Posts Tagged "participation"

  Communities of practice usually involve multiple levels of participation. Because involvement can produce learning in multiple ways and the domain has different levels of relevance to different people, the boundaries of a community of practice are more flexible than those of organizational units or teams. Typical categories of membership and participation include: Core group: a relatively small group of people whose passion and engagement energize and nurture the community Active participants: members who are recognized as practitioners and define the community (though they may not be of one mind as to what the community is about) Occasional participants: members who only participate when the topic is of special interest, when they have some...

If knowledge is power, why would anyone want to share it? Knowledge is indeed a source of power; but hoarding knowledge is not necessarily the best way to benefit from its power, especially in the context of communities of practice. Generalized reciprocity. In a community of practice, sharing knowledge is neither one-way nor merely a transaction. It is a mutual engagement in learning among peers. An improved practice benefits the whole community. Even experts benefit from having more knowledgeable colleagues. Contributing one’s knowledge is an investment in the stock of the community. In this context, the distinction between self-interest and generosity is not so clear. Reputation platform. A community of practice acts as a platform for building a...

Should participation be voluntary or compulsory? In general, it is much better to let participation be voluntary. This way, communities of practice live on because they create value for members, not because of an edict or a box to check. It does not mean that one cannot strongly encourage participation or even request that someone run an idea by the relevant community. But making participation compulsory more generally runs the risk that communities become just another meeting to go to and survive. This is likely to deflate the very social energy that makes healthy communities of practice places of meaningful learning.   >...

What level of participation should one expect in a community of practice? Participation in communities of practice is rarely a person’s main activity or job, so expected levels of participation should reflect this reality. Mainly they should reflect the level of relevance of the domain to the main activities of members. This means that levels of participation will likely be quite different for different people. It is not unusual to have a smaller core group of members who identify very strongly with the community and contribute most of the activity—with concentric bands of participation from very active members to merely passive observers (or so-called lurkers on the web). This disparity is usually not a problem as long as it reflects personal interest in the...

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...