Category: communities of practice

CPsquare’s Connected Futures Workshop

Flickr CC image by takuya miyamotoIt’s time to register for the Connected Futures Workshop that begins April 20.

I’m on the team again this time holding the fort on week 4. My partners in learning/crime are John Smith, Bronwyn Stuckey, Shirley Williams and Etienne Wenger. We are using Howard Rheingold’s Social Media Classroom as our home base this round (we vary each time to add to our own learning!) Note, you’ll get a pre-press copy of the now-infamous and as of yet still unpublished “Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for community” book, plus a 6 month membership to CPSquare. So be there or don’t be square. (Sorry, I could not resist!)

It should be fun. Holler if you’d like more information. Here is the boilerplate!

Connected futures: New social strategies and tools for communities of practice is a five-week workshop for community managers, designers and conveners to explore social strategies and tools to support them (referred to by some as Web2.0). We anticipate offering it twice a year. This workshop is a hands-on, practice-shifting, dive into the use of new technologies to meet community needs. At the end of this workshop, participants can expect to:

  • Become more confident in managing and combining tools to support a community’s orientation and ongoing activities
  • Develop a deeper understanding of how new tools enable one another, are adopted and supported in communities
  • Have productive and lasting social connections with other participants, community leaders and community conveners.

New technology stewards are encouraged to join us. The workshop includes virtual field trips to successful communities and dives into the use of new tools. We will explore many readily available technologies, including web conferencing, teleconferences, blogging, RSS syndication, microblogging, social bookmarking and tagging, wikis, mashups, and social networking. Each aspect has the support of experts and leaders in areas such as organizational, educational, government and enterprise communities. Participants will work through a process of thinking through new social strategies and technologies to support the ongoing life of their respective communities of practice. Participants will also receive an advance electronic copy (PDF) of parts of the forthcoming book “Digital habitats: stewarding technology for Communities ” (Wenger, White, and Smith 2008).

See what previous participants have said about the workshop.

Requirements:

While this workshop is intended to be challenging, it is grounded in today’s reality for communities of practice, social strategies and new tools. We assume some experience with communities of practice and with technologies such as teleconferences, web forums or email lists. Our aim is to support practitioners: participants should be in a leadership role or intending to take one on, or be convening an existing community of practice.

  • Participants are expected to be conversant with basic notions such as domain, community and practice and have had experience participating in or organizing online events and learning activities (such as the Foundations of Communities of Practice workshop).
  • Participants should be willing to install, run and experiment with an array of tools (such as Skype) on their computers.
  • Participants should be confident to converse in English.
  • Participants commit to 20 to 40 hours of engagement over the 5 weeks. Since several phases and phase changes are designed into the workshop structure (we change technologies, modes of connecting, and frameworks), participants need to be attentive enough to make those changes with us when they are scheduled.

The workshop includes a lot of modeling by both workshop leaders and participants of learning interactions, stratagems, and tactics using a dozen different social technologies. We are all “teachers” and “learners.”

The workshop is designed to support:

  • Getting to know each other and each other’s communities (Community)
  • Creating “a workshop as laboratory” (Practice)
  • Exploring real communities, from an insider’s and outsider’s perspective to see community orientations & technology integration (Domain and Practice)
  • Considering the role and activity of the technology stewards in authentic situations (Practice)
  • Exploring the uses of social technologies to stay in touch with each other, as well as for sustained focus on a topic (Practice)
  • Experiencing the design of learning agendas and then configuring technology to pursue those agendas (Domain and Practice)
  • Articulate strategies to introduce new social technologies to a community (Domain and Practice)

We’re designing the workshop to support:

  • Getting to know each other and each other’s communities
  • Creating “a workshop as laboratory”
  • Exploring real communities, from an insider’s perspective to see community orientations & technology integration
  • Considering the role and activity of the technology stewards in authentic situations
  • Exploring the uses of social technologies to stay in touch as well as for sustained inquiry
  • Experiencing the design of learning agendas and then configuring technology to pursue those agendas
  • Articulate strategies to introduce new social technologies to a community

Readings from Wenger, White and Smith’s “Stewarding Technology for Communities” and several other sources on topics such as:

  • Communities of practice theory glimpse
  • Community technology stewardship
  • Tools and their Integration
  • Scanning the Technology Landscape
  • Orientations: community experience and configuration of tools
  • A More Distributed Future
  • A Learning Agenda

Tuition is as follows:

Standard rate $995
NGO, Non-profit employee $795
Student $595

Participants receive a free 6-month membership in CPsquare upon completion of the workshop.

If money is a challenge in this economy, write me directly to inquire about “FON” discounts. (Friends of Nancy).

Photo Credit: takuya miyamoto

Technology Stewardship and Unexpected Uses

Flickr cc from http://farm1.static.flickr.com/66/223828400_24606629d4.jpg?v=0I was cruising through my blog reader, hopelessly “behind” in reading (my own construction – I know I can “mark all read!”) and came upon a post from Vic Desotelle who pointed to a TED talk on Compassion which somehow lead me to a Garr Reynolds post about a TED Talk by Evan Williams of Twitter. (Talk about the network!)

The post had a quote that resonated with my experience as a technology steward to various communities.

Presentation Zen: TED talk: Twitter & the power of the unexpected

You never know how users will end up using your technology. Sometimes they end up using your product in creative ways that you could not possibly have thought of on your own.

As I work with NGOs attempting to roll out intranets and collaboration tools, I preach two things:

  • technology is designed for groups, but experienced by individual
  • users are creative – use that as a powerful positive force rather than trying to get them to conform with rules and limitations.

These two tenets have significance for technology stewards. It means that they cannot assume that the members of their community will have the same experience they do with any particular tool or platform, and that over time, the community will continue on a predictable trajectory of use of that technology.

It is about a dynamic evolution of practices and applications of the technology, not about the installation or the simple availability of the tool. So here are some practice hints.

  • Role model your experience and practices with tools, but don’t present them as the only options.
  • Watch for experimentation and amplify new, useful practices. Better yet, encourage community members to talk about and share their practices.
  • When members ask for tool adjustments based on their experimentation, work hard to accommodate rather than block innovation. This may mean going to bat with “higher-ups” to gain permission, or to allow the experimentation to fly “under the radar” until you can make a case for the value of the changes.
  • Encourage the fringies – the people who push the limits of a tool. Make them allies rather than enemies. Their pushing of your buttons may also create the innovation that you need to foster wider adoption.

What are your suggestions for technology stewardship that involved unexpected uses?

And… you never know where a link will lead you either. 😉

Photo credit: Alex Osterwalder on Flickr


Winemakers’ Communities of Practice

I don’t know anything about growing grapes and making wine, but an old college buddy of mine has hatched a second vocation/avocation as a grape grower and wine maker. I’ve enjoyed reconnecting with Craig through his blog. Recently he has been sharing some of his practice (I.e Gopher trapping and pruning. Check out the very specific practice categories in his right nav bar if you are looking for ideas about how to share what you/your community knows!) Craig’s work is a great example for communities trying to understand how social media like blogs can be used. So first, this is simply a pointer to a useful practice.

The blog is a great example of “reification” in a community of practice – capturing, making explicit for  sharing out what is known and learned so that others can access it. (I learned this fancy pants term from Etienne Wenger. It mystified me for years, but now I love it. )

This week, Craig’s post rang the old “communities of practice” bell for me with Survivor Wino’s Edition: Episode I: Installing The Trellis System. Now this is more than a “how-to” – it is about how communities share their knowledge and support each other. This is both the “community” and the “practice” part of the three legged stool of CoPs – Community, Domain and Practice.

Photo by Craig JusticeHere’s the teaser…

There is a code of honor among wineries to assist your neighbors with their crush if you’re finished and they’re not. You’d think there would be competition but the best winemaking regions are those where there is cooperation. So when your neighbor puts out the call for help to install her vineyard, you go. That’s just what you do.

“That’s just what you do.” Yup. That is the difference of a community of practice. It is as much about “we” as “me” or the domain, all woven together in a pile of inherently messy human-ness. And Craig, through his generosity of (humourous) blogging of the work of his community makes this visible and accessible to wine makers anywhere, and a great story about communities of practice for those of us looking to understand how we learn together about things we care about. Thanks, Craig!

Digital Habitats Community Orientation Spidergram Activity

A couple of people have asked me for more materials related to the Community Orientations Spidergram activity. I have embedded them into some slides now up … Digital Habitats Community Orientation Spidergram Activity. [Edit June 2011 – here is an updated pdf of the activity! Spidergram Worksheet 2011 ]

Here is a hint I should have shared earlier. The “context” orientation is a bit odd on the spidergram. You need to decide if internal orientation is in the middle/exterior towards the outside or reversed. I tend to use internal towards the middle, but I realized my instructions weren’t so clear.

Another way to do it is to ignore the “context” spoke from an internal/external perspective and then do one layer on the spidergram around your internally focused activities. Then with a different color, do another layer on externally focused activities. I’ve done this with a few test cases and it quickly showed that some communities which have both internal and external contexts have very different internal and external activities.

Digital Habitats Community Orientation Spidergram Activity

View more presentations from Nancy White.

[slideshare id=1229819&doc=digitalhabitatscommunityorientationspidergramactivity-090331164047-phpapp01]

Red-Tails in Love: Birdwatchers as a community of practice

Red-Tails in LoveMy friend Sue Wolff generously lent me two books recently. The first, Marie Winn’s “Red-Tails in Love” captured my heart and mind. It is the story of a community of birdwatchers in Central Park in New York City and how they observed, loved and obsessed over a family of Red-Tailed Hawks that raised a family on an apartment ledge just of Central Park.

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. The narrative is compelling, but the lessons about community life are at once simple, effective and profound.

I 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.  This work builds on what Etienne has been doing for years. In our research of CoPs we noticed 9 general patterns of activities that characterized a community’s orientation. Most had a mix, but some were more prominent in every case. By looking at orientations, we posit, you are in a better position to understand how to support them with tools and processes. They give you a lens to reflect on how your community is doing and where you might want it to be headed.

Here is a brief glimpse of the orientations:

  • Meetings – in person or online gatherings with an agenda (i.e. monthly topic calls)
  • Projects – interrelated tasks with specific outcomes or products (i.e. Identifying a new practice and refining it.)
  • Access to expertise – learning from experienced practitioners (i.e. access to subject matter experts)
  • Relationship – getting to know each other (i.e. the annual potluck dinner!)
  • Context – private, internally-focused or serving an organization, or the wider world (i.e. what is kept within the community, what is shared with the wider world)
  • Community cultivation – Recruiting, orienting and supporting members, growing the community (i.e. who made sure you’re the new person was invited in and met others?)
  • Individual participation – enabling members to craft their own experience of the community (i.e. access material when and how you want it.)
  • Content – a focus on capturing and publishing what the community learns and knows (i.e. a newsletter, publishing an article, etc.)
  • Open ended conversation – conversations that continue to rise and fall over time without a specific goal (i.e. listserv or web forum, Twitter, etc.)
Spidergram examples of the Central Park Birdwatchers
Spidergram examples of the Central Park Birdwatchers - click for larger image

We have been using a little “spidergram” as an assessment tool, again building on Etienne’s work, but each of us has been creative in how we use it. Sometimes it is for looking at technology choices (like in the Digital Habitats book), sometimes for community assessment and planning. So I decided to see what orientations were strong in the Central Park birdwatchers “Regulars” group chronicled in the book. Here is the image I came up with:

Would you like to try the Spidergram activity for your community? You can find a little cheat sheet and template  here. [Edit June 2011 – here is an updated pdf of the activity! Spidergram Worksheet 2011 ]

If you try it, I’d be interested to hear what you observed or learned about your community by doing this exercise.

And yes, the book is coming SOON!