Sorry I have been off the board for awhile.  A new computer and slow to get
everything connected.

A few months ago Ed Schnider asked if we incorporate ideas from Ray
Oldenburg into communities.  Yes, actually one of the principles I have
developed for community design is to create two kinds of events for
communities;

- those that encourage familiarity.  familiar events are just like those Ray
Oldenburg describes, homey places where people know each other, trust each
other, can offer advice without getting entangled in each others projects.

- those that create exposure.  Max Sennet some years ago pointed out that in
a city you are exposed.  You can be seen by people who are in the city --
anyone can approach you and ask for directions, help, your wallet.  But the
city is exposed to you,  you see new things.

So in designing communities we try to create a mix of these two kinds of
events, whether the community can meet face to face or not.  Familiar small
groups of people who connect with each other.  Exciting marketplace type
events where people can see new things.

I have found talking about familiarity and exposure has been a very useful
way to help a community see what it could do and set a tone for interaction.
'

Richard

McDermott Consulting ___________________________________
189 Overlook Lane                                    Phone: 303-545-6030
Boulder, CO 80302                                       Fax: 303-545-6031
www.McDermottConsulting.com
Richard@...


----- Original Message -----
From: "Ed Schneider" <eschneider@...>
To: <com-prac@egroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 02, 2000 4:06 PM
Subject: [cp] Third Places


> Ray Oldenburg in his book The Great Good Place stresses the
> importance of those third places, between home and work that are so
> import to the life of a community.  These meeting places are the
> pubs, cafe's, coffee houses, etc. where people come together to
> socialize.
> I was wondering if any of you have incorporated this idea in your
> CoPs.  If so, how and how have they been received?
>
> Ed Schneider
>
>
> CoF Field Trip Dec 8 at 11 am EST
> Details at: http://www.egroups.com/files/com-prac/CoF/
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Email com-prac-unsubscribe@egroups.com to unsubscribe
>
>
>
>

Communities of Practice 2001
Implementing, Measuring and Profiting from Communities 
May 7-9, 2001, The Royal Sonesta, Cambridge, Massachusetts

To review the full agenda for this event Click Here

At this interactive and intimate program, you'll learn about: 
Ø  Practical skills for implementing and improving communities in your organization
Ø  Skills for measuring and managing communities 
Ø  How leading organizations use different types of communities for knowledge sharing and business improvement
Ø  How to lead a vibrant, living community
Ø  Incentives for knowledge sharing within the community
Ø  Benefits and issues with distributed communities 
Ø  What leaders in the field of communities are doing to advance them

Hear from experts discussing communities of practice at:
Buckman Laboratories · Clarica · EDS · Fast Company · Ford · IBM Institute for Knowledge Management · Lotus Research · Microsoft · Montgomery Watson

And CoP thought leaders: 
· Richard McDermott 
· Etienne Wenger 
· William Snyder - don't miss this group of "who's who"! 

For a downloadable PDF Brochure for this event Click Here

To REGISTER online Click Here
by Fax:     941-365-2507
by Phone: 888-670-8200
by e-mail: register@...

        Please mention KEYCODE: J0160XXEM when registering.

For more information about the program or about IIR's Knowledge Management conferences, contact me at tcain@...

Tracy Cain
The Institute for International Research

Anyone got any experience fostering a community of practice among project
managers?

Fred Nickols
nickols@...
http://home.att.net/~nickols/articles.htm
(609) 820-0624

Fred,
3M has had a community around project management since the early 50's.  I don't
know anyone there, though.
Regards,
Melissie

<<Communities Toolset Webpages97.doc>> The Department of Trade and Industry is just getting going with establishing CoPs and we're proposing to put the attached 'toolset' onto our Intranet as a set of web pages. Whilst it is primarily designed for our internal colleagues, we hope it will be of help/interest to others. I'd be delighted to hear anyone's view on the structure and content of what we're going to put up. Any ideas for additional content also gratefully received.

Pat

Pat Langford
Head of Knowledge Management
Department of Trade and Industry
732 Kingsgate House
66-74 Victoria Street
London SW1E 6SW
+44 (20) 7215 4437
Mailto:pat.langford@...
http://www.kmu.org.uk

Fred,

Yes, I think you will find quite a few communities among project managers.
One resource is www.ProjectConnections.com which helps build communities
among project managers.  Contact Cinda Vogetli.  Tell her I sent you.  I
helped her build some communities among project managers at PacBell.

