After a few months' absence, I rejoined Com-Prac and noticed right
away links to a couple of articles. One was Wenger's "doughnut" paper
and the other was Haldane & Bond's paper on the use of KALiF. Reading
them reminded me of Tom Stewart's 1996 cautions against using a heavy
hand to exploit CoPs. (Here, by the way, is a link to Tom's paper
from the Fortune archives.)

http://home.att.net/~discon/KM/invisible_key.htm

As I reflected on what I'd read, I was reminded of something taught me
by an wise old woman named Susan Markle. Susan was of the opinion
that nothing is quite so good as a good example. In trying to come up
with a good example of a CoP, one that illustrates sensible support
without getting heavy-handed, one that illustrates a sound, valuable
role for information technology (without bastardizing the CoP and
making it an "IT thing"), one that clearly demonstrates the value of
CoPs, and one that satisfies what I consider to be the criteria of a
true CoP, the only one that comes immediately to mind is the oft-cited
Xerox copier technicians and Xerox's Eureka system. (Here is a link
to a PARC commentary about Eureka.)

http://www.parc.com/research/spl/projects/commknowledge/eureka.html

I was wondering if list members might point to any other "good
examples" of CoPs, ones that are of equal quality to that of Xerox's
copier technicians?

Regards,

Fred Nickols
nickols@...
www.nickols.us