WAO together with the lovely people from Participate have been running three conversational workshops this last month.

Goal of the workshops was to unlock the potential of Communities of Practice, explore Open Recognition, and experience the Participate platform through this curated series of online events.

​The three sessions were designed to offer comprehensive insights into methodologies such Value Cycles, Maturity Models, and Convening Systems and helping others grow their communities. For people interested in establishing Communities of Practice, as well as current community managers seeking to enhance value and impact but also for professionals interested in innovative online education approaches.

This post recaps the three sessions and shares some resources, together with a quick video summary of each workshop.

​​1. Creating Value in your Community

🚀 Link to Slides

In this first workshop we ​​explored Value Cycles, inspired by the work of Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner, to cultivate thriving Communities of Practice.

​​The workshop covered

  • ​​Understanding the different kinds of value community members bring to a CoP
  • Imagining context specific scenarios that lead to community created value
  • Recognizing and applying created value

Resources

2. Helping your Community Mature

🚀 Link to Slides

The second workshop was all about navigating your community through its growth stages using a Maturity Model, based on the work of Emily Webber, Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh & Kai Elmer Sotto.

​​The workshop covered

  • Using our remixed Community of Practice Maturity Model, understanding how Communities of Practice mature
  • Reflecting on the phase of your own CoP and highlighting areas that can help the community progress towards becoming self-sustaining
  • Identifying activities and intervention strategies to help a community develop

Resources

3. Communities as Change Agents

🚀 Link to Slides

In the third and last workshop we learned how to transform your community into a catalyst for change using a Convening Systems model, introduced by the Social Learning Lab.

The workshop covered

  • Recognising and documenting alternative systems using the two loop model
  • Applying the seven areas of systems convening to your own work
  • Seeing relationships between value cycles, the maturity model and convening systems

Resources

Next steps

WAO is eager to help you grow your community. Get in touch if you need assistance, whether it’s for adding value to the community, think about open recognition pathways or who to apply system change to your system!