SANGAMA
The Community Architects Convergence
Lead the Room. Deepen the Community. Strengthen the Ecosystem.
You already know how to bring people together.
The next level is learning how to lead them exceptionally well—and architect a community that becomes more valuable as people participate in it.
SANGAMA is an intimate, three-day intensive at The ARC for established leaders of online, in-person, and hybrid communities.
This is not a conference or networking event. And it is not a program for learning how to find your first members.
It is a working room for accomplished community leaders who want to sharpen their craft, solve meaningful challenges together, and build extraordinary communities.
Master the Room
At the center of SANGAMA is an immersive Front-of-Room Leadership Intensive led by Community Architects Institute co-founder Jon Block.
Because there are dimensions of leadership you cannot fully develop through another course or Zoom call.
You have to stand up. Lead. Receive feedback. Adjust. And lead again.
We'll work deeply on speaking, storytelling, facilitation, presence, group dynamics, audience participation, and the ability to create meaningful experiences from the front of the room.
Whether you're leading 12 people around a table, 50 people at a retreat, or hundreds from a stage, you'll develop the craft to lead with greater confidence, connection, and impact.
A Mastermind of Community Leaders
Some of the greatest value at SANGAMA comes from who is sitting beside you.
The room is intentionally curated around established leaders building online, in-person, and hybrid communities.
We'll bring real challenges into the room and use the collective experience of the group to work through them: engagement, retention, culture, member participation, gatherings, leadership, founder dependence, and the challenges that emerge as communities mature.
Expect peer-to-peer masterminding, hot seats, breakthrough conversations, collaborative problem-solving, and relationships that continue well beyond the retreat.
You won't simply learn about extraordinary community.
You'll experience what happens when extraordinary community leaders are intentionally brought together.
Architect the Community. Architect the Ecosystem.
A great community is more than an audience, online platform, calendar of Zoom calls, or annual event.
At Community Architects Institute, we develop leaders across three dimensions:
Architect the Leader — Become the human being capable of leading extraordinary communities.
Architect the Community — Create the relationships, culture, participation, belonging, and leadership that turn members into contributors.
Architect the Ecosystem — Design how your online and in-person environments reinforce one another and continuously increase member value.
This third dimension is where we explore the Community Infinity Loop™.
Your online community should be extraordinarily valuable in its own right. Your physical gatherings should be extraordinarily valuable in their own right.
When intentionally architected together, however, something more powerful happens:
Digital experiences strengthen physical experiences. Physical experiences strengthen digital experiences. Relationships, stories, leadership, belonging, and contribution compound between them.
That's when a collection of community activities becomes a Community Ecosystem.
The SANGAMA Experience
Wednesday Evening — ARRIVE
Dinner, connection and an opening experience that begins bringing the room together.
Thursday through Friday Lunch — LEAD THE ROOM
Deep immersion in speaking, storytelling, facilitation and front-of-room leadership with Jon Block. Expect practice, coaching and feedback—not simply presentations.
Friday Afternoon & Evening — ARCHITECT THE COMMUNITY
Peer masterminding, hot seats, faculty sessions, collaborative problem-solving and experiential work around the challenges established community leaders are actually navigating.
Saturday — STRENGTHEN THE ECOSYSTEM
Integrate the experience into your own community and identify the changes, relationships and opportunities you'll take home.
Throughout the retreat, there is intentional space for conversations, meals, experiences and unexpected connections—because some of the most important breakthroughs happen outside the formal agenda.
Your Hosts
Jon Block
Co-Founder, Community Architects Institute
Jon has been building and leading communities since 2008 across music and the arts, public speaking, leadership development, intentional living, and entrepreneurship. He has mentored more than 2,000 people and led 24 retreats.
A graduate of USC Film School, Jon's particular craft is speaking, storytelling, facilitation, experience design, and front-of-room leadership. He has been hired by HBO and Google to train their employees in public speaking and brings that experience into his work developing the next generation of Community Architects.
At SANGAMA, Jon leads the Front-of-Room Leadership Intensive.
Dr. Mansi Shah
Co-Founder, Community Architects Institute
Dr. Mansi Shah is a Doctor of Pharmacy, facilitator, wellness entrepreneur, and co-founder of The ARC and Community Architects Institute.
Her work focuses on the human being behind the leader—integrating vitality, resilience, self-leadership, and wellbeing into the responsibility of leading others.
SANGAMA also includes contributions from select faculty and accomplished community leaders, including Dr. David Gruder.
Who SANGAMA Is For
SANGAMA is designed for established community leaders—founders and leaders of paid memberships, masterminds, professional networks, educational communities, associations, retreat communities, and other established online, in-person, or hybrid communities.
You should already have people to lead.
We're not here to teach you how to find your first members.
We're here to help you become exceptional at what happens after people choose to belong.
Participation is intentionally limited because the caliber and contribution of the people in the room are part of the experience.
What You Leave With
You leave as a more capable Community Architect: a stronger speaker and storyteller, a more skillful facilitator, a more intentional designer of human experiences, and a leader better equipped to turn spectators into participants and participants into contributors.
You'll also leave with solutions to real challenges, new perspectives from accomplished peers, meaningful relationships, and a clearer architecture for strengthening your own community ecosystem.
SANGAMA
The Community Architects Intensive
Lead the Room.
Deepen the Community.
Strengthen the Ecosystem.
The ARC — Transformational Retreat Campus
San Diego County, California
By application and invitation.