Attendee Briefing

London Community Week 2026.

8th & 9th July 2026 · Big Penny Social, London

An informal conference where speakers from around the world, all specialists in building and scaling communities, share their expertise. Ross and Pete will be at the full event and would love to swap notes, compare talks and make any introductions that would be useful to you.

Dates
Wednesday 8th & Thursday 9th July 2026. Doors at 8:30, first session at 9:15.
Venue
Big Penny Social. Nearest train station: Blackhorse Road.
Shape of the Day
Mornings are given to talks; afternoons to roundtable conversation.

Steadfast at the event

Ross and Pete are here for both days. Grab either of us to compare notes on the talks, or to be introduced to someone in the room.

Pete leads a roundtable, Proving ROI Without Vanity Metrics, at 2:40 on the first day. A scorecard leaders actually respect.

8 July 2026

Day One · Conference & Roundtables

  1. 8:30 – 9:15
    On now Check-in, Breakfast & Networking
  2. 9:15 – 9:25
    On now

    Welcome to London Community Week 2026

    Nicola Earle

    Opening welcome, setting up the structure of the day and how to get the most from the sessions and conversations.

    Pete's note
    I'm so glad you're here! 
    Ross's note
    Hello! 👋
  3. 9:25 – 9:50
    On now

    The New Community Manager Skillset

    Marius Ciortea

    A keynote on how community managers can use AI well, not by handing everything over to it, but by using it to free up more human community work.

    Pete's note

    Three Types of Community Managers

    • The resistor: rejects AI entirely, risks being left behind
    • The automator: automates everything, loses authenticity (“a cutout of yourself at a party”)
    • The integrator: treats AI as a tool, opens the door carefully

    Key Disciplines for AI-Augmented Community Management

    • Trainer: teach AI your world, not just product docs
      • Feed support tickets, roadmap, feature releases, expert blogs
      • Transforms a mediocre intern into a genuinely useful assistant
    • Assistant: move from firehose to insight
      • Not “400 questions yesterday” but “here are 3 things to act on”
      • Surfaces dormant members, flags conversations at risk
    • Avoid the “aging bureaucrat”: don’t build agent pipelines that monitor other agents
      • If it takes more time to approve than to do, automate or cut it
  4. 9:55 – 10:20
    On now

    The Half-Life Problem: Your Members Are Decaying on Schedule

    Jillian Bejtlich

    On member engagement decay: why some drop-off is natural, and how to design around the lifecycle rather than treating disengagement as failure.

    Pete's note

    Community engagement strategies

    The Half-Life Problem: Member Decay Is Inevitable

    • Core thesis: decay is proof your community worked, not that it failed
      • Members disengage because they learned what they needed
      • Re-engagement campaigns try to fight physics; they don’t work
    • Engagement follows a predictable arc: high uncertainty early, confidence grows, then disengagement
      • The high-value window is early and finite; you know when it’s coming
    • Decay is inevitable. Better design is not.

    What to Stop Doing

    • Stop aggregating members without context
      • Raw declining numbers are misleading as communities grow
      • Use cohort framing instead: behavior by join date range
    • Stop re-engaging by default
      • Make it deliberate: who, what action, what CTA
      • Spending budget on members who’ve already graduated is waste
    • Stop treating member decline as a crisis
      • Member count is behaviorally irrelevant, especially in the AI era

    What to Do Instead

    • Faster onboarding to value
      • The window between “just joined” and “got something real out of this” is tight
      • Relationships formed in the first 90 days are the ones that stick
    • Align content and programming to early-stage problems
      • Think intentionally about content, events, and UX for new members
    • Give execs the right language
      • Swap “active members” for “cold-start retention”
      • Swap “engagement is down” for cohort participation rate by tenure
      • You’re not asking leadership to care less; you’re asking them to care smarter

    Key Design Principles

    • Focus on known variables: new member behavior, common first-30-day questions, when drop-off typically occurs
    • Design for the mass, not the individual
      • Bespoke journeys for every member aren’t scalable
      • High-need design keeps more people engaged for longer
    • Use the human skill that AI can’t replace: relationship building
  5. 10:20 – 10:40
    On now Coffee Break
  6. 10:45 – 11:05
    On now

    Building a Community for People Who Don't Fit in a Box

    Francisco Opazo · Ece Kurtaraner · Milly Tamati

    A fireside chat on how Generalist World turned a hard-to-define professional identity into a growing community, brand and partnership engine.

