I wonder what it is about Non-Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs), Non-Government Organisations (NGO’s) and other Quangos that somehow feel compelled to monitor and report on socio-demographic data that is not part of their brief?
I encountered this first hand when I was contracted by LSC and DIUS last year to set up the Information Authority. This [...]
I attended (and presented at) the Butler Group “Information Management and Collaboration” event that was held in London on 14-15 May. Regrettably I couldn’t get to the first day of the event, so missed presentations on topics such as:
Document collaboration using Sharepoint, and
Next generation collaboration through BEA Systems portals
Hence, I was left to ponder how [...]
Tools for Communities Wiki A companion piece to a forthcoming book Stewarding Technologies for Communities of Practice by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White and John D. Smith. It collects knowledge about how Communities of Practice use different tools. Like all Wikis, this is a work in progress. It collects knowledge about how Communities of [...]
I thought I would try out Google Gadgets as a way of showing the growth in usage of the IDeA CoP platform. It was simpler to set up than I imagined. A straight forward process of adding the data to a Google Spreadsheet, inserting the Gadget to the spreasheet, and then selecting the option [...]
Having only just seen the Exalead press release, I’m reminded of a significant new enhancement that we introduced to the IDeA Communities of Practice (CoP) web platform earlier this year. The Exalead search service provides each CoP with a facility for creating a personalised community list of websites that enables more focussed and relevant search [...]
I highly recommend the recently published white paper - “Building a collaborative workspace” - by Shawn Callahan, Mark Shenck and Nancy White. The paper goes some way to redressing the balance between Web 2.0 technology solutions and the skills, processes and techniques required to ensure the technology is used effectively. I’ve blogged on this [...]
One of the things we have learnt from the development and use of the IDeA Community of Practice Platform is that a CoP can have different needs, dependent on the stage in their life cycle and their primary purpose. The role and importance of the facilitators (or moderators) in these communities cannot be overemphasised since [...]
David Wilcox over at Designing for Civil Society has posted some additional comment on the Community of Practice Facilitators Workshop. My thanks to David for his probing questions and insightful comment.
We had a very good day at the IDeA Community of Practice Facilitator’s Workshop on Friday 11th April. These are regular (bi-annual) events where we get the CoP facilitators (and several guests) together to share knowledge and experience of facilitating one or more of the 300+ CoPs now active across local government.
The day was organised [...]
So glad to see the Community of Practice (CoP) website for local government getting some blog coverage.
Happy to provide any help, information, advice to anyone wishing to use the platform, or anyone wishing to start up a similar initiative for their communities. My credentials? I set this one up for the Improvement & Development Agency.
