As some of you will know, I founded the [Community Leadership Summit](https://www.communityleadershipsummit.com/) that takes place in Portland, Oregon every year. The event brings together community leaders, organizers and managers and the projects and organizations that are interested in growing and empowering a strong community. Each year we discuss, debate and continue to refine the art of building an effective and capable community, structured in a set of presentation and attendee-driven unconference sessions.

This year’s event is happening on **18th – 19th July 2014** (the two days before [OSCON](https://oscon.com/)), and is shaping up to be a great event. We have [over 140 people registered already](https://www.communityleadershipsummit.com/attendees/), with a diverse and wide-ranging set of attendees. The event is free to attend, you just need to [register](https://www.communityleadershipsummit.com/register/) first. We hope to see you there!

## The Think Tank Community Leadership Summit

This year I am also excited to announce an additional sister-event to the main Community Leadership Summit at the [Open Source Think Tank](https://www.osthinktank.com/events/open-source-think-tank-spring-2014/event-summary-bafe74fefce34c9a8dcbef90bc8cab20.aspx).

The *Community Leadership Summit* and *Open Source Think Tank* have partnered to create a unique event designed for *executives and managers involved in community management planning and strategic development*. While the normal annual Community Leadership Summit serves practicing community managers and leaders well, this unique event is designed to be very focused on *executives in a strategic leadership position* to understand the value and process of building a community.

I have been wanting to coordinate a strategic leadership event such as this for some time, and the Think Tank is the perfect venue; it brings together executives across a wide range of Open Source organizations, and I will be delivering the Community Leadership Summit track as a key part of the event on the first day.

The event will be in the form of a day of presentations and sessions that cover many of the considerations when building a community management strategy, and these approaches will be exercised in a practical and interactive case study. The conclusions from the event will then feed into the rest of the Think Tank. I am excited to get started and I am confident the event will be tremendously valuable for attendees, particularly in an age when a community management strategy is more and more of a core requirement.

The event takes place on **24th March 2014** in Napa, California. See the [event homepage for more details](https://www.communityleadershipsummit.com/about/thinktank-cls/) – I hope to see you there!