  7. 11:10 – 11:25
    On now

    From Private to Public: What Really Happens When You Open Up Your Community

    Jennifer Hanley

    A practical look at what changes when a private community opens up: culture, trust, metrics, member expectations and internal pressure.

  8. 11:30 – 11:55
    On now

    Community, Rebuilt: From Engagement Layer to Business Driver

    Ruthie Berber

    How Grow Therapy rebuilt a sprawling 26k+ member community into something more strategic, focused on retention, trust and provider performance.

  9. 12:00 – 12:10
    On now

    Top 5 Mistakes You're Making in Your Ambassador Programme

    Ewa Magiera · Lightning Talk

    Common ambassador-programme traps: scaling too quickly, over-relying on swag, copying big-company models and turning community into a rigid programme.

  10. 12:15 – 12:40
    On now

    Hard Truths about Champions Programs: Giving and Taking While Raising the Bar

    Esther Trapadoux

    A deeper look at the differences between contributor and ambassador programmes, using Zed's programmes as the example.

  11. 12:45 – 12:55
    On now

    Promoted in a Year: Why Community Leaders Need Strategic Visibility

    Isabella Leslie-Miller

    Making community work visible to the business through clearer storytelling, better alignment to company priorities and stronger leadership communication.

  12. 1:00 – 1:30
    On now

    Community-Led Growth, Without the Buzzwords: How Community Actually Drives Pipeline

    Imogen Marić · Sasja Beerendonk · Sarah Masterton-Brown · Mohan Ram

    A panel on the real mechanics of community-led growth: community-qualified leads, attribution, sales handoff, pipeline influence and what not to do with members.

    Ross's note
    Important distinction between vanity metrics and useful metrics.


    Good example: A Reddit moderator’s total number of actions might look impressive at first glance, but that figure alone does not tell the full story. A moderator could be taking genuinely valuable actions, such as removing spam, enforcing rules fairly, or helping maintain the quality of the community. Equally, they could simply be removing a high volume of content, including content that perhaps did not need to be removed.


    The headline metric, “moderator actions”, is not enough on its own. It needs to be broken down further to understand what those actions actually are, whether they are appropriate, and what impact they have on the community.


    useful example of how a single metric can appear meaningful, but still hide reality of what is happening. the metric needs context, categorisation, and a clear understanding of whether the activity being measured is actually creating value.

  13. 1:30 – 2:30
    On now Lunch Break
  14. 2:30 – 2:40
    On now

    Introduction to Roundtable Sessions

    Nicola Earle

    A short introduction to how the roundtables work, what to expect and how to get value from the conversations.

Roundtable sessions

On now 2:40–3:40 & 4:00–5:00 · Coffee 3:40–4:00

Choose the conversations you'd most like to join. Each one runs across both afternoon blocks.

Led by Steadfast

Proving ROI Without Vanity Metrics: a Scorecard Leaders Respect

Pete Heslop

Building a community outcomes scorecard around retention influence, support deflection, product insight, advocacy and pipeline assist.

Designing an Enterprise Member Journey that Actually Gets Used

Jan Biller

Mapping the journey from first login to first contribution, spotting where members get stuck and improving the first 30 days.

Community Governance for Complex Orgs: Roles, Rules, and Decision Rights

Isabella Leslie-Miller

Governance models for complex B2B communities: role clarity, moderation authority, escalation paths and internal boundaries.

From Tickets to Conversations: Building a Support-led Community that Scales

Brian Kling

Turning support communities into peer-help spaces without reducing service quality: deflection, accepted answers and escalation.

Community as a Product: Content Types, Templates, and Experience Design

Speaker to be confirmed

Designing structured content models, templates and resource libraries that reduce noise and improve the member experience.

Executive Engagement Without Tokenism: Making Leaders Useful in Community

Speaker to be confirmed

Making executive involvement genuinely useful: AMAs, listening sessions, themed office hours, response loops and follow-through.

Building Advocacy in Regulated or High-stakes Industries

Speaker to be confirmed

Safe advocacy in stricter environments: peer learning, approved stories, permissions, confidentiality and public proof.

From Community Events to Revenue: Building Programmes That Support Growth

Michelle Sims

Designing community events that support trust, partnerships, pipeline, sponsorship, retention and brand growth.

Community as a Product: Designing Experiences People Return To

James Thornton

Treating community like a product: onboarding journeys, participation loops, repeatable formats and useful experiences.

