Session one · 2h
Tasks
What does this role actually do all day? Not the job description — the real work. Mapping the tasks grounds everything that follows in reality.
Community Forest Workshop · free · online or at your venue
Skill matrices are written in boardrooms. Forests are grown by people who do the work.
Free community workshops, running online all year, profession by profession. Join people who do the same job as you, map together what your work really takes, and leave with a Skill Forest you can actually use — and new peers who helped grow it.
One role per run. Small groups. Everything you grow is yours and public.
Top-down competency matrix
- –Written far from the actual work
- –Generic labels nobody on the team recognises
- –Does not account for the future
- –Updated annually — accurate once a year
Bottom-up Skill Forest
- +Grown by practitioners of the role
- +Real skills, real prerequisites, in the order they actually develop
- +Lets you plan for future progress and growth
- +Living — copied, tracked and updated by the people using it
A Skill Forest describes the job as it’s actually done — because the people who do it are the ones who grow it.
How a forest grows
The forest is designed in 3 sessions, each one building on the previous one’s findings.
Session two · 2h
Skills
What does that work actually take? Together you break the tasks down into concrete skills — including the ones that never had names before.
Session three · 2h
Trees
Skills grow into competency trees: which skills root which, and what junior, mid and senior really mean in this profession — ranked by the practitioners themselves.
Pick your format
| Detail | Online · 3 sessions | Offline · 3 sessions | Offline · full day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Schedule | 3 × 2h over 2 weeks | 3 × 2h over 2 weeks | 1 × 7h |
| When | Weekday evenings | Weekday evenings | One full day |
| Where | Zoom + Mural | In Japan | In Japan |
We regularly run online workshops for different professions. If you know of any NGOs or communities that would like to host offline workshops, send them a link to this page.
What you’ll build
A public forest for your profession
The complete skill map your team creates is published as a public forest — free for anyone to copy and grow.
Your own starting point
You leave knowing where you stand in your own profession’s forest: what you’ve grown, what’s next.
A group that mapped it with you
You’ll spend six hours arguing and agreeing about what your job really takes. With people who do the same job. That perspective is half the value.
After the workshop we enter your forest into the Skillforests app and open it to all participants.
See your whole profession at once
The full landscape with all the complexity laid out, not a simplified course list.
Discover skills you didn’t know had names
The invisible things you do daily, finally on the map.
Get a starting point for tracking your growth
A design for your career’s knowledge based in reality.
Learn how others see the same skills
Peers rank and connect skills differently than you expect.
Upcoming runs
Every run is listed on our Luma calendar, and registration happens there — pick the role that fits.
Checking Luma for open runs…
No open runs right now — join the newsletter and be first to hear about the next one.
Get the newsletterFree, for real
Community Forest Workshops are a community offering, not a business one. Online, we run free public workshops regularly. In person, we run them free for NGOs and communities hosting free public events — because every workshop grows the public forest library.
Bring it to your people
Run an NGO, a meetup, or a community of practitioners? If your event is public and free to attend, we’ll bring the method and the facilitation to your venue, free — you provide the space and the materials. One role per run is the only rule.
Grounded in the method
The Community Forest Workshop is the live version of the Skillforests method — skills, trees, roots, ranks and forests, fully documented and open.
Read the methodBring the Forest Workshop to your community.
For NGOs and communities running free public events, we’re happy to run the workshop free of charge. You bring a group of practitioners who share one role and a venue — we bring the method, the facilitation and two experienced facilitators. Tell us about your event and we’ll get back to you within a few days.
Juliusz Fedyk
Co-creator of the Skillforests method. As a development lead, used its early form to grow a team of 5 into 17 specialists — by mapping what the work actually took and training toward it, bottom-up.
Stefan Nüsperling
Founder of NüWorks, licensed Management 3.0 facilitator, and specialist in growing intercultural, self-organizing teams in Japan. Brings the facilitation craft that turns a room of practitioners into a forest.
Thanks — we’ll be in touch shortly.
In the meantime, the method is fully documented at docs.skillforests.com.
Questions people ask
How much does it cost?
Nothing. Online public runs are free and we run them regularly. In-person runs are free for NGOs and communities running free public events — the host provides the venue and materials. It’s a community offering, not a paid service.
Will the workshop be photographed or recorded?
It may be. We reserve the right to publish photos, videos and results of every workshop. The forest you grow is public by design — and so is the story of how it grew.
Do I need to be senior?
No. You need real working experience in the role — that’s it. Juniors see the path ahead; seniors finally get to name what they know.
What if I miss a session?
Sessions build on each other, so attending all of them is strongly recommended. If you miss one you can rejoin — the group’s board stays available between sessions.
What do I need?
Online: a laptop, Zoom, and a free Mural account. In-person: just yourself — your host provides the venue and materials.
What happens to the forest afterwards?
It’s published as a public forest for anyone in the profession to copy, and entered into the Skillforests app, where all participants get access to it.