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 do not grow just because people contribute. They grow when contributors are supported to bring in, guide, and eventually lead others.

That is what POPCOM is for. It gives us a way to look at the parts of community life that help people move from newcomer to contributor, mentor, organiser, or leader, without exhausting the same small group of people year after year.

OCL is built on POPCOM because most community advice starts with tools: which platform to use, how to manage events, where to host discussions. POPCOM starts underneath all of that. It looks at what makes someone feel welcome, useful, connected, and ready to take on more.

This module is the starting point. On the canvas, you will meet two POPCOM dimensions directly: Participation and Connection. They have their own stages because they shape so much of what it feels like to be part of a community.

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 — A plain-language introduction to the framework behind OCL.
  2. The main idea — the experience is the community. Why the experience is the community, and why people stay or leave because of what it feels like to be there.
  3. Activity 1 — Stay / Leave — You reflect on communities you have stayed in and communities you have left, then compare patterns with your table.
  4. Activity 2 — Map your community — 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 — speed-table style. You choose the biggest problem your community faces right now that you would like to tackle, then in three 5-minute rounds you pair with someone to explain your problem and 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.
  • Share your feedback — fill out the workshop feedback form.

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

You have earned your Workshop badge

To claim the Module 01 — Workshop badge:

  1. Go to the OCL project on Badgecraft.
  2. Select Module 01 - Workshop - Experience is the Community.
  3. Click Get this badge and log in or create a Badge Wallet account.
  4. Submit your evidence and send it for review.

You did it!

You looked closely at your community, talked it through with others, and found one thing worth changing.

Now it is time to test it and see what happens.

Notice what improves, what does not, and what else you discover along the way.

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.