Richard

McDermott Consulting ___________________________________
189 Overlook Lane                                    Phone: 303-545-6030
Boulder, CO 80302                                       Fax: 303-545-6031
www.McDermottConsulting.com
Richard@...

Hello everybody,

It is great to see that after 1,5 years this community is still so active and
has so many members!
I read the postings with a lot of enthusiasm.

Anyway, I hoped that some of you could help me with an issue we keep on
struggeling with: measuring the value of CoPs.

We find that in this time of reorganizations due to the megamerger with
Bestfoods, km in general and CoPs in specific are really competing with other
improvement initiatives in our company. And, this means that showing how much
value a CoP can deliver becomes even more essential.
So far I have communicated the added value by collecting success stories and
relating those to the Unilever strategy.
It is already a big step forward, but some quantitative figures would really
help us. However, to get robust dollar figures is something I find next to
impossible.

Any hints and tips on how you all do that?

Cheers,

Claire

At 02:37 PM 4/4/01 +0200, claire-de neree wrote:
...
>Anyway, I hoped that some of you could help me with an issue we keep on
>struggeling with: measuring the value of CoPs.
>
>We find that in this time of reorganizations due to the megamerger with
>Bestfoods, km in general and CoPs in specific are really competing with other
>improvement initiatives in our company. And, this means that showing how much
>value a CoP can deliver becomes even more essential.
>So far I have communicated the added value by collecting success stories and
>relating those to the Unilever strategy.
>It is already a big step forward, but some quantitative figures would really
>help us. However, to get robust dollar figures is something I find next to
>impossible.

Given the nature of CoPs, this is not an easy question.

I have seen a model by Nahapiet and Ghoshal used to evaluate
perfomance in terms of how communities of practice created
organizational value.

The reference is:

Nahapiet, J. and Ghoshal, S. (1998) Social Capital, Intellectual
Capital and the Organizational Advantage. Academy of Management
Review, 23(2), pp. 242-266.

However, if you are looking for a more quantitative approach,
'Communities of Practice: Performance and Evolution', by
Bernardo Huberman and Tad Hogg.

http://www.parc.xerox.com/istl/groups/iea/www/communities.html

*may* be of some use.  It was published in the journal of
Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory (Vol 1,
1995, pp 73 - 92), so it does contain quite a bit of heavy
maths.



--------------------------------------------------------------

                          Chris Kimble
  Department of Computer Science, University of York, York, UK
            tel: +44 1904 433380  fax: +44 1904 432767

             Home: http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/~kimble
            MIS group: http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/mis/

--------------------------------------------------------------

I truly believe it is impossible to get a directionally right dollar figure
without standing back and agreeing a common language of how you grow value
first

If like Unilever appears to do, your corporate worth and growth potential is
organised around brands then ultimately the kind of langauge that needs to
be made common across your company includes these ideas

-The brand isn't just communications, it also connects all valuable
intangibles such as: knowledge-actions, communal business case, why we as an
organisation make a difference, what we uniquely invest in. If you like,
your main communities of practices are your brands (or vice versa). And in
these terms the brand's capital is really a proxy measure of 2 sorts of
things that no other business measures make:

1) if you have growth goals 3 to 5 yeasrs out, the brand scorecard rather
than anyone else's (certainly not accountants) must be designed -and these
days intranetted - to be the best way for everyone in the brand community of
practice to proactively track your progress
2) the brand is in fact a value exchange between all its stakeholders
(consumers, the people who work on it, channels which partner it and so on).
You've got to be measuring whether what you are doing is improving value for
all these groups and integrating win-wins between them

Let me rehearse one other bit of outrageous logic with you. When I talk to a
KM guru friend of mine about measurement, he says so someone's fixating a
number, ask them "of what?". I say pardon. He says all measures are
abstractions OF something. Of what is a dolar measurement? Usually a
short-term past transaction. That's not at all correlated with sustainable
brand (or corporate) growth. Over a short period of time I can milk any
brand to increase its dollar figures (and also kill it off!).

If you can't find a way of selling this whole idea in to your co-workers and
their powers that be, YOU ARE NOT IN A BRAND COMPANY.

chris macrae
author Brand Chartering Handbook- how brand organisations learn living
scripts
http://www.egroups.com/group/melnet2

PS Apologies for length. I'm doing a one-hour presentatiin on brand
measurement at Georgetown next month. email me at wcbn007@...,uk if
you want a copy bof that presentation when its ready . Equally, I'm happy to
debate this mail's logic with anyone. If you know someone it will infuriate,
I'd be happy if you copy it to them and make me the stalking horse.



If you have growth goals 3 to 5 years out, then brands are going to be
intimately c
----- Original Message -----
From: claire-de neree <claire-de.neree@...>
To: <com-prac@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 04 April 2001 08:37
Subject: [cp] Measuring value


> Hello everybody,
>
> It is great to see that after 1,5 years this community is still so active
and
> has so many members!
> I read the postings with a lot of enthusiasm.
>
> Anyway, I hoped that some of you could help me with an issue we keep on
> struggeling with: measuring the value of CoPs.
>
> We find that in this time of reorganizations due to the megamerger with
> Bestfoods, km in general and CoPs in specific are really competing with
other
> improvement initiatives in our company. And, this means that showing how
much
> value a CoP can deliver becomes even more essential.
> So far I have communicated the added value by collecting success stories
and
> relating those to the Unilever strategy.
> It is already a big step forward, but some quantitative figures would
really
> help us. However, to get robust dollar figures is something I find next to
> impossible.
>
> Any hints and tips on how you all do that?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Claire
>
>
>
> ::: http://www.egroups.com/group/com-prac
> ::: Email com-prac-unsubscribe@egroups.com to unsubscribe
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>

• There are probably ongoing, healthy, and useful CoPs that are private and beneath the KM / management radar screen.  It might be helpful to acknowledge such cases and explicitly say that some communities may choose to stay "closed" for a series of reasons.  (You might argue against that strategy, but it's not your decision to make, it's a community decision that you have to respect.)
• You might frame your role (or the role of these web pages) as helping leaders and communities make decisions regarding becoming more public and open or doing more of their work in an online environment.  For some communities the only really useful online function might be to announce a face-to-face meeting.  The role of a web page (or of a good consultant) would be the help make a series of decisions as to just how much work to move online and at what point to do so.
• I read your piece hurriedly, but I was left with an impression that you're emphasizing training rather heavily.  Did you mention (or are you thinking of) some kind of community of practice for community leaders?  Obviously you don't want to put too much of a burden on people who step forward to lead communities, but conversely, you can save them a lot of time and help them learn what they need to by using the same methods we're proposing and offering to others.  Among other things such a community could focus on the balance between the virtual and the face-to-face which is not something to strike in the abstract or in general.

Hi All,
I am trying to find some information on quantifying the support provided to
communities. Does anyone have any articles, or ideas on the kinds of things
that one usually measures. I am also trying to find out some new
information on how to measure the returns on community participation. Any
resources, advice would be much appreciated.

Raksha Sukhia

Hi Again all,

I am trying to find any references, case studies etc about how
organizations have managed tacit content generated within  communities.
Basically turning the tacit to explicit.
Does anyone have any articles, ideas, case studies etc that they cfan
share?

Thanks in advance,
Raksha Sukhia

Raksha

20 months ago I participated in a course that was lead by Etienne Wenger, and
which John D Smith acted as the techy.  (He actually did a lot more).  I
learned an enormous amount about what CoPs are ..how to establish, service and
support them. We also spent time looking at the issue of "measures".

Can I recommend that you converse with John (the host of this list) about the
content of this course.  It really would give you a great insight to what you
are trying to get at.

I think too, you will discover that "measures" are very hard to attribute to
CoPs, and that there are many other more important aspects to CoPs.

Roy Greenhalgh

rsukhia@... wrote:

> Hi All,
> I am trying to find some information on quantifying the support provided to
> communities. Does anyone have any articles, or ideas on the kinds of things
> that one usually measures. I am also trying to find out some new
> information on how to measure the returns on community participation. Any
> resources, advice would be much appreciated.
>
> Raksha Sukhia
>
> ::: http://www.egroups.com/group/com-prac
> ::: Email com-prac-unsubscribe@egroups.com to unsubscribe
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

An interesting tidbit from a friend in higher education:

	 http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2001/ocw.html

From a higher ed perspective, this is pretty radical stuff.  But to me, it's
a reminder that sharing web pages is not the same thing as sharing
knowledge.  It may be helpful, but it's not the same.

John

--*
--* John D. Smith, 503.963.8229, 2025 SE Elliott Ave, Portland OR 97214-5339
--* http://www.teleport.com/~smithjd ICQ: 72789757 cell: 503-975-7799
--* Spring 2001 CoP workshop starts May 14: http://www.ewenger.com/edu/
--* "With company you quicken your ascent." -- Rumi

Roy,

Thanks for the plug about the CoP workshop!  Some thoughts:

* You can't measure what you can't talk about or haven't observed.  So the
workshop tries to provide a lot more than "information" but tries to get at
issues of experiencing what it's like to BE in a community and to produce
one.

* In one sense you need to be thinking about measurement from the very
beginning; at the same time it seems more important to help communities
along than to justify your own existence.

* If learning is "situated," then so is the measurement of learning.
Richard McDermott put it well in a presentation I heard him give on the
subject of measuring the value of communities: "You have to ask yourself
'Who's asking?'  'What are their values?'  'What do they care about?'  Once
you are clear about that, the problem of measurement isn't so overwhelming."
(I'd say that if you can't have meaningful conversations with management
about these questions it may be a waste of time to try measure the value of
CoPs.)

* In different workshops there are different concerns, like a community that
evolves and deal with different topics over time.  For whatever reason, the
Winter 2001 workshop focused a lot more on issues of internationalization
and cultural hegemony.

* Be open to the idea that communities of practice can not only be an
integral part of managing and producing knowledge in a company.  The whole
process of community growth and measurement could have a transformative
effect on the way companies think about management.

* One thing is particularly clear to me: nobody has the last word on the
subject of measuring value.

Actually, it's time to write to com-prac about the workshop, how it's
evolving, what we're trying to do with it, etc.

John

--*
--* John D. Smith, 503.963.8229, 2025 SE Elliott Ave, Portland OR 97214-5339
--* http://www.teleport.com/~smithjd ICQ: 72789757 cell: 503-975-7799
--* Spring 2001 CoP workshop starts May 14: http://www.ewenger.com/edu/
--* "With company you quicken your ascent." -- Rumi

-----Original Message-----
From: Roy Greenhalgh [mailto:rgreenh@...]
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2001 11:07 AM
To: com-prac@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [cp] Quantifying Community Suport


Raksha

20 months ago I participated in a course that was lead by Etienne Wenger,
and
which John D Smith acted as the techy.  (He actually did a lot more).  I
learned an enormous amount about what CoPs are ..how to establish, service
and
support them. We also spent time looking at the issue of "measures".

Can I recommend that you converse with John (the host of this list) about
the
content of this course.  It really would give you a great insight to what
you
are trying to get at.

I think too, you will discover that "measures" are very hard to attribute to
CoPs, and that there are many other more important aspects to CoPs.

Roy Greenhalgh

I agree with John's comment that there are probably some communities under
the screen of KM.

In one company we used the announcement of luncheons to identify
communities.  Some it turned out were just luncheons.  Others were
communities having an event.  It was a good way to find communities that
were not very visible.  We approached the leaders "Were corporate and we're
here to help" asking if they were interested in being included in the
support stream corporate had identified.  We were clear that this was an
offer, not an obligation.  Several turned us down.  One leader said, "We're
like a little village here, and from our perspective, this initiative looks
like urban sprawl.  We don't want to get gobbled up in it."

This has happened in several companies. In one we found a thriving community
of practice among admins.  They were very reluctant to be identified because
they thought that spending time helping each other might be considered
"wrong" by some of their managers.  -- A genuinely reasonable fear.  In
another company, a community of mechanical engineers literally met in a
closet (a big one) and said they didn't want any help because they did not
want to grow.

I suspect there are many, many communities under the screen of KM.  I don't
think it is our job to make them visible unless they wish.  Since they are,
I believe, the connections -- the circulation system -- that keeps
information, ideas and collaborative thinking flowing in the organization,
and since they are organic, we don't need to surface every one.  Even
underground communities can benefit from an organization's legitimating
communities.  A community of librarians, for example, who did not want to
surface, never-the-less felt legitimated when one organization announced the
community support initiative.  They felt the time they spent connecting was
finally recognized as useful.  But they had been underground so long, they
were uncomfortable being declared a community along with the science
communities in the organization.

Richard

McDermott Consulting ___________________________________
189 Overlook Lane                                    Phone: 303-545-6030
Boulder, CO 80302                                       Fax: 303-545-6031
www.McDermottConsulting.com
Richard@...

Fred  I am currently involved in a collaborative effort with the Defense
Acquisition University(DAU) to establish a CoP for PM's.  This will
ultimately service both DOD PM's and industry PM's who deal with the defense
issues. During the formative phase we are developing it around key focus
areas e.g. Contract Management, system engineering, Risk Management, et al,
and relying on the faculty of DAU and its campuses, and the service branches
to formulate the community building efforts as well as requirements and
content management approaches.
-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Nickols [mailto:nickols@...]
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 5:35 PM
To: com-prac@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [cp] Project Mgrs CoP


Anyone got any experience fostering a community of practice among project
managers?

