How to cultivate community, getting together, OnDeck learning conference and more
Hello friends,
Greetings from Barcelona☀️ where summer has officially arrived ☀️☀️☀️.
Many thanks for your feedback on the last edition of The Quest. A special shout out to Stef in London, Connie in Toronto, Barry & Michaele in Bracebridge, Joan in Mansfield 🙌.
If you are joining The Quest for the first time, welcome to our weekly exploration of creativity, facilitation, and learning.
You can catch up on last week’s edition on ✨Creating Meaningful Connection and all past editions here.
This week is all about Cultivating Community 🔎
👉 5 lessons on cultivating community from the OnDeck Course Creators Course
👉 Get Together – a book and podcast about the art and science of cultivating community
👉 Free access to the OnDeck Learning Conference June 9-11 (and join me for an interactive session June 11 @9:30 am Pacific Time)
Let’s dive right in.
🌿Cultivating Community
It was the final zoom session of our 9-week online course creator course.
Emotions were running high.
One by one each student unmuted their mics to share their biggest takeaways from the experience.
One student fondly known as Sir Steven chimed in:
“I just knew that not only were you going to teach me some amazing stuff. But I could feel that the people you were bringing together were going to be explosive.”
Most of us signed up for the course to learn skills. How to design a curriculum. How to build an audience. How to launch a successful online course.
But no one imagined how powerful the community would be. Yes, we learned skills. A lot of them. But it was the power of the community that transformed the experience for me and my peers.
This did not happen by accident. Our expert guide and instructor Andrew Barry and course manager Jackie Williams were deliberate and intentional about how they set up the conditions for this community to thrive.
And it showed me that when we successfully channel the power of community for connection and learning, we can supercharge learning experiences that go well beyond learning facts and skill-building.
So how can we do it well? That’s our Quest for this week.
📚6 Lessons on cultivating community from the OnDeck Course Creators Course
A tweet with 6 lessons I learned from ODCC Course Creators Andrew and Jackie about how to create the conditions for the community to thrive. Also check out my post on LinkedIn.
How do you cultivate community in your groups?
🔥Get Together
A book by Bailey Richarson, Kevin Huynh, and Kai Elmer Sotto on cultivating community. They are the founders of People & Company. They are specialists in the art and science of connecting and growing communities.
The book likens community cultivation to igniting a fire. And it explores a different facet of community cultivation in each chapter.
Here are the key steps a nutshell:
Spark the Flame:
Pinpointing your people —> doing something together —> get people talking
Stoke the fire
Attract new folks —> cultivate your identity —> pay attention to who keeps showing up
Pass the torch
Create more leaders —> supercharge your leaders —> celebrate together
👉The real secret to getting people together …
Build your community with people, not for them.
Check out the Get Together podcast for a bunch of real-life examples of people and organizations doing this exceptionally well.
🎟️You are invited! OnDeck Learning Conference June 9-11 (get your free ticket below👇)
Are you interested in the world of online learning and cohort-based courses? Don’t miss the OnDeck Learning Conference. It’s a conference for “ambitious founders, creators, and career builders looking for fresh ideas and new opportunities”. I’m especially looking forward to the workshops led by my fellow OnDeck Course Creators.
Click on this link for a free ticket for you, a valued member of The Quest!
👉Join me on June 11 at 9:30 am (Pacific Time) for a 60-minute interactive demo of Breakthrough Facilitation, an online course I’ll be launching in September.
💌Thanks for reading The Quest
I always love hearing your feedback and suggestions. Leave a comment below👇or hit reply to share your thoughts and ideas. Visit my website for ways we can work together here.
If you are enjoying The Quest, I’d appreciate it if you shared it with anyone you think might like it.
Oh – one more thing. I’m changing email services this week. I’ll be sending future newsletters out from ConvertKit. If you don’t receive the newsletter next week please check your spam folder and add my email address to your contacts. Thank you!
Until next week!
P.S. I loved hearing your comments on my new Creativity Kickstarter e-book. If you haven’t seen it yet you can download it for free here💥.
P.P.S. If you were forwarded this email, you can subscribe to The Quest here:
