'Remember that the people and processes, not IT, need to drive your communities of practice. IT tools should enable easier, more effective sharing.'
(American Productivity & Quality Center 2002).
This really sums up my position, although the book is issued in 2002 and thus somewhat dated.
This book section also states that face to face meetings, virtual chat rooms and building personal connectivity are the important cultural drivers of CoP's. This class, this Blog, the virtual CoP we are currently using, has no face to face meetings, but we have a domain a praxis and a community. We have supportive technology although some members have found the platforms somewhat limiting.
The paper also discusses content management, meta-data, tags, key words, abstracts for codification and retrieval of information. It suggests that this task needs early intervention i the CoP life-cycle as it quickly gets out of hand.
One can already see in an asynchronous discussion board that despite some categories, the large number of posts and information, it becomes overwhelming, repetitious, hard to data-mine and creates an disengagement. A blackboard, group concept map, wiki or even this blog are Web 2.0 technologies that assist in the content management.
Given that our CoP is only functional for about three months, the time limit is very different to an expanding and growing CoP with a life-cycle to consider.
Given that by definition , the CoP is about praxis to much knowledge and not enough praxis, will make a messy and useless CoP.
Reference
American Productivity & Quality Center, (2002). Landmark Seven - Information Technology and Content Management
Communities of Practice: A Guide for Your Journey to Knowledge Management Best Practices
Communities of Practice: A Guide for Your Journey to Knowledge Management Best Practices
retrieved 26/11/2007, USQ catalogue, electronic version http://library.books24x7.com.ezproxy.usq.edu.au/book/id_8748/viewer.asp?bookid=8748&chunkid=0884360760
2 comments:
Ah, but not forgetting that too much praxis and not enough knowledge will land you in one big pile of over-structured technology that noone wants anything to do with!
There's a certain type of chaos that comes with a group of people sharing knowledge (let alone a whole community). I love the type of technology that can keep up with this, such as the wiki. People will naturally grow knowledge... and sure there are branches that are looking bedraggled but that's nature and evolution for you - messy.
Cheers,
- B
Messy- I think you have clinched the point of people and CoP, its very messy, rflecting the messiness of Web 2.0 and the messiness of human neural networks.
Praxis is when the messiness becomes co-ordinated. I like that metaphor
Joyce
Post a Comment