Thinking about choosing tools for communities of practice
The work on the "Technologies for Communities" report continues (and continues, and continues!) Someday we may even finish.
These last few weeks Etienne, John and I have been finishing what we fondly call "Section 4" about how to approach the selection of technologies to support communities of practice (CoPs).
We are honing in on 9 different orientations that show up in CoPs - I'll write about them a bit later, but the term "orientation" is needed for context. Short version: first you look at what your community does and focuses on, then you figure out how to support that with tools.
We decided we wanted to illustrate a number of "paths" that a community technology steward might take in this process, so I've ginned up a series of mind maps. They are each a bit different. I've put them up in a set at Flickr and if anyone has feedback, I'd love to hear it. I know there is really not enough context to fully comment, but first impressions are really useful.
The one shown here is a path for a CoP that exists across organizational (and other) boundaries, has no IT support and no budget. So it looks at mashing up free tools. The other four describe different contexts.
Feel free to comment here, or over in the picture comment areas. I'll try and add a little more context on Flickr as we go forward. (By the way, the colors are not indicative of anything - just to distinguish quickly between them.)
Categories: technologyforcommunity, communitiesofpractice, techreport
posted by Nancy White at 4:26 PM
4 Comments:
Interesting stuff! I've just saved all of your images so I can enlarge them for better viewing. I like the idea quite a bit and it looks like you've got a good variety of paths on most of these.
Interesting interesting interesting!
Hi Nancy! I've looked only at this one but I really, really liked it a lot. I think it can help people to see more options in technology paths to take with a community, which is otherwise at times a static thing (we choose a platform and that's it).
(added the skills to match it with community member's preferences and where new tools would be energizing or de-energizing at a certain point). Great work!
I'm wondering how this connects with the CP project?. We share interests here. Is there any easier way to collaborate around these artifacts - e.g. a conversation space to explore further?.
Have some ideas to share around the questions to ask to determine needs and orientations that may be useful to your group.
Hi Nancy, what's missing for me - although I can't think how to put it in - is the people and politics around the tools. It's difficult to know how you could map the practices or the contexts, but (one day) I'd like to try. A sort of context or practice sensitive "instrument" that went with it. Just some fuzzy thoughts :-)
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