Fred Nickols
nickols@...
http://home.att.net/~nickols/articles.htm
(609) 820-0624


::: http://www.egroups.com/group/com-prac
::: Email com-prac-unsubscribe@egroups.com to unsubscribe



Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

Richard McDermott wrote:
>

> I suspect there are many, many communities under the screen of KM.  I don't
> think it is our job to make them visible unless they wish.  Since they are,
> I believe, the connections -- the circulation system -- that keeps
> information, ideas and collaborative thinking flowing in the organization,
> and since they are organic, we don't need to surface every one.
>
I think Richard's comment is right on the money.  I was going to say
brilliant, and then decided that I should just say,  "I agree with
him."  As a former admin who worked with other admins in helping each
other learn, I agree that it is not necessarily a good thing to identify
and surface such communities.

In my experience, the source of our vitality was that we created it
ourselves with only our initiative (no funds from the company).

The fact that we were calling the shots and deciding what to do was
vital to the whole effort.  By staying independent, we were not subsumed
into the power structure of the organization nor co-opted by a corporate
effort to "help" us which turned into a chance to direct and manage us.
While from time to time people wanted money from the company, I always
actively discouraged it, because without money, our own greatness and
knowledge could gradually emerge and be seen in each other.  Fancy
equipment or training tools, things that we could not buy or create
ourselves, might have quickly obscured or diminished our own sense that
we were in power and were the source of the learning.

When groups create communities, they do so in the context of what they
have learned of surviving the organization's culture.  Frequently, there
is no similarity between what a company says it does and what an
anthropologist would discover in what I call the volume-turned-down
actions.  Often, what the company says it does is a post-hoc
explanation, after already deciding what to do and then creating a
palatable framework for employees.  People know this and distrust it.

An interesting way to approach communities discovered within successful
areas of a company is to regard the members as the experts on community
building within that organization at that level.  Listen, learn and
absorb.  Give up ideas and concepts about what would help  or "be
better" and ask people how to serve them.  The manager's temptation is
to try to assert one's supposedly greater knowledge and expertise, which
often will effectively disempower the community in the name of helping
it.

I believe that a quiet listening to what is going on, a quiet helping
hand (when requested) with no banners and bandwagons, and eliminating
hype, fanfare, self congratulations, or conceptual community building
ideas will go far.

I remember the first time I went to Colorado and saw the Rocky
Mountains.  My comment was, "They look just like the postcards!"  On
reflection, I realized that the postcards looked just like the
mountains.  The concept of a community is like a postcard.  It helps us
know one when we see one.  When a mountain does NOT look like a postcard
picture of it, it is important to remember that it is the postcard
(concept of a community), and not the mountain (community), which should
change.

Regards,

Chris Reid

Richard,

In any of the cases you mentioned, were you able to engage the leadership of
those communities for long enough to get at questions of support and value?
I'm mixing two threads here (the one started by Pat:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/com-prac/message/1029  and the one by Claire
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/com-prac/message/1031), but its seems to me
that there are at least two considerations regarding underground
communities:

* Can the resources that, say, Pat is setting up for the public, "out of the
closet" communities help the underground communities (and how would we
know).

* In assessing the value of *supported* commnities of practice, it seems to
me we have to try our questions out on the closet communities, too.  (One of
the roots of our "field" here came from Etienne and Jean Lave asking what
would we think about how learning happens if we asked the learners, rather
than the teachers.  Analogously we should ask about the value of communities
of all sorts and then compare those that receive extra resources, coaching,
toolsets, etc.)

I find the whole issue of underground communities to be fascinating and I
think it may be very important.

John

--*
--* John D. Smith, 503.963.8229, 2025 SE Elliott Ave, Portland OR 97214-5339
--* http://www.teleport.com/~smithjd ICQ: 72789757 cell: 503-975-7799
--* Spring 2001 CoP workshop starts May 14: http://www.ewenger.com/edu/
--* "With company you quicken your ascent." -- Rumi

Mongoose Technology invites you to a free webinar April 11th on Corporate
Communities of
Purpose, featuring:

Cynthia Typaldos
   Founder of GolfWeb and RealCommunities
   CKO, Mongoose Technology
Mary Lou Song
   Independent consultant, speaker
   Former Sr. Manager of Community Strategy and Development for eBay

Cynthia Typaldos, Chief Knowledge Officer at Mongoose Technology, is a
leading authority on the software infrastructure needed to build, operate,
and evolve thriving web communities. She founded RealCommunities, Inc. to
build web community infrastructure software for vertical portals, corporate
and B2B web sites.

