Open Community Leadership

Module 01 — Experience Is the Community: Workshop

Workshops are facilitated sessions that bring OCL modules to life in a group setting.

Each workshop is self-contained: everything needed to participate in or facilitate it is under each individual module folder named as workshop.md.

All workshops are free to run, adapt, and share under CC BY 4.0.

Before facilitating a workshop, it is strongly recommended to attend it once as a participant.

The Experience · Open Community Leadership

This is 3 activities OCL workshop where a group of people who build community spaces map their own communities together. This page tells you what to expect, what to bring, and how to get the most out of it.

  • Approximate duration - 90mins Activity 2 or 3 can be omitted to adjust to your timeline

New here? Start with the module overview for the thesis and the canvas.

First, 5 minutes on POPCOM

Communities don't grow because people contribute. They grow because contributors help create the next contributors. POPCOM exists to make that repeatable — it names the dimensions of a community that produces its own future organisers, mentors, and leaders, instead of burning through the ones it has.

That's why OCL is built on it: most community advice is about tools and platforms. POPCOM is about the human structure underneath — the things that actually decide whether someone stays, grows, and eventually leads.

This module is the entry point. You'll meet two POPCOM dimensions as stages on the canvas — Participation and Connection — because they're that central to how a community feels.

Want the full framework? → POPCOM overview

Who this workshop is for

People who build or run community spaces of any kind:

  • Meetup and event organisers
  • Open source project maintainers
  • Conference organisers
  • People running online sprints, calls, or Discord/Slack communities
  • People thinking of starting one

The room is deliberately mixed. You'll learn the most from the people whose communities look nothing like yours.

What to bring

  • One community you already run, or one you're thinking of starting, that you're willing to look at honestly.
  • Something to write with (pen or laptop).
  • 90 minutes of attention. Phones down if you can — the exercises depend on being present with the people at your table.

If you want to look at your community before you arrive, skim the Community Experience Canvas. You don't need to fill it in. Just knowing the eight stages exist will let you land faster on the day.

What to expect

The workshop moves in five beats:

  1. POPCOM intro (10 min) — the framework and why it matters, in plain terms.
  2. The thesis (5 min) — the experience is the community. Set with a short reflection, no lecture.
  3. Activity 1 — Stay / Leave (15 min) — you write, for yourself, why you've stayed in communities and why you've left. Then your table clusters everyone's answers into themes. You might notice the same reasons repeat across the room.
  4. Activity 2 — Map your community (25 min) — using the Community Experience Canvas, you map your own community across its eight stages: Arrival, Welcome, Participation, Connection, Recognition, Growth, Safety, Return. Then you share what you found with your table.
  5. Activity 3 — What's missing (25 min) — speed-table style. You write the biggest problem your community faces right now that you would like to tackle, then in three 5-minute rounds you pair with someone from another table: two minutes to explain your problem, two for them to suggest a solution, then swap. Musical-chairs switch, new partner, next round. Three perspectives on your problem in fifteen minutes. Then you commit to the one suggestion you'll actually try in the next month.

Close with 10 minutes of reflection, a quick QR feedback form, and a take-home reminder.

Nothing you share about your community leaves the room.

How to get the most from it

  • Bring one specific community. "Communities in general" is too abstract for the exercises. Even if you run several, pick one for the day.
  • Be honest, not impressive. The canvas gets more useful the more you admit isn't working. Green everywhere means you're defending, not mapping.
  • Talk to strangers at your table. The person whose community works nothing like yours has probably already solved your problem.
  • Leave with one thing, not ten. The final exercise asks for a single change. Resist the urge to plan a redesign.

What you leave with

  • A completed Community Experience Canvas of your own community
  • The single most important thing that's missing from it
  • One concrete change to test in your community this month
  • A room full of people who now know what you're working on

After the workshop

Complete the workshop activities and submit the required evidence to earn the Experience badge. Then put the work into practice by testing the one change you chose during the workshop. You can also:

  • Apply what you learned — test the one change you chose and record what happened.
  • Revisit the module independently — use the Self-guided path and work at your own pace.
  • Become a Mentor — Mentor someone. use the Mentor Guide to support another community leader through the module.

Supporting others through the module contributes towards earning the Lead Mentor badge. Share what you tested and what you learned using #OpenCommunityLeadership.

Workshops can be taken in any order unless otherwise stated. CC BY 4.0 — Open Community Leadership. Free to use, adapt, and share with attribution.