalty, belonging, and the eternal human quest for meaning. It explains the irony that-for many veterans as well as civilians-war feels better than peace, adversity can turn out to be a blessing, and disasters are sometimes remembered more fondly than weddings or tropical vacations. Tribe explains why we are stronger when we come together, and how that can be achieved even in today's divided world.

Since it was first published almost a decade ago, Seth Godin's visionary book has helped tens of thousands of leaders turn a scattering of followers into a loyal tribe. If you need to rally fellow employees, customers, investors, believers, hobbyists, or readers around an idea, this book will demystify the process.

When I moved to New York City, I realized what it meant to be truly lonely for the first time. I had no consistent community — people who would wonder where I was if I didn’t show up. I was disconnected. At the time, I thought that I was the only one who felt this way… but I was VERY wrong.

In Walk Out Walk On, we invite you on a learning journey to seven communities around the world to meet people who have walked out of limiting beliefs and assumptions and walked on to create healthy and resilient communities. These Walk Outs who Walk On use their ingenuity and caring to figure out how to work with what they have to create what they need.

You aren't alone. Millions of adults struggle with an uncomfortable and persistent ache: platonic longing, which is the unfulfilled wish for authentic, resilient, close friendships. But it doesn't have to be this way. Making and maintaining friendships during adulthood can be hard--or, with a bit of intention and creativity, joyful. Author Kat Vellos, experience designer and founder of Better Than Small Talk, tackles the four most common challenges of adult friendship: constant relocation, full schedules, the demands of partnership and family, and our culture's declining capacity for compassion and intimacy in the age of social media. Combining expert research and personal stories pulled from conversations with hundreds of adults, We Should Get Together is the modern handbook for making and maintaining stronger friendships. With this book you will learn to: Make and maintain friendships when you (or your friends) keep moving Have deeper and more meaningful conversations Triumph over awkwardness in social situations Become less dependent on your phone Identify and prioritize quality connections Find time for friendship despite your busy calendar Create closer, more durable friendships Full of relatable stories, practical tips, 60 charming illustrations, 55 suggested activities, a book club discussion guide, and 300+ conversation starters, We Should Get Together is the perfect book for anyone who wants to have dedicated, life-enriching friends, and who wants to be that kind of friend, too.

Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about enabling communication across racial and ethnic divides. These topics have only become more urgent as the national conversation about race is increasingly acrimonious. This fully revised edition is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the dynamics of race in America.

In Working in Public, Nadia Eghbal takes an inside look at modern open source software development, its evolution over the last two decades, and its ramifications for an internet reorienting itself around individual creators. Eghbal, who interviewed hundreds of developers while working to improve their experience at GitHub, argues that modern open source offers us a model through which to understand the challenges faced by online creators.