As eBay's third employee and Senior Manager of Community Strategy and
Development, Mary Lou Song focused on helping eBay work with its members to
create a fun, safe personal trading community. She was responsible for the
strategic direction of the eBay community, for the development and
implementation of community retention programs, and for eBay's global
community initiatives.

Cynthia and Mary Lou will explore the "12 Principles of Civilization", with
an emphasis on ways to grow successful communities online. You will see how
a collaborative infrastructure enables corporations, through their Web
sites, to proactively manage key business relationships with and between
their most important stakeholders: customers, partners, developers,
integrators, franchisees, distributors, employees, and others. In
preparation for the Webinar, attendees can download "Shared Knowledge and
Common Purpose: Using the 12 Principles of Civilization to build Web
Communities", by Cynthia Typaldos, downloadable from our website at
http://www.mongoosetech.com/download/download.html.

The webinar will be held Wednesday, April 11, 2001, at 1pm Eastern, 10 am
Pacific.  The webinar is free, but advance registration is required.  Please
sign up at http://www.mongoosetech.com/events/events.html.

We sincerely hope you will join us for this educational and informative
event.

Scott Allen
Senior Director of Services
KM Evangelist
Mongoose Technology Incorporated
281.461.0099 - Office
scott.allen@...
http:/www.mongoosetech.com

In response to Richard, Chris and others,

I agree, too, that some communities should remain under the radar, but it
somewhat depends on what the purpose of the community is. If it is pure
knowledge sharing for enjoyment, work improvement around a specific skill
or profession, that kind of thing, then under the radar is fine. If the
purpose of the community is to make some change in the organization, then
"under-the-radarness" becomes an issue. I've seen "quiet" communities
struggle because they don't have corporate backing (resources), and so it
wears the active core out to keep the events or linkages going over time
because everyone also has their day job. More thoughts?

Dori

In response to Dori, a question for her and all:

What have you found useful to do in situations where quiet communities
are struggling?  Are there other reasons for struggling other than the
lack of corporate resources?  I'd be interested in learning from you
what you have seen and experienced.

Chris Reid








Dori Digenti wrote:
>
> In response to Richard, Chris and others,
>
> I agree, too, that some communities should remain under the radar, but it
> somewhat depends on what the purpose of the community is. If it is pure
> knowledge sharing for enjoyment, work improvement around a specific skill
> or profession, that kind of thing, then under the radar is fine. If the
> purpose of the community is to make some change in the organization, then
> "under-the-radarness" becomes an issue. I've seen "quiet" communities
> struggle because they don't have corporate backing (resources), and so it
> wears the active core out to keep the events or linkages going over time
> because everyone also has their day job. More thoughts?
>
> Dori
>
> ::: http://www.egroups.com/group/com-prac
> ::: Email com-prac-unsubscribe@egroups.com to unsubscribe
>
>
>
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An additional thought for Dori and others:

Whose purpose is it to make a change in the organization: the
community's or the company's?  What kind of changes?

How did the communities for organizational change come about?  How do
they see their purpose or describe their value?

In your experience, is there a relationship between how communities see
their focus, how the focus was developed (e.g. management stimulation,
worker creation) and sustaining the community?

Chris


Dori Digenti wrote:

> If the purpose of the community is to make some change in the organization,
then
> "under-the-radarness" becomes an issue. I've seen "quiet" communities
> struggle because they don't have corporate backing (resources), and so it
> wears the active core out to keep the events or linkages going over time
> because everyone also has their day job. More thoughts?
>
> Dori
>
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Etienne Wenger has just self-published a report that might be interesting to
com-prac: "Supporting communities of practice; a survey of
community-oriented technologies."  He's put it on his web site as
share-ware: you pay a modest fee if you find it useful.  I think it's useful
because, in addition to looking at a bunch of specific platforms, it puts
the features and capabilities of different products in a framework that I
think is helpful.