Using AI in Community: Practical Applications and Lessons Learned

Nicole Saunders

Practical AI use across content creation, onboarding, insights, knowledge management, governance and member trust.

Redefining What a Community Role Can Be

Ece Kurtaraner · Mildred Cheng

Shifting from operational community work to strategic influence, and making community value legible to leadership.

The Connected Ecosystem: Cultivating Community Across Social Networks

Imogen Marić

Connecting fragmented activity across TikTok, Reddit, Threads, newsletters and private spaces into one clearer ecosystem.

Meet Your Members Where They Are: How to Pick a Platform

Zach Hawtof

Choosing platforms based on where members already are, not just features. Lessons from hundreds of Slack and Salesforce communities.

  1. 5:00 – 5:15
    On now

    Wrap-up

    Nicola Earle

    Closing reflection on the day's sessions and discussions, with key insights and momentum into the final day.

9 July 2026

Day Two · Conference & Unconference

  1. 8:30 – 9:15
    On now Check-in, Breakfast & Networking
  2. 9:15 – 9:25
    On now

    Welcome Back to London Community Week 2026

    Nicola Earle

    Opening welcome for the final day, setting expectations for the last sessions and conversations.

  3. 9:25 – 9:50
    On now

    Level Up or Log Off: Why Members Leave When They Stop Growing

    Antonios Meimaris · Vellanki Sriharsha

    A keynote on using game-design principles to improve retention: progress loops, motivation and meaningful progression without turning community into a badge farm.

  4. 9:55 – 10:20
    On now

    A Playbook for a Successful Community Operations Team

    Alfredo Morresi

    How community operations teams form and scale, with lessons from running developer community operations at Google.

  5. 10:20 – 10:40
    On now Coffee Break
  6. 10:45 – 11:10
    On now

    How TeamViewer Builds Community Support at Global Scale

    Francisco Opazo · Alena Fengler · Juulia Ruha

    A fireside chat on building a global support community that reduces repetitive work, helps customers and feeds insight back into the product.

  7. 11:15 – 11:25
    On now

    Use AI... Or Not: Build Agents That Realistically Free Up Your Time and Help You Scale

    Claudia Caféo · Lightning Talk

    How AI agents can help with community ops such as applications, matching, intros and follow-ups, while keeping human judgement in the right places.

  8. 11:30 – 11:55
    On now

    Session to Be Announced

    To be confirmed

    A placeholder in the running order. Details to follow closer to the day.

  9. 12:00 – 12:10
    On now

    Why Open Source Community Frameworks Could Be the Future of Community

    Jan Biller · Lightning Talk

    Why open-source community frameworks could give organisations more flexibility, ownership and resilience as the platform market changes.

  10. 12:15 – 12:40
    On now

    Inside the AstraZeneca Community Ecosystem: Building Connection at Scale

    Francisco Opazo · Annamaria Isnard · Vera Hazelwood

    How AstraZeneca approaches community across a large, complex organisation: different audiences, member experiences, operations and connection across teams.

  11. 12:45 – 12:55
    On now

    Migration Mishaps and Resilience: A True Story

    Brian Kling

    A migration story of platform issues, vendor challenges and resilience. What actually drove growth when the tooling let the team down.

  12. 1:00 – 1:30
    On now

    Trust, Safety, and the Hard Conversations: Moderation, Crisis, and Burnout in 2026

    Francisco Opazo · Michelle Sims

    A panel on moderation, crisis handling, harassment, member conflict, legal and PR involvement, and protecting the people doing moderation work.

  13. 1:30 – 2:30
    On now Lunch Break
  14. 2:30 – 2:50
    On now

    Unconference: Brainstorming Time

    Attendees

    The agenda opens up to attendees, who bring questions, challenges and ideas to shape the unconference topics.

  15. 2:50 – 3:50
    On now

    Unconference: Session One

    Attendees

    Participant-led discussion on a topic chosen during the brainstorming session.

  16. 3:50 – 4:10
    On now Coffee Break
  17. 4:10 – 5:10
    On now

    Unconference: Session Two

    Attendees

    A second participant-led discussion, another chance to explore a topic or go deeper into a conversation.

  18. 5:10 – 5:20
    On now

    Wrap-up

    Nicola Earle

    The final close to London Community Week 2026, reflecting on the days, key learnings, connections made and what comes next.