TL;DR
Iβm James and I work with Rosie to co-create an open source community curriculum. On 17 November 2022 we ran an open meetup . You can watch the recording. This post is a writeup of the event, outputs and roadmap for the future. More on the next meetup soon. Head over to The Village to discuss this post. Book time with me to discuss your community education journey.
What we did before the meetup
Since October 2022 Rosie and Iβve had a regular, weekly natter about the project. In between we work on the draft curriculum. Rosie created a bunch of questions for the meetup and together we facilitated the session.
What we did in the meetup
The meat of the meetup consisted of 3 parts:
- pose our questions via free text polls and encourage discussion,
- explain what weβre doing with the curriculum and why it's important,
- answer questions, take feedback, generate ideas and garner support.
Choosing what to share in this post
110 people registered of whom 39 joined. We asked 12 open questions giving a potential total of 468 answers. Thatβs a lot to report on, so Iβve selected the following 3 questions to focus on:
- What is lacking in community education?
- Where have you gotten stuck in building community?
- What would you love to see within an open source course
Feel free to explore all the poll data.
What is lacking in community education?
Unlike answers to other questions below, we forgot to do the voting properly for this question. So instead of votes, Iβve gone with βtotal number of times people mentioned this topicβ.
βStoriesβ and similar got 5 mentions. Having content you can relate to definitely feels like a thing. Itβll be really interesting to source and choose relevant stories from the community, enabling buy-in but hopefully not alienating people whose stories we donβt include. Maybe this is where the community around the content comes in and the collective upvoting of the best stories and examples?
βSupportβ and similar got 4 mentions, but I think that relates more to how we provide the courses, not how we design the content. Feel free to challenge me on that (-:
βMetricsβ and similar got 4 mentions. This is a perennial topic of discussion in community forums and meetups, so defo feels like it need clarifying in the curriculum.
βRole modelsβ and similar got 2 mentions. We know thereβs loads of brilliant, established community professionals out there to feature - Iβm working with one on this project :-) How do we find, invite and elevate new role models?
βSynthesisβ and βInterdisciplinary approachβ got 2 mentions. Makes me think we always need to be reaching outside the community profession to find inspiration and validation from elsewhere. Iβve mentioned user researcher and agile practitioners, but I also think content design, product management and software development are 3 related disciplines we have a lot to learn from and include in the curriculum. What other disciplines would you include?
βAccessibilityβ was mentioned twice, which makes me smile. As someone with mental health, learning disabilities and other sources of neurodiversity, I find poorly designed and displayed content frustrates and excludes me from learning. I believe that designing for edge cases makes things more accessible for everyone. We need to purposefully invite people with accessibility knowledge and experience to collaborate on this project. Who would you suggest?
Where have you gotten stuck in building community?
βNeverβ was a bold claim from one attendee. Well done you! :-)
βEngagementβ and βinvolvementβ got 20 votes. How do we motivate people both individually and as a group to participate in community, specifically our community over others? Or to be more collaborative, how do similar communities work together and possibly merge their members? How do we do whatβs best for the community members, giving them a voice and stake in how things are done? Loads of interestings questions to explore around engagement and involvement. I suspect weβll need a whole meetup on this one.
βGrowthβ, including βSuccession planningβ and βMembers rotationβ 8 votes. This is a common area of discussion among community professionals, so we know weβll need to cover it. I wonder if engagement and involvement are subcategories of growth - what do you think?
βTechnologyβ and βtoolsβ and the data they capture got 3 votes. Should the curriculum include an overall approach? Do we list all the tools and then rate / discuss them? What about the use of physical space for communities - is that a tool?
βStrategyβ and βstructureβ got 3 votes. Thereβs loads of community strategy posts on Rosieland we can draw on for the curriculum. We should also look at βGood Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Mattersβ by Professor Richard Rumelt. To quote from Eda Kizakβs review of the book:
The book describes that the good strategy has an essential logical structure called kernel. The kernel of a strategy contains three elements: a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent actions.
I really like this - makes creating a strategy feel more accessible.
βStarting itβ and βlaunchesβ got 2 votes. Could it be the confidence to just do it? Or knowing where to start, which maybe ties into strategy and community discovery? How do you do a high profile launch and what do we mean by βhigh profileβ? Loads of interest questions to answer here.
βBuy-inβ and βpatienceβ from βhi-upsβ and βleadersβ got 2 votes. I guess weβre talking about the people with the money and authority to approve things, right? How do you persuade them that community is the right thing to do, relative to competing priorities? Or that community is everything and without it weβre nothing? What about the indie / bootstrap community? Does buy-in apply there?
βMotivation that it's all worth it πβ got 3 votes. Thatβs where Rosielandβs community of community professionals can encourage and support each other, right? π Are there personal motivation techniques we could include in the curriculum? What would that look like?
What would you love to see within an open source course?
βStoriesβ, βcase studiesβ and βreal life examplesβ got 8 votes. It mirrors the answer above in the βWhatβs missingβ question, so weβll definitely be putting effort in collecting stories. Whoβs up for designing a set of standard interview questions?
βA journey of building a community from start to finishβ and βCommunity 101 - how to lay the foundations, common mishaps, etc.β got 8 votes. This feels like a no brainer, right? Does all community building follow the same path? If not, what are the common components? I wonder if we need a βgolden threadβ that runs thru the entire curriculum? Maybe using some of the stories that we could collect?
βTemplatesβ got 7 votes. But templates for what? Community discovery interview or survey questions? Minimum viable community checklists? I suspect the answers will fall out of other work.
βDifferent levels for junior, mid and senior Community peopleβ got 5 votes. The delivery manager role I do in the civil service goes from associate, thru senior to head of delivery manager. Itβs part of a larger framework of roles and might be an inspiration for what weβre doing here.
βLeadership qualitiesβ and βout of the box thinking and ideasβ got 3 votes. This answer is really interesting to me. Which leadership qualities are we talking about? Are they innate or something that can be learned? Fascinating ππ»
βExercise and activitiesβ got 2 votes. This feels like a standard part of any curriculum. It also matches the βtrain and trainerβ training Iβve had. It emphasised getting to an exercise as soon as possible, once youβve started a course.
βCollaborationβ plus βFriends and circles with whom we can thrive togetherβ got 2 votes. Similar to above this is the community around the curriculum, especially in a cohort based learning environment.
What to do next
2 challenges that Rosie & I have with this project are:
- limited time we can both contribute,
- knowing what to focus on next.
So a really cool question that Rosie posed in the meetup was, βWhat do you think we should do next?β
Here are the top answers thatβll help us focus on what to do now, next and later:
- 9 votes = Meetup and brainstorm over tea
- 4 votes = Define community and other terminology
- 2 votes = Create groups for the different topics above
- 2 votes = Define what to focus on in the groups above
- 1 votes = Decide which technology (Slack) we collaborate on
Although it didnβt get any votes, a couple of people mentioned creating surveys or interviews. They should then be sent to everyone who signed up for the original meet, and then onto our own communities.
Roadmap
Based on the answers above, I suggest the following:
- Now = agree date and topic for a collaborative curriculum creation session
- Next = organise ourselves into working groups
- Later = use the collaboration model as building blocks of the community curriculum
How you can get involved
Trip on over to The Village and join the conversation.
I'd also love to interview you and replay your memories of courses you've attended and what did / didn't work for you. Book a slot with me via https://calendly.com/jacattell
Thanks so much for reading. Please subscribe to get future Rosieland posts. C u soon (-: