Have you attended Asana events? Have you spoken at an event? Have you hosted one?
I recently joined the event organizer team in Tokyo, Japan, and I’m sharing my learnings in this post 
Quick History of Community-Led Events in Japan
- 2018: @Tomo_Aoki hosted the first Asana events in Japan.
- 2019: Asana Japan office opened.
- 2020: @Akiko_Nagahashi joined Asana and started helping the community members.
- 2022:
- PLANETS program launched as a private and psychologically-safe group for enterprise users.
- Monthly “Ask Us Anything” (AUA) sessions started.
- 2023:
- @YUKI_YANO started “Asana Refresh Morning” (ARM) sessions.
- Local communities in Osaka, Shizuoka, and Hiroshima launched and started hosting events.
- @Masa_Hagiwara started Monthly Learning Session events.
- 2024:
- Local community in Tokyo launched and integrated AUA, ARM, and monthly learning session initiatives.
Events are a core part of the Japan Asana community, along with the Japanese forum (since 2019), advent calendars (launched in 2021), and engagements on Asanaverse (Asana space for ambassadors), Slack, and social media.
Looking back, the Asana community in Japan has grown significantly!
What I Like about Community Events as a Participant
Community is where diverse people gather with a shared interest in one thing: Asana. Even though I’m knowledgeable about Asana, I always learn something new at community events. People use different features in different ways. Some share technical expertise, others offer psychological insights, or project management best practices.
Compared to official Asana-hosted events, community-led events focus on real-world use cases.
We can confess our struggles with change management while rolling out Asana in our teams. While ambassadors may know Asana inside out, some team members might not be comfortable with IT tools at all.
Casual chats and conversations often lead to fundamental insights. For example, knowing how to use Asana becomes pointless if your teammates don’t open it in the first place. Mastering basic features like My Tasks and Inbox is often more impactful than adopting shiny new features.
Offline events are especially energizing—you can feel the passion of others who love Asana. I’ve attended most local events in Japan and taken valuable takeaways every time.
How I Started Hosting Events
As an ambassador, I began by localizing Asana-related videos and articles into Japanese.
At first, I didn’t have a clear goal, but I wanted to help people with my Asana knowledge.
Over time, I took on additional activities, such as creating quizzes for events—something attendees enjoyed far more than I expected.
Asana community managers (@Akiko_Nagahashi and @Nao_Kumazaki) act as catalyst between people, rather than being a leader and doing everything for us by themselves. This approach empowers us to host more events, and make the community more sustainable.
Especially, @Masa_Hagiwara has been actively hosting events. He invited me to co-host virtual “Ask Us Anything” sessions, inspired by @lpb’s AMA.
I was happy to help people from beginners to experts. I learned a lot by teaching. I observed what people struggle with and I became better at providing the support.
However, after co-hosting the events for two years, we noticed that attendees often didn’t have questions prepared. Instead, they often discovered their questions during discussions.
So, Masa started hosting monthly themed learning sessions. The best part was that the sessions were focused on use cases, not features. Attendees were able to associate the events with their daily work and participate in the one that attracted their interest.
The sessions spanned eight months, covering the following themes:
- Running recurring meetings with Asana
- Tracking team progress effectively
- Managing deals and requests with Asana
- Presenting Asana to your team
- Promoting Asana across your organization
- Managing goals with Asana
- Streamlining routine tasks in Asana
- Encouraging collaboration with Asana
It was initially hybrid, but we realized that the offline attendance was more engaging. Over dinner, we’d casually discuss various topics, often identifying the topic and speaker for the next session.
Then, the Tokyo community team was formed.
As a team, we’ve become more sustainable. Organizing the events and coming up with idea is not a burden on one person anymore. We can keep going until the initiatives gain traction.
We are hosting more offline, engaging events.
In the online AUA events I co-hosted, we had almost no preparation. On the other hand, I was surprised to see the sheer number of tasks involved in organizing offline events, which I’ll share in the next section.
As the Tokyo community team, we’ve hosted and spoken at the following events:
- Let’s create more comfortable work environments!
- Make My Tasks easier to use
- The cutting edge of workstyle digital transformation in 2024
How We Manage Events in Asana
We use a master project to:
- regularly meet
- add event ideas
- assign an admin to kick off each event
Our event project template evolves over time.
It includes around 10 sections and 100 tasks. This significantly reduces the risk of things falling through the cracks.
Key sections in the event project:
- Reference tasks
- Preparation
- Promotion
- Presentation
- Communication with presenters
- Content creation
- Event day to-dos
- After-party
- Survey answers
- Follow-up
In the “Follow-up” section, the following tasks are especially important and useful:
- A task to upload the photos to
- A task to capture learnings and areas for improvement
Here is the typical event agenda:
- Opening
- Main session
- Questions and/or discussion
- Writing
- Closing
- (Optional after-party)
Events are better when participants can engage and interact.
We encourage attendees to share their highlights on the Asana forum and social media (e.g., X). Outputting their thoughts helps attendees reinforce their learning.
We also ask in the survey if anyone is interested in joining the organizer’s team.
What I Like about Community Events as an Organizer
I enjoy learning new perspectives and sharing mine to help others can use Asana comfortably.
Many community members have valuable stories to tell, and we provide opportunities for them to share.
We also get the latest updates first. We learn how to use Asana effectively from each other.
Community marketing is becoming increasingly important, and some organizers join our team to learn this methodology.
I hope this article inspires you to think about hosting events 
- Share how you use Asana—everyone has unique perspectives to learn from.
- Host events—public or private, online or offline, large or small*.
- If you’re curious about a topic, invite others to share their insights!
*I don’t believe success is measured by attendance numbers. Smaller events often allow for more questions, leading to greater attendee satisfaction.
