Community Hosting

When we started working on this as a Community Hosting Community of Practice (CoP) for the Hub Practice Academy we defined our purpose to be: "to define and evolve the role of hosts at the Hub and support their role as network enablers, differentiating what hosting as a leadership practic is (practiced by the network and core teams) from the role of the host at the Hub (practiced by those in the team responsible for community and hosting the space). 

From December 2011 till now March 2012, we have been working on documenting and codifying our practice, with special focus on: hosting practice, community hosting, community building and programming and each time a member has taken the lead on researching within the network and cristillizing a chapter of the updated handbook. We have posted the drafts now for the Hub Network in the internal platform to have access to them (let me know if you are in the network and need access through the platform!) and also give feedback till they reach the final and coherent version in writing and format as well!

Maria Glauser (Hub Talent), Dimitris Kokkinakis (Hub Vienna) and Marieke van der Velden (Hub Amsterdam) were the authors while I was the editor of it, working closely together which has made it a wonderful experience. It was a pleasure working with you three. We hope it serves the network now and incredible individuals trying to host hubs and its entrepreneurs! Like the photo up shows, I was travelling while we were working on it so some of the skype calls caught me on the wildest places! La Cumbrecita, a lovely town in the Sierras of Cordoba, Argentina. ;-)

This is the description of the contents although there are not available for everyone now, it might happen in the mid term:

1. Hosting Practice: Chapter on the hosting practice, the use of the term within the network, the member experience and value creation, the hub´s theory of change, the hosting type of leadership and methodologies used while hosting.
2. Hosting a HUB Community: Chapter on the principles and approach of hosting a Hub community, the direct and indirect ways, the qualities of a good host, the basics of the role and job description (more elaborate info will be available on the Management and Operations CoP guide), key lessons learnt and hosting the space before habitation.
3. Community Building: This chapter describes the methods and the elements that are conceived as community Building from the Hosting Practice. We describe the definition of community building and the principles around it. Subsequently by breaking down the term to every development stage of the Hub but also through a users-led approach according to the member's experience, we aim to establish the term and the activities that we apply in each case. You will also find key lessons learnt and resources.
4. Programming: This chapter is about programming in the Hub context, with a description of principles we apply and processes that have proven to be succesfull in many Hubs, followed by practices to share as well as by learnings and challenges. Please note this chapter is not about the incubation programmes some Hubs are running, more information on this can be found in the Business Development tools.

AoH Buenos Aires

This is a letter I sent to some AoH friends when we finished the training in this city... It was very interesting to see how 37 participants + 7 in the team came from all over South America (we just missed Ecuador) and even North America with two people coming from the US even if living in Argentina, so the call resonated in them as well.

We also had an apprentice in the team with a lot of value to give already from his experience but this being his first AoH design and delivery process. His name is Cristian Figueroa and his project is called Tejeredes. Pablo Espinosa from La Arenera in Colombia also came to support the team and start weaving a latinamerica network of practitioners.

It was amazing the fact that participants seem to be going deeper in a faster way, right to the important issues. In this sense we think that the crafting of the invitation and making the call really attracted and invited the "right" people! Unfortunately, the Hub Buenos Aires team members could not make it, they were shy to really ask for what they wanted on time (if it was too much money you could ask for a "scholarship") but basically there was a timing confusion with them as well apparently.

We did it in Spanish and are feeding forward 1000USD to the Latin America community of Art of Hosting, for the community of practitioners for the next regional art of hosting. In this sense, the AoH Porto Alegre helped us with Marcello Lacroix´s flight coming from there and it was great.

Personally I felt very well and in service, with my own experiences to share and a lot to keep learning too! I enjoyed the residential AoH for the first time as somehow all the ones i was in before were urban ones. I agree that it is better in a way to be residential as both the team and participants have more space internally. It was great to be in the team with Maria (with whom I work a lot for the Hub network but never outside so far), Cristian from Chile, Pablo from Bogotá, Marcello from Brasil and Cecilia and Martin from Rosario in Argentina.

Oh, and Guido from the AoH Madrid in 2011 came to visit the last two hours! He had just landed from the flight from Europe but wanted to come and join for whatever he could. It was amazing because just by participating for that amount of time he also felt transformed and very genuinely happy about this taking place in Argentina. You will see people already posting in the spanish group of Ning and also Facebook page (Tendedero Social we called it) created for this. There are also three videos available as a visual harvest, one edited by Cristian on-site and the other two by Marcello: one teaser and a longer one here.

I wanted to acknowledge and express gratitude for your support in an indirect or direct way for this to take place, either holding space, introducing potential participants, the past steps the callers made for this or even supporting other team members or myself into stepping up for it. This was very smooth process in the end. Thank you Tatiana Glad, Ria Baeck, Mary-Alice Arthur and Jan Hein Nielsen!