Should we be? technorati tags: communities of practice , CoP roles , CoP' In my role as blogmeister for LCB I've done a lot of reading in the communities of practice literature to gain a better understanding of how online communities work. What can be done to enhance the community? What causes high quality interaction or

The list is longer than I thought: Community of ICT4D trainers ILO/CIARIS experiences in lusophone Africa Communities of practice in India CoP in Ghana Tech forum in Kumasi, Ghana The community empowerment network in Central Asia Ayuda Urbana, a cop on urban development in Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean Communities of practice at CARE International E-collaboration amongst Dutch development organisations Thailand Community of practice on e-government UNDP's experiences in India UNDP's knowledge networks 5 examples from Latin America Obstacles to knowledge

Ofcourse you may look at the class as a community of practice, but it is a very specific situation with members in the same age group, not resembling other (corporate, inter-organisational) CoPs with members of a wide range of ages. Martin Kloos wrote his thesis for the University of Amsterdam on communities of practice 2.0 . It's written in English, so if you are interested, you can download it and read it too.

It will not elaborate much on the past but focus on points of reflection and next steps in order to develop our network into a flourishing CoP. Main points of reflection on the e-collaboration community Clarity on our mission, identity of the group: The network started off with the inventory of tools and the technical aspects of using them. Make use of this, let them in new things learnt elsewhere. Community of Practice (CoP), a laboratory: A fter the discussions with John it becomes clear that our network is, of course, a Community of Practice. Based on the input of John Smith , learning facilitator Don't plan ahead too far, outline a few steps, practice a lot .

A lot of people are talking about the search aggregator Gada.Be , but it isnt specific to blogs. By Jack Vinson on June 26, 2006 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) 7 Comment(s) Andrew Mitchell said: Interesting that you choose now to bring up this topic, Jack. Im not sure if the discussion archives are online but you can sign up to the list at [link] You offer some very useful perspectives. June 27, 2006

He noted down 4 coordination problems with the CoPs of the Amsterdam Police Force: Work for the CoP (called regional projects) has low priority, participation is hence unreliable. At the same time he does report that part of the members is very enthusiastic and they often work for the CoP in their free time. CoP Coordinators have a lot of freedom, and might benefit from stronger Of late, I have printed more articles than I can read, so maybe I should stop printing them... But I have read one article written by Joeri an Laere called Managing communities of practice

say your name before speaking - not everyone can hear voice differences) · Issues around size of the group: what size is maximum, how to handle larger groups? · … Interesting links: · Nancy's Telephone Call Facilitation Tips · John Smith's Meeting on a Telephone Bridge · Npower's Running Effective Online Trainings · Kate Pugh's Good practice for phone-based CoP teleconferences · Tips for Teleconference Participants · Tips for Teleconference Leaders · Proven, Practical Tips for Conference Calls Experiences from: Joitske Hulsebosch, Mirjam Schaap, Russell Kerkhoven, Steven

Having an outsider name the dilemmas the CoP is facing is also a very good intervention in itself, when it is not named, the group can not work with the dilemmas as a group. The e-collaboration community of practice, a group of people working for development organisations in the Netherlands (which started a blog on its domain here) is almost one year old and the 'facilitators' decided to ask an external person, John Smith , to look back and help to design the next steps. I

When I work in Ghana I am conscious of the fact that I don't know the context as a Ghanaian would and try to give different options when I propose something and ask for ideas and feedback. During the tech forum in Ghana I did a presentation on communities of practice and we asked for questions and examples of CoPs in Ghana. The participants could easily identify with the idea of social learning and mentioned various examples of CoPs in Ghana: * Accra Linux User Group- people with an interest in the same thing come together voluntarily * Informal women’s groups – shea butter, micro-credit

I was so busy talking about blogs that I didn't have time to blog :), nor did I read blogs. I volunteered to summarize a discussion in CPsquare about communities of practice and blogs/RSS. Here's the summary, but based on the summary you can start a whole new discussion (if you want to read it, you may copy this JPEG image and print it).