Booklist 2.0: June 2009

Every month, The Next Web Blog picks three relevant books for you to read. The teasers are short, the pro’s why to read are relevant. This month we’re discussing Ignore Everybody written by Hugh MacLeod, 18 Rules of Community Engagement written by Angela Connor and Building Social Web Applications written by Gavin Bell.

Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity

Ignore everybody: and 39 other keys to creativity written by Hugh MacLeod was rocking the web in the past few weeks and it delivered to its expectations. Macleod, famous for creating the best cartoons on the back of business cards, has published some of them combined with 40 super short chapters on how to foster your creativity, ignore what everyone says and live up your dream in this book. Sharp as ever and with a 5-star rating from Seth Godin himself, this book is a must read when you have a few hours to spare. Insightful, funny and relevant.

18 Rules of Community Engagement: A Guide for Building Relationships and Connecting With Customers Online

Building an interesting, high-end website is (relatively) easy. Building and facilitating an interactive community platform on the other hand is difficult, if not impossible, especially when you are an organization. If you build it, but they won’t come is more true than ever. Since the explosive rise of social networks and (niche) online communities however  are organizations looking into ways to leverage the power of online communities for their business. But the most important question, how do you engage your audience with your products, services, eachother and your offerings and how to participate as an organization is the hardest to answer. In 18 rules of community engagement, a guide for building relationshsips and connecting with customers online, written by Angela Connor tries to answer just this. In 18 rules Connor builds on her own experience of growing an online community into 11.000 members in 18 months. The book focuses on adding people, cultivating your most valuable audience and keeping track of progress. A humble, thorough, with a good sense of reality, and interesting read.

Building Social Web Applications: Establishing Community at the Heart of Your Site

A title to watch: Building Social Web Applications: Establishing Community at the Heart of Your Site written by Gavin Bell deals with the question on how to design for social software. The book will be released in August and is written for O’Reilly. As Bell puts it, the book is more about the why and what of social design instead of the how it looks likes and how it works. Building Social Web Applications helps you with tough questions you need to answer when entering the field of social software: who do I want on my site and how do I keep them engaged? Do I need to build, join or use off-the-shelf technology, how do I succesfully launch my site etc etc. Probably a little bit more technology / designer focused than 18 rules, but no less interesting.