Module 1 — Experience is the Community

Open Community Leadership (OCL) · Introducing the POPCOM Framework

The experience is the community.

People don't stay only because a community has useful information. They stay because of what it feels like to be there. They leave for the same reason. They may say they got busy, but more often the community stopped giving them a reason to return.

This is the first module in OCL, where the POPCOM framework is introduced and where you use it to evaluate the current state of your community.

About POPCOM

POPCOM names the human structure underneath a healthy community the six things that decide whether people stay, contribute, and eventually lead. It's the lens OCL uses across every module: Participation, Ownership, Purpose, Connection, Opportunity, Mentorship.

You'll meet the framework properly here, and use it to look at your own community for the first time.

Goal

By the end of this module, you can map your community's experience across its eight stages and identify the one change that would most improve whether people stay in the community.

Your intention

Before you begin, decide what you want to gain from this module for your community.

Keep that intention alongside the module goal. The goal gives the work direction. Your intention gives it meaning.

Where this fits in POPCOM

POPCOM is the framework underneath OCL — the lens running through every module.

As you work, you'll meet two POPCOM dimensions as named stages on the canvas: Participation and Connection. They shape community life so directly that they need their own place in the journey. That's not coincidence. POPCOM dimensions aren't abstract ideas. They show up in concrete moments: how someone enters, whether they feel noticed, what they are invited to do, and whether they are given a reason to return.

Future modules explore the other dimensions more deeply.

What you'll learn

• Why experience shapes whether people stay or leave
• How to map a person’s journey through your community
• How to identify the stage where people may be quietly dropping away
• How to choose one concrete change that makes returning more likely

The Community Experience Canvas

The core tool for this module is the Community Experience Canvas — a one-page map of the eight stages a person moves through inside a community: Arrival, Welcome, Participation, Connection, Recognition, Growth, Safety, Return.

The canvas works across different kinds of community spaces. Each stage includes prompts for:

• In-person communities
• Open source projects
• Live online communities

Resources

• Community-Experience-Canvas.pdf — the canvas. One page covers all contexts: each stage carries a prompt for in-person, repo, and online communities. Read the line for your kind of community.
• Community-Experience-Canvas-examples.pdf — a filled example (PyBridge Rotterdam, a fictional Python meetup) showing what done looks like.

Print the canvas at A3 for group work or A4 for individual use. This canvas is essential for this module.

Reflect

Before you call it done:

• What surprised you about your own community?
• What's the one thing you're taking back?
• Is the current experience sustainable for me and for the people I lead?
• What would make someone want to return?

Completion evidence

You can complete this module through any of the three learning paths.

The module is complete when you can share:

1. Your Stay and Leave themes
2. One completed Community Experience Canvas
3. The most important thing missing from your community's experience
4. One improvement you have planned or tested

A real-world improvement tested later is the strongest evidence of all.

That is when you notice how this module can change how your community works for the better.

Earn the Experience badge

Complete the module and submit the required evidence to earn the Experience badge.

The badge recognises that you can: (here you dont capitalize the sentences as you did elswhere)

• Examine a community experience honestly
• Identify a meaningful gap
• Choose a practical improvement
• Connect that improvement to whether people stay and return

The badge can be earned through the self-guided path or by attending a workshop.

Testing your improvement in a real community strengthens the evidence and gives you something useful to carry into future modules.

Teach this module

Guiding this module and reflecting on your practice can contribute towards earning the Lead Mentor badge.

This module is CC BY 4.0. You can run it in your community, your meetup, your workplace — no permission needed. Read the path that fits, adapt the timing, and share what you changed. Tag #OpenCommunityLeadership so the next facilitator can learn from your run.

Pick your path

This module works three ways. They cover the same arc — set the thesis, map your community, find what's missing, commit to one change — but how you do it depends on why you're here.

• Self-guided — working on your own, at your own pace. ~30–45 min.
• Attend a workshop — join a live session someone runs.
• The Mentor's Guide — guiding another person or a small cohort. Flexible.

Each path is designed to stand on its own.

Share what you learn

If you test your improvement, run the module, or adapt it for another community, share what happened.

Tag #OpenCommunityLeadership so other community leaders and Mentors can learn from your experience.

License

CC BY 4.0 — Open Community Leadership. Free to use, adapt, and share with attribution.

OCL was started and is maintained by Georgi Ker.