How to turn events into powerful communities

Low angle shot of a group of unidentifiable people forming a circle with their hands against a bright blue sky

Events are fantastic tools to bring humans together, yet often the value for participants ends with the closing of the experience.

So, how can event organisers extend those experiences and build strong and meaningful communities?

This was the focus of Fabian Pfortmüller’s session at the Asia Pacific Incentives and Meetings Event (AIME) 2019 in Melbourne on Monday.

The Swiss entrepreneur and community builder began his talk by defining ‘community’ as a group of people that trust each other and feel they belong together.

“There’s two simple, core ingredients: trust and belonging. It is at the intersection of these two concepts when you get the power of community,” he told attendees.

“Events bring people together to help them build connections, but often they stay temporal connections. People go to events with individual identities, which won’t really be affected.

“Community has this shared sense of identity which is ongoing – it is something that will stay with you.”

Fabian Pfortmüller

Fabian Pfortmüller

Pfortmüller said we live in a world where people’s outer circles (acquaintances and connections) have grown tremendously at the cost of their middle circles (your closest friends, the people you call when in trouble).

“For most of us, the middle circle has shrunk, and that is the opportunity,” he explained.

“If we can get the courage together to build communities that are in the middle circle, I think we will be tremendously rewarded.”

The co-author of the Community Canvas then outlined some key considerations for those wanting to turn a series of events into an ongoing community.

Firstly, Pfortmüller said it was important for event organisers to think about what actually creates value in a community.

“Event people tend to assume that events create value in communities, and I think it’s very important that we challenge that and that we open our mind,” he said.

“It’s very important to keep in mind that community is always personal. Yes, you may be building a community from a professional point of view, but communities are deeply, deeply personal.

“The deepest thing that people are looking for in communities are questions of being. That feeling of safety and love and being enough is crucial in communities.”

According to Pfortmüller, communities need to have clear boundaries in order for those within them to feel safe, along with rhythm or a “heartbeat” to build trust and a sense of togetherness.

Pfortmüller also encouraged event organisers to decentralise their power so that those within the community can feel as though they are a co-creator rather than a consumer.

“We need to think about power, because the moment we keep power, we exclude people. If we want to include people, we need to let go of control,” he said.

For Pfortmüller, successful communities need different levels and a variety of spaces to gather, such as micro-groups (home, intimacy), local gatherings (the centre of rhythm and ongoingness), regional gatherings (cross-pollination) and an annual global summit (emotional peak, all connected).

“I think it’s really important as event organisers to shift our mindset from organising events to defining templates, and from organising events ourselves to coaching people to organise events,” he added.

“There’s no more powerful community-building tool than a kitchen table, but it’s so underestimated. Most of the communities I’ve built were built on dinners, and I didn’t organise them – they were organised by the people within them.”

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