BLDG.Insights #003: Building a Learning Hub for Sustainable Buildings - a progress update

Well, that took a bit longer than expected... Diving into the amazing world of online communities has been quite an adventure! 😉

Over the past two years, I've been part of various learning communities myself and was able to experience first-hand what worked well and what didn’t. So, I thought choosing the platform would be the easiest part of starting a community. What I hadn’t expected was the sheer amount of options out there. Looking into that was quite overwhelming at first.

So I went into testing the main players. After starting test accounts for the top contenders like Circle, Mighty Networks, Skool and Thinkific I also found some super interesting new ones like Heartbeat.

What I realized is that each of these platforms offered great individual features, but actually none of them provided the solution I was looking for to cover our needs. Also, each platform seemed to be great in certain areas but fell short in others, such as integrating a robust Wishlist where you will be able to suggest and upvote content ideas to cover, a feature I find critical for our community’s content to be 100% relevant to you.

After looking into that, Bettermode caught my attention because of its extreme customizability and robust features. It is more targeted towards customer communities for software companies, but because of that it has nice features for upvoting ideas and building a dynamic roadmap. It does lack an own app and integrated events and a courses interface but somehow I figured that you might not be waiting for yet another app on your home screen anyway. Mainly it feels like I can create the simplest and cleanest experience there.

And if we outgrow it later, I can still implement the features we need through its customizability.

So, step 1 of this exciting journey is done:

✅ choosing a community platform

What's Next?

• Get Involved and shape the content:

To shape the content that will be in the community from the start, it would be great to get some initial questions that you would like to get covered.

👉 What burning questions do you have in your everyday work on sustainability in buildings? Just hit reply give me some questions like:

- How do I....

- Can you explain...

- What does requirement ...... mean for my project?

• Join the waitlist:

Eager to be part of the initial group to access the platform or simply want to hear more detailed updates as they come? I promise to keep emails to a minimum - just updates to keep you informed and prepared for what’s coming.

👉 If you haven't told me yet, reply to this mail and let me know that you are interested. No obligations whatsoever!

• Launching the Community:

I am gearing up to launch the community after the summer break. Expect a space where right from the start you can participate in live sessions and masterclasses, ask questions and engage with content in the community and request topics to be covered in short practical content pieces.

Thanks for joining me on this journey. I'm super excited to see how our new community platform will come together. Stay tuned for more updates, and please feel free to reach out with any initial thoughts or questions!