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Category: Communities of Practice

The Role of the Facilitator in Building and Sustaining Communities of Practice

The Role of the Facilitator in Building and Sustaining Communities of Practice

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I have the honour of being invited to present at the XIII Seminari Compartim L’e-moderador i altres nous agents de coneixement a les organitzacions on 21st September 2011. The event is sponsored by Generaliti de Cataluña, centre d’Estudis Juridics, I Formacio Especialitzada. This post is a brief preamble to my presentation. Background My experience of knowledge sharing in organizations stems mainly from my involvement in setting up Communities of Practice (CoPs) for UK local government. This was part of a…

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Communities of Practice: a strategy for more effective collaboration

Communities of Practice: a strategy for more effective collaboration

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Acting as a public administrator, it was my privilege to arrange and facilitate a meeting this morning between a delegation from the Government of Singapore and some of the ‘expert’ Community of Practice Facilitators from the local government Community of Practice platform. My thanks to Etienne Wenger for making the original connections with the Singapore Government, and to Adrian Barker (Policy & Performance CoP – 3913 members), Neil Rimmer (Productivity and Efficiency Exchange CoP – 2513 members) and Michael Norton…

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Knowledge Hub – part 4: Social Graph and Activity Stream

Knowledge Hub – part 4: Social Graph and Activity Stream

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Continuing with my posts about the Knowledge Hub (Beta release in April 2011): Knowledge Hub 3 – User Experience Knowledge Hub 2 Knowledge Hub 1 I wanted to touch on another of the key features being delivered by the new system, the ‘Social Graph’ and ‘Activity Stream’. These are intimately related and hence it makes sense to discuss them as one feature or capability. Social Graph A social graph in its broadest context is the mapping of everyone and how…

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Are you a robin or a magpie?

Are you a robin or a magpie?

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I was reading one of Johnnie Moore’s blog posts recently, about positive deviance, where looking at outliers helps people to solve serious real world problems. Johnnie refers to an abstract from The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World’s Toughest Problems, ( published by Harvard Business Press. © 2010 Richard Pascale, Jerry Sternin and Monique Sternin), which in turn refers to a Nasrudin parable about how easy it is to miss the answers that are right before…

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Communities of Practice leading the way in public service improvement

Communities of Practice leading the way in public service improvement

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Rounding out another year of growth and innovation in the use of social media, this item provides a compelling case study for the success of Communities of Practice as a foundation for more effective collaborative working. I’m privileged to have been one of the catalysts for establishing this strategy for UK local government. In fact, I’ve been an advocate for Communities of Practice since long before they were made fashionable by Etienne Wenger et al, tracing my involvement back to…

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Building and Nurturing On-Line Communities – Batteries Not Included

Building and Nurturing On-Line Communities – Batteries Not Included

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Much has been written about best practice for developing and nurturing on-line communities , such as Communities of Practice (CoP), and the accepted wisdom is that technology by itself – no matter how good – will NOT deliver vibrant and successful communities. “Build it and they won’t come”  should be the mantra, as Google Wave so amply demonstrated (and I know this was not an on-line community in its purest sense before I get flamed!). I’ve previously tried to illustrate…

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EDO International Congress 2010

EDO International Congress 2010

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I had the privilege if being invited to present at the EDO 2010 International Congress in Barcelona at the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialized Training on 12, 13, 14 May 2010. The conference theme was “New training strategies for oganisations” and I did a session on ‘Cultivating Knowledge Through Communities of Practice”.  The slides I used are available for download from Slideshare and embedded in this post. My sincere thanks to Jesús Martinez Marin and the organiser for the…

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CoP Usability and Sociability Heuristics

CoP Usability and Sociability Heuristics

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As some of my regular readers will know, I’m involved in a major new project to deliver the ‘next generation’ community of practice platform for UK local government organisations, see previous blog posts about the ‘Knowledge Hub’. The current platform has been (and continues to be) a huge success, with over 63,000 users and more than 1,300 active CoPs, working towards various outcomes but with a common goal to improve public service. These will eventually be migrated to the new…

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Knowledge Hub (part 2)

Knowledge Hub (part 2)

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It’s taken a while for me to get around to posting an update to my “Knowledge Hub Part 1” post, mainly as a result of being fully immersed in the technology procurement process these past several months. This phase is now almost complete and we will shortly be starting on the actual development of the Hub, so now seems to be an opportune moment to remind everyone what this Knowledge Hub thing is, and to give a first airing of…

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Cultivating knowledge through Communities of Practice

Cultivating knowledge through Communities of Practice

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The presentation looks at the phenomenon of Communities of Practice and how they can develop into effective knowledge sharing environments. Topics include: What is a ‘Community of Practice’ (CoP)? Moving from conversations to collaboration Community culture and behaviours What makes a successful community? Measuring success and the elusive ROI Lessons learnt from deployment of CoPs in local government. My thanks to Jesus Matinez Marin and the organising committee for inviting me to address the Congreso Internacional EDO 2010 Conference in…

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