You can download the report from http://www.ewenger.com/tech/

The report is built around 4 questions:

1. What makes communities of practice different from garden-variety online
communities?

2. What categories of community-oriented products exist and what are they
trying to accomplish?

3. What are the characteristics of communities of practice that lend
themselves to support by technology?

4. How to use the answer to these questions to develop a strategy for
building a platform for communities of practice?

The report ends by posing (and then expanding on) some "questions to ponder"
that I think are relevant to our discussions here:

1. What types of communities are you trying to support?
2. What are you trying to accomplish with technology?
3. Do you want technology to modify behavior?
4. What are the effects of pricing structures?
5. What are the requirements of the technology?

John

--*
--* John D. Smith, 503.963.8229, 2025 SE Elliott Ave, Portland OR 97214-5339
--* http://www.teleport.com/~smithjd ICQ: 72789757 cell: 503-975-7799
--* Spring 2001 CoP workshop starts May 14: http://www.ewenger.com/edu/
--* "With company you quicken your ascent." -- Rumi

  ~~~~~~~~ Supporting communities of practice: Executive summary ~~~~~~~~

This report is intended as a guide for selecting and assembling a
technological platform to support communities of practice across a large
organization. To this end, the report addresses four questions:

1. What makes communities of practice different from garden-variety online
communities?

Every group that shares interest on a website is called a community today,
but communities of practice are a specific kind of community. They are
focused on a domain of knowledge and over time accumulate expertise in this
domain. They develop their shared practice by interacting around problems,
solutions, and insights, and building a common store of knowledge.

2. What categories of community-oriented products exist and what are they
trying to accomplish?

The ideal system at the right price does not exist yet, though a few come
really close. But there are eight neighboring categories of products that
have something to contribute and include good candidates to start with.
Analyzing these categories of products yields not only a scan of products,
but also a way of understanding the various aspects of a knowledge strategy
based on communities of practice.

3. What are the characteristics of communities of practice that lend
themselves to support by technology?

Technology platform are often described in terms of features, but in order
to really evaluate candidates for a technology platform, it is useful to
start with the success factors of communities of practice that can be
affected by technology. The third section of this report provides a table of
thirteen such factors with examples of how a technology platform can affect
the success of a community in each area.

4. How to use the answer to these questions to develop a strategy for
building a platform for communities of practice?

Most of the product categories can be a starting point for building a
general platform. In fact, this analysis of the field suggests a strategy
for approach the task. Decide what kinds of activities are most important
for your communities. Select a product in that area, and expand it with
elements from the other categories.

My name is John Kellden,
am a Knowledge Tool inventor,
husband, father of three, living in Sweden,
I am relatively new at Howard Rheingolds BS,
and have recently participated in the OSN-event,
where I mostly hung out with the Glass Bead Game-players.
Chris Macrae told me you were here.

let me just get "warm" here first and then lets mingle...
( if you dont hear from me, the next two weeks, I´m downhill skiing with
my family,
positively no computers / email )
See you !

I have downloaded and looked at Etienne Wenger's report on community
tools and wish to share some ideas with the group here.

1) This could be a great 'source document' for this community.
Etienne has developed a neat taxonomy and a visual chart that is
packed with insight. I hope participants here will contribute their
insights and critique to build upon this strong conceptualization.

2) A couple of suggestions: Need to look more closely at the 8
categories, my first impression was the sample lacked good
representatives from helpdesks / customer service (Siebel? Eureka?)
and from the CRM area. There may be applications in these spaces that
come quite close to assisting CoPs with building relationships and
capturing solutions, two key areas I believe.

3) I found the knowledge desktop / portals and the synchronous
categories to be little surprising. As Etienne mentions synchronous
apps on their own hardly quality as community tools and this
functionality is being integrated in the power suites. Centra and
Webex are selling tools in my mind rather than community building
apps.

4) It would be nice to get a feel for market penetration, perhaps
using circles of different area to present seats? I know this will be
difficult data to obtain.

5) I was bit surprized by some of the selections and missed some
favorits e.g. Groove, Practicity, slash.dot, what no MS stuff?,
Intranets.com, Flypaper.com and some of the eLearning stuff,
Powerworx, Collegia, gForce, Docent

What are your opinions?

I, too, think it's an extraordinary document -- unprecedented in terms of
something so publicly available.  Here are my comments/observations (numbers
corresponding to your observations below):

1) I like the visual chart, but I have a little bit of a hard time with the
radial nature of it -- it's not entirely intuitive.  Some tools actually
