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.