The Orbit Model is a framework for building high gravity communities. A high gravity community is one that excels at attracting and retaining members by providing an outstanding member experience.

Visit the website: https://orbitmodel.com/

The model will help you answer questions like:

• How do I measure my community's engagement and growth?
• How do I attract new people to my community?
• Which members should I prioritize spending time with?
• What contribution should I ask each community member to make?

Product and developer communities. Form a community of your most enthusiastic users and developers.

Community-driven businesses. Learn who your most influential customers and help increase their reach.

Open source projects. Build relationships that help convert users into contributors.

And anyone else focused on growing their community!

The Orbit Model was developed by developer advocates for working with communities of software developers, but the principles apply to most things that are community-shaped. The model was first used in 2014 and put on GitHub in November 2019 so anyone can use it and contribute back. We aim to make this framework useful to open source maintainers, developer advocates, community managers, founders, and anyone interested in building a community. It is sponsored and maintained by Orbit.

Learn more on the about page.

Contributions and questions are very welcome. Please open issues with ideas on how to improve the model including feedback, critiques, and information about how you're using it.

Read the contribution guide to learn more.

We want to thank and acknowledge the open source projects used to build this site:

• Next.js
• MDX
• G6
• FontAwesome
• Tailwind CSS

May 2022

• New website, updated concepts

July 2021

• Updated Orbit Level names

March 2020

• Created sections for love, reach, and gravity
• Added calculations and example tables for each metric
• Added Orbit KPIs section
• Added sections about choosing and distributing orbit levels

December 2019

• Added orbit levels
• Improved introduction

June 2019

• Repository created