address areas that are not adjacent to each other.  What then?  As I read
it, each product is in its primary domain, with the radial position and
proximity toward the center representing the degree to which it addresses
other areas.  Criticism aside, it's a far better concise visualization than
anything else I've seen.

2) I see the point about CRM.  At some point, though, many applications end
up being just repackaging of similar toolsets.  What does a CRM app
typically have in it?  What does it have in it that is unique to that
domain?  Or is it not merely the combination of the tools and the
configuration values that are placed in them as a starting point that make
it "CRM"?

3) Certainly the knowledge desktop / portals area is not the focus of the
study.  There are several major players in the enterprise portal market that
are covered in the Gartner report on EIP's (and others) that are not in this
report.  My guess is that he addressed largely the ones that lay some
significant claim to collaboration or community (as Plumtree, Mongoose,
Livelink, Intraspect, etc., all do) while not focusing on those pushing
other marketing messages, i.e., Viador is focusing on "self-service portals"
in the CRM space, Epicentric's message is focused on E-Business, etc.
    Of course, it could have been that there were just too damn many portal
vendors to include them all in the scope of the project.
    RE: Synchronous tools -- that's largely a matter of market positioning,
as well.  Placeware has seen beyond the sales tool niche, for sure.  A
recent webinar series by them included topics on CRM, e-learning, and a
couple of other non-sales/marketing applications.

4) That would be difficult to obtain in a meaningful way -- would you count
number of seats or number of customers, for example?

5) Good starter list you've got there of other tools that deserve a look.
Etienne -- if you're reading this, you made a great point in the
introduction about the time-sensitive nature of this document.  I think you
could get a pretty nice business going for yourself by keeping this thing
constantly updated (or, say, quarterly).  This is GREAT competitive
intelligence for anyone in the space, and I would think you wouldn't have
any problem selling subscriptions to this.  I'm hoping a lot of my company's
competitors don't even know about this report.

One other comment -- and this has particular bearing on the issue of perhaps
keeping this report up-to-date on an ongoing basis moving forward:

Partnerships, market consolidation and innovation can have a radical effect
on this chart literally overnight.  For example,  where does a
Plumtree/Documentum partnership (announced this week) sit on this chart?  In
the case of my own company (Mongoose Technology -- top center and a little
to the left), we merged with RealCommunities, the publisher of CiviServer
(prominent position close to center under web communities) and CiviServer
Experience (on the left on the border between Access to Expertise and
E-Learning Spaces).  Where does that offering sit on the chart?

Etienne -- again, if you're reading this -- this is great work, and we
really hope you'll find a way to keep this updated in the future.

Scott Allen
Senior Director of Services
KM Evangelist
Mongoose Technology Incorporated
281.461.0099 - Office
713.816.9557 - Mobile
scott.allen@...
http:/www.mongoosetech.com




-----Original Message-----
From: Denham Grey [mailto:dgrey@...]
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2001 6:21 PM
To: com-prac@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [cp] Etienne's report


I have downloaded and looked at Etienne Wenger's report on community
tools and wish to share some ideas with the group here.

1) This could be a great 'source document' for this community.
Etienne has developed a neat taxonomy and a visual chart that is
packed with insight. I hope participants here will contribute their
insights and critique to build upon this strong conceptualization.

2) A couple of suggestions: Need to look more closely at the 8
categories, my first impression was the sample lacked good
representatives from helpdesks / customer service (Siebel? Eureka?)
and from the CRM area. There may be applications in these spaces that
come quite close to assisting CoPs with building relationships and
capturing solutions, two key areas I believe.

3) I found the knowledge desktop / portals and the synchronous
categories to be little surprising. As Etienne mentions synchronous
apps on their own hardly quality as community tools and this
functionality is being integrated in the power suites. Centra and
Webex are selling tools in my mind rather than community building
apps.

4) It would be nice to get a feel for market penetration, perhaps
using circles of different area to present seats? I know this will be
difficult data to obtain.

5) I was bit surprized by some of the selections and missed some
favorits e.g. Groove, Practicity, slash.dot, what no MS stuff?,
Intranets.com, Flypaper.com and some of the eLearning stuff,
Powerworx, Collegia, gForce, Docent

What are your opinions?


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::: Email com-prac-unsubscribe@egroups.com to unsubscribe



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I will be out of the office from 12/04/2001 until 17/04/2001.

I will respond to you as soon as I can on return.

Does anyone have any nominations for largest CoPs?

One reason for asking is that I hypothesise the larger the coomunity the
harder it is to practice, without some brilliant systemisation or
knowledge-circulating core ( just one of several hypotheses I'd like to test
against some actual nominations)

chris macrae