Sprout Up Philippines

Officially titled “Innovation Community Builders Unconference 2024”, this event name is due to be improved upon in future editions.

Overview

On October 13, 2024 we held the first instance of the Community Leaders’ Retreat. Attended by 20 community leaders from Bohol, Cebu, Pampanga, and Davao, the activity aimed to enable these grassroots leaders to ideate, connect, and collaborate on how they could nurture their local communities.

The anchor for this years topic proposals was “Roadblocks or challenges you’ve faced as a grassroots community leader“. The anchor phrase was kept ambiguous enough to allow for a variety of ideas to emerge through the Open Space framework.

To conclude the event, participants were encouraged to share notes and updates with each other post-event through a Facebook group chat where they could continue to discuss action plans they’ve formulated for their own communities.

Top-of-mind challenges

Below are the key challenges identified by the participants. The order of priority was determined through voting where each participant had 3 votes that they could allocate however they want to influence the priority of topics to be discussed.

1. How do you measure if a community is “successful” or “effective”
2. Organizing sustainable events where organizers don’t have to shell out their own cash
3. Volunteer Commitment
4. Community Succession
5. For professional tech communities, do you see value in penetrating younger age groups with your advocacy, or is building with professionals with your stack better for you?
6. Dealing with burnout due to many responsibilities in the community
7. How do you effectively market community events in social media + stay consistent in posting?
8. How to deal with politicians when it comes to tech community building?
9. How do you combat imposter syndrome?
10. No. of people required to be able to start a community
11. Event number of participants: quality or quantity?
12. How to build a movement
13. What the f*ck is an Activity Design?
14. Coping with the fear of AI taking over tech jobs?
15. Is it reasonable to conduct events monthly? Either face-to-face or virtual events
16. Creating a roadmap for your community. Long-term Goal of 5 years? 10 years? How to ensure it is implemented by your predecessor? How long should a lead hold the helm?
17. Commitment issues: How many communities can you lead? When do you leave = let go
18. How to encourage volunteers to lead events instead of the org founders spearheading all the time?
19. Building your career through community.
20. What do employers find attractive?

Through conversation, the participants found themselves gravitating towards the common question of sustainability both in terms of financial need and succession in leadership. This topic has been identified as the key concern of the participants.

Next Steps

Update: Community Leaders’ Retreat 2025 has been announced. Get tickets here.

The 2024 event achieved an average NPS score of 9.5 and so a 2nd instance of the event was proposed for 2025, possibly in Davao City or nearby the area, and is expected to gather a group of 50 community leaders.

A reflection of how the event can be better organized can be found in this blog post, but below are some key insights:

• Retain the connection with nature through thoughtful venue selection.
• Invite a speaker who could impart knowledge and set the tone for the retreat.
• Have a more focused topic anchor now that a key concern has been identified.
• Give participants the option to have an output artifact, like a worksheet, for example, that they can take home after the retreat.

This event was supported by GeeksPH, the non-profit organization behind one of the Philippines’ most awaited technology conferences, Geeks On A Beach.

Do you want to get involved for the next retreat? Send us a message at hello@sproutupbohol.com