What we learned from the first Open Weekend
Success! We completed our first-ever Open Weekend.
We learned about a few things to keep — community building, experiments momentum and a few things to change — quieter venue for storytelling, shorter day for the hackathon. Most importantly, we learned about the power of all of our community.
I can try to put into words the incredible responses I received from the audience, but I think Matt Helt put it best (below). Matt is an advisor to Open Labs and brings his expertise building hundreds of communities for Startup Week. Matt’s words bring me excitement because they not only come from someone who knows what it means to live with a brain condition, but they also comes from someone who knows what it takes to build community.
This Mental Health Month prompted several new communities interested in replicating our work. This October, there is a community leader in Seattle replicating the Brain Crawl at Startup Week. I look forward to catalyzing this work in many more cities and growing the membership here in Colorado.
Cheers to a great Mental Health Month!
Alexandra
Here are a few highlights…
Brain Crawl (Friday)
- Thank you to our amazing speakers and presenters from Brain Crawl
- Congratulations to the three audience favorites DistroMonk, Man Therapy, and Narratives of Hope!
- Congratulations to our audience winners of the HRadvantage employee review kit, KyndHub and Kynd Kit — Karr McCurdy, Jason Stellar, Michelle Devon
Hackathon (Saturday)
Matt Helt, advisor to Open Labs and all-things-community-building put it best, we are on the cusp of changing perception of brain health in the world.
What’s next?
Experiment leaders will now be in charge of their group’s next steps.
Workplace: The Behavioral Health Workplace Assessment in partnership with Health Links will be complete by end of 2018. Interested workplace can sign up here.
Open Labs Community: Open Labs is developing a new leadership structure that resembles a club (President, VP, recruitment chair, etc.) This group will work closely with Hollis, our Community Manager, who will provide back office support.
Storytelling: They will have recurring storytelling workshops guided by work with story2 and casual storytelling workshops on the calendar. There will be a focus on member engagement and increasing membership, and launching a pilot podcast.
How will the community stay connected?
- Sign up for monthly emails
- Join the Open Weekend Denver 2018. Once again, we welcome Hollis as our Community Manager. She will serve as the project manager for Open Weekend, event coordinator, and communications manager.
- Open Coffee & Monthly social dates can be found on the calendar. Each month, experiment groups will answer:
30 second elevator pitch
What was most energizing for the group this month?
Milestone accomplished this month
What’s next? Where do we need help?
This information will also be included in the monthly newsletter!
Community Day (Sunday)
Thank you to James for making the day great despite the weather! I was thrilled to hear the energy in your voice and know that other new faces are excited about the launch of the community model!
Wait, one more thing! Register for Open Weekend Denver September 2018! We’ll revisit the experiments, improve the model, and grow our community with an even bigger audience in Denver.
Thank you again to our sponsors and the Open Weekend Team!
