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you have ever hankered to read a “real life” story about an organic community of practice, one free from the business pressures of CoPs manufactured inside of corporations, read this book. thought it might be fun to look at this community, as best an outsider can do (which is usually not very well) from one of the CoP perspectives Etienne Wenger, John Smith and I use in our upcoming book, Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for community .  In My friend Sue Wolff generously lent me two books recently. The first, Marie Winn’s “ Red-Tails in Love

If you have ever hankered to read a “real life” story about an organic community of practice, one free from the business pressures of CoPs manufactured inside of corporations, read this book. thought it might be fun to look at this community, as best an outsider can do (which is usually not very well) from one of the CoP perspectives Etienne Wenger , John Smith and I use in our upcoming book, Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for community . (Crossposted from my Full Circle blog ) My friend Sue Wolff generously lent me two books recently.

It is a good study looking at exisiting CoPs in the development sector in India. A wide variety of groups and networks were studied, like a farmers group producing a journal, an exchange programme, a listserv and email discussion group, and information sharing group on livelihoods and gender equity and a group championing women's rights. The study first looks at CoPs in the Indian private sector, before moving onto the development sector. SCD and Intercooperation have commissioned a study called Experiences with communities of practice in India , an important resource published in december 2005.

In chapter 7 Steve makes a clear distinction between CoPs and Networks where the latter consists of a group of people who link together for mutual benefit, such as an alumni. Now, if you take extreme examples like your LinkedIn contacts (a network) and Shell’s Turbodudes (a CoP of geologists interested in turbidites) the difference between the two forms of organising are clear. I would like to Home What we do Keynote Speaking About Us Whitepapers Anecdote Associates Clients Contact us Categories Anecdotes Blogging Books Change management Collaboration Communities of practice Complexity Culture Expertise location Facilitation Fun Intervention design Knowledge Knowledge circulation Most Significant Change Narrative News Newsletter Open space Questions Quotes Sensemaking Social networks Storytelling Strategy « Management can kill a community of practice | Main | Getting into a sensemaking mindset » 31/07/06 | The difference

In a follow-up post on the actKM listserve, Brad Hinton makes the excellent point that cumbers can mean different things in different context, which is why qualitative input is so important alongside the numbers to help interpret them correctly. 8212;- “When I had to supply metrics for the CoP’s I managed at a former workplace, I reported on activity (akin to hit rates) broken down in sub-categories like questions/answers/news/market opinion, etc. The learning ripples from the actKM conference are still spreading, on the actKM forum as well as in the blogosphere.

This kind of group has become known as a community of practice (CoP)—a group whose members regularly engage in sharing and learning, based on their common interests. The CoPs we examined represent different stages of development, cross several industries, are both global and local in scope, and, most importantly, offer the opportunity to consider different kinds of contributions to organizational performance. Home Products & services Support & downloads My account Select a country

Essentially, the question is whether blogs build or tear apart other online communities (listservs, online forums, etc.). They are mostly to be ignored, from my perspective. October 9, 2007 10:11 PM Leave a comment Name Email Address

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This concept of a Community of Practice (CoP) is key to understanding how braided learning works online. The term CoPs was coined by Lave & Wenger (1991) with acknowledgement that it refers to a human process of working and learning together that has been operating for centuries (e.g., It has been described by researchers as a CoP “with an active and passionate core’ (Stuckey, 2005, p. It’s taken a long time but since 1992 MirandaNet members have been learning how to communicate on line. Now an e-mature community our discussions are becoming more and more sophisticated.