So, our very high level plan at the moment is to create an open source community curriculum with the community. Weāll figure out specific details as we progress over the next few months.
This section in The Village will be used as the core place to talk about all things related to it.
So first question - what do you think should be included in a community curriculum?
And what level is it appropriate for? (e.g. foundation, mid-level, senior, leader)
Ok, here were some of my thoughts with what if community building was taught in schools.
Immediately I thought about how this is naturally happening in school because youāre throwing students together and in the unorganized, unstructured part of their days, community-building is whatās happening.
It made me pause and wonder if we try to overly structure or curriculum-ize community building, does that inhibit actual real, natural community-building? And if so, then how do we ensure that the curriculum enhances the natural connections that are already there.
An example that came to mind was a study I read a long time back about the effect of little league on leadership in boys. They found that little league (a lot more structure to make baseball more accessible) as actually producing less leadership skills than the traditional sandlot-style groups of boys that would get together, work out their roles, and play. The nature of no adults there actually produced better development for the kids than a tightly controlled environment like little league.
So it made me excited because I think schools are already the playground for community-building, but it also made me pause with a lot of caution about how to go about doing that in a way that empowers kids to build their community skills without backfiring. Thoughts??
Often I think and say that a lot of community building doesnāt look like or isnāt called community building.
Like kids playing sports by themselves, itās such a great way to build community.
I think with a ācurriculumā we donāt need to formalise everything/anything, itās more about opening up peopleās minds to what they could or should do to work towards a strong community.
And if we think where people get stuck, is the starting and the knowing they are heading in the right direction. āThe overwhelm of startingā is the biggest stumbling block, I think.
So good ! Oof course be thinking about this in a way that isnāt overly formulaic 
forgot who I was talking to! 
Very high level here, but when I think about teaching the fundamentals of community building for kids, I would have them articulate a problem that they experience (like, itās hard for me to get out of bed, or I really want this new video game but I donāt have enough money), then task them with finding other people who have that same problem.
After that, how can they solve the problem together. Do they just need to talk about it in a safe place? Do they need to put on an event and bring in an expert?
Just some ideas on a caffeine-less Friday
I reckon foundational stuff would be very much welcome.
For those experienced they could use it to reflect on their current approach. I think itās powerful when someone in a profession has a moment to say to themselves, āoh wow, Iām already doing that. And it has a name. Iām not alone. Cool!ā And experienced folks/leaders can also use the curriculum to train people in their team/s.
And for those new to the world of being a community professional it would set them up with a toolbox of ideas and approaches to help them succeed in their career.
Yeap, this chimes nicely with the ābring your community challenges to the courseā and then work together to solve them.
In a recent project with a completely new org who hadnāt built any community before these were the things that they needed:
Worth noting that this was all groundwork for the org to get them prepared for a community way of thinking so was done with limited input from the people who would make up the community (though there was some, particularly around writing the purpose). So the above Iām describing is what the org needed to feel confident they understood before they could get moving, but it felt a reasonable MVP to get a test community off the ground.
Adding a comment here with a video that I think accentuates my point: Push for "adventure playgrounds" comes with safety concerns - YouTube
I like the idea of thinking through the āgroundworkā required to get a community off the ground from a business perspective.
Love these adventure playgrounds. Good stuff can happen when you just let people do their stuff.
Thinking about this the key is creating a space + figuring out ways to get people to show up.
Is that what we need in modern / business communities. Creating the initial space is not hard, itās getting people to show up and understand the value and what can be done within the space.
For me and being honest my needs for community, some key useful stuff would be how do develop good community OKR (Objectives and Key Results). Being able to illustrate real Return on Investment through those Key Results. I am like a lot of you in the position where we need to justify community and what it does. So being able to really show and quantify the value add of community at the individual, community and organizational level would be a key factor.
Also developing charters, this is something I am doing just now in my community at work, I have found some great examples out there the Ministry of Testing one being a very good example. Code of Conduct | Ministry of Testing but a resource that helped you to develop one suitable for your community, enterprise whatever. I may ask chatGPT right enough!
Oh and leadership models, I use 2 different models in my commnunities at work. We have a joint compassionate focussed leadership model for the Mindfulness and Meditation Community and a more traditional, hub spoke workstream driven model for my Quality Engineering Community.
I think there is a specific subset for both open source and developer relations areas within community management that would give way to niche content there. Iām still mulling on what those might look like specifically though.
Iāve said this on LinkedIn recently, but my biggest qualm about community resources at this very moment is everything is nearly 100% slanted toward product and support communities.
While those types are a core part of the industry right now, I wanted to voice there should be guardrails in an open-source curriculum to elevate multiple forms of community (or evergreen practices). Otherwise discussions on topics like ROI, for example, almost always end up back at case deflection or hard revenue.