Our first-ever meetup

Hi there, this is Anamaria. 👋

Our community started small, in Amsterdam, in 2019, with a handful of learning practitioners looking to learn from each other. It was intimate and non-pretentious, so no polished slides or posh experts. We each brought a challenge and our laptops, sat around a table, and left with pages of notes and ideas.

The first-ever Shakers meetup

Over lunch, during our first-ever meetup, we shared our vision about this community, we defined what “value” means for each of us, and we agreed on some ground rules that we have shared with everyone unable to attend:

• Invite other L&D or HR professionals who could add value through their experience.
• Meeting once every month – the host will prepare a short keynote on L&D relevant topics and will facilitate the session.
• Have longer meet-ups allowing us to deep-dive into a specific topic.
• Mix and match session formats: keynote, discussion, case study, short workshop, resource sharing, etc.

Lesson learned: Everyone had a slightly different view of how this community should unfold, but everyone emphasized the value of genuine, raw discussions about the common challenges we face. That was a strong enough reason to keep going.

What accelerated our journey

Right after the initial events, COVID-19 hit Europe, and several countries went into lockdown. It soon became apparent that if we wanted to continue riding the momentum wave, we needed to move the sessions online as quickly as possible.

Moniek and I felt this was the perfect moment to bring the community together and involve interested members in shaping our next steps. We knew that moving a community of (back then) 80 members forward would require more brains and hands than what the two of us could give.

And that’s what we did: we facilitated three co-creation sessions to co-design the community guidelines with anyone willing to join us on this journey. We guided the members through the “purpose-to-action” liberating structure and ended up with a blueprint of our community foundation that still stands today:

• The community purpose and why do we exist;
• The people we would like to attract as members as we advance;
• The structure of the community (“Core Team” to steer the long-term vision, “Event Catalysts” to organize & manage the logistics around each type of event).

By the time we finished this co-creation process, we had already reached 100 members and were organizing bi-weekly virtual events. Members were becoming more and more active, asking questions and sharing ideas on LinkedIn and Slack.