Running the Crewing Program
Documentation for people leading a crewing program
This is part 2 in a series of Notion pages I wrote as part of introducing crewing to the Commons in SF.
More disclaimers here:
Link to official Commons documentation
Purpose
Running the program is about supporting people to have the best possible crewing experiences.
For “why crewing” in general, read the manifesto Goals for the Crewing Program
Object Level Goals (”What” is done)
Ideally we can support people in as much of the crewing lifecycle as possible, particularly the leads:
Starting/joining crews
Successful crewing experiences
Ongoing support
Reflection
“Meta” Goals (”How” it’s done)
Sustainability - “How do we make running the program sustainable?”
Modeling/leading by example - Can we show rather than tell?
Iteration - “How do we improve the program over time?”
What was done (Summer 2024)
From Summer 2024 - a retro done with mostly crews that were still in progress
The categories were not particularly well researched, kinda made up on the spot by Johnson. The little star indicates what the crew lead was most wanting from their crew. Really interesting stuff
Learnings for Next Cycle
The main thing that I (Johnson) would love to see is modeling - if the people leading the crewing program are themselves a healthy vibrant crew, that’s one of the most impactful possible ways to rep, promote, guide the crewing program.
Plenty of learnings from this cycle that I have full trust that y’all/we’ll uncover and respond to.
One major one is something around what a crew session with strangers looks like vs with casual friends (already have a relationship). And potentially even if those should be started differently (eg centrally assigned vs with a lead), have different durations, explicit intentions, etc.
Another ongoing question is “how to assess how crews are going”. I suspect there’s a lot of iteration that could be done on the “crew scoring” shown above
Another is “institutional support”, like how embedded is this in onboarding, socials, where/who is encouraging people to crew