Communities versus networks?
How is a community of practice different from an informal network in regard to social learning? All communities of practice are networks in the sense that they involve connections among members. But not all networks are communities of practice: a community of practice entails shared domain that becomes a source of identification. This identity creates a sense of commitment to the community as a whole, not just connections to a few linking nodes. Communities and networks are often thought of as two different types of social structure. From this perspective, one would need to ask the question: given a group, is it a community or is it a network? We prefer to think of community and network as two aspects of social structuring, which require different forms of...
Multiple communities, identity and information anxiety
We had an interesting online conversation with members of KC Blue, the community-leader community at IBM. The meeting was hosted by Laurie Miller and Sandy Yarchin. Many of the members have followed Etienne’s writings to cultivate IBM communities so it felt like a meeting with friends. Information anxiety We addressed many topics, but a highlight for us was much of the conversation focused on dealing with the excess of information and multiplicity of communities – referred to as “information anxiety” by Ed Easton. Identity question An identity question for members knowing who they are (becoming) in relation to so much information from different sources. A practical question for community leaders is how to filter, summarize, recycle and highlight...
Evaluation framework
As communities and networks go more mainstream there is an increasing demand from organizations to have ways of monitoring their value. How can we make the connection between the activities of a community and the improved performance of the organization? In our value assessment framework, published by the Open University of the Netherlands, we identify five levels of value creation of a community or network: Cycle 1. Immediate value: the activities and interactions between members have value in and of themselves Cycle 2. Potential value: the activities and interactions of cycle 1 may not be realized immediately, but rather be saved up as knowledge capital whose value is in its potential to be realized later. Cycle 3. Applied value: knowledge capital...