I presented today on the topic of Communities of Practice for the launch of the Progress through Partnership programme, sponsored and supported by the South East Employers (SEEMP). The Progress through Partnership (PtP) is a peer led programme with the objective of creating an environment for knowledge sharing and identifying examples of best practice and innovation for Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs)
The programme includes the launch of a new portal site with a link to the CoP platform.
The idea of using a CoP for this programme of work was well received by most of the audience, and particularly when I explained that these communities were not hierarchical and were not workflow driven. The issue of hierarchy seemed to resonate most with delegates from district authorities, who appear to have a lesser voice in the LSPs than members from unitary authorities. It will be interesting to see how the inherent flat structure of a CoP will work in this particular programme. A case of ‘watch this space’ I think!
I picked this up courtesy of Beth Kanter’s blog, regarding a recent survey conducted in the education sector on use of Web 2.0 tools. The survey summary analysis is available under a Creative Commons license from David White, JISC funded ‘SPIRE’ project 2007 Survey. I was particularly interested in the data on the ratio between contributors to lurkers for on-line communities, an area I’ve previously commented on (Re the "1% Rule"). The survey reveals a much higher proportion (20%) who regularly contribute to social networking sites (e.g. Flickr, YouTube etc.), which I suspect might be skewed due to the demographic (education sector plus majority of respondents under 21?). It certainly doesn’t reflect my own experience in setting up communities of practice in the public sector (local government) where it’s closer to the 1% rule.
It’s difficult to avoid making generalisations on a survey of this type, but it was also apparent that even within this survey demographic, there was a remarkable lack of knowledge about Web 2.0 social book-marking tools, looking at the high proportion of respondents who said they had never heard of del.icio.us or stumbleupon, and a strange inconsistency between the high proportion of respondents who had never heard of a wiki, and the relatively small proportion who had never heard of wikipedia. I would have thought they could have deduced some connection from the wikipedia name. Ho hum!
Download online_tool_use_surveysummary.pdf
Dave Snowden’s post caught my eye today. (I’m interpreting Weltanschauung as meaning ‘world view’, or ‘accepted opinion’ here).
Sensible (and deep) perspective on the social computing ‘revolution’ (my word not Dave’s), as you’d probably expect from this renowned thinker. Difficult to do justice to Dave’s posting in a few words here, though a couple of points I’d like to note:
I too dislike the term ‘Enterprise 2.0’ (much in the same way as I dislike Web 2.0 – and I’m still not entirely sure if they’re the same!); social computing is far more descriptive and takes us away from the concept of giving release numbers to what is in effect a gradual (evolutionary) change, predicated on human behaviour. And yes, I have noted this contradicts the reference to ‘revolution’ in my first sentence, but I do get the impression from various vendors’ marketing releases that they believe it is a revolution.
The other point is (again) in support of the Dave Snowden’s statement that
“….you have to get people enthused, get the early adopters to use the tools. It’s a lot harder letting things evolve, than designing something based on an ideal approach….”
It is indeed difficult letting things evolve, because this takes time and despite the well-worn KM cliché of learning before, during and after, managers want instant (and perfect) solutions. The ideal solution doesn’t become apparent until users have worked out where the shortcuts are and how to avoid the pitfalls and problems. Anyone who thinks they can design an ideal system from a purely theoretical paradigm must be….well, Einstein. Maybe it happens, but not very often.
I’ve always been an advocate of starting off with something quick and dirty – and yes, probably imperfect, but by observing how it’s being used and listening to user’s feedback you can develop something approaching an ideal system. Of course you’ll never quite reach the utopian position of having a ‘perfect’ system, because that’s what evolution is all about. Change is good, provided we’re learning from it.
So, my own crusade is to find the (social computing) early adopters in the local government sector. Quite difficult when you have a fairly institutionalised mentality, where freedom of thought and action has been actively discouraged over many (many) years. The good news is, there are some out there, and the fact that in less than 6 months we’ve managed to encourage over 900 users to join one or more of the 24 or so on-line communities of practice on the IDeA collaborative workspace does give me some encouragement. In fact, I’m enthused about it!
I came across the idea of Action Oriented communities of practice on the Anecdote blog by Shawn Callahan. It refers to the point in the CoP life cycle when the group really benefits from creating tangible things designed
to improve the members’ practice. This point occurs sometime after the
early days of formation after the members have worked out their domain,
and they know who’s participating, how people get on with one another,
and how members communicate.
The article refers to a five part approach designed to coordinate action within a CoP:
- general discussion
- discussion tables
- a list of possible projects
- small groups (ideally 3 people) working on things together
- database of projects
The community makes progress by hosting discussion tables and
encouraging active and robust conversation that leads people to suggest
things that would be good to do as a community. The list of projects
grows and some are tackled based on the energy and enthusiasm of
members. The process of undertaking these projects in small groups
creates new relationships which in turn creates new conversations and
new ideas for future discussion tables.
I’m inclined to try this approach for the Facilitator’s Community of Practice for the IDeA, which I co-mentor. I was slightly disappointed at the response to a recent forum entry I posted within the CoP, asking what members wanted to get out of the community, i.e. their needs and objectives. There were only three responses from a total membership of fifty. However, this did trigger the suggestion for a meeting of the members, and I’m in the process of putting an agenda together now. I think the action oriented approach the Shawn describes in his blog would be perfect for this occasion, and I will put it to the CoP members for their views. I’m hoping though, I’ll get more then three responses!
I was drawn to this item on the Phronesis blog by Bev Trayner. The Knowledge Management for Development Journal (KM4D Journal) has issued a call for papers on “Stewarding Technologies for Collaboration, Community Building & Knowledge Sharing in Development”, for their KM4Dev Journal Vol. 3, Issue 1, June 2007 publication. It appealed to me with respect to the work I’ve been engaged on at the IDeA for development of a Community of Practice strategy, which included a technology component (web site) for support of on-line collaboration. An abstract from Bev’s blog:
The ‘Knowledge Management for Development Journal’ (KM4D Journal) is an open access, peer-reviewed, community-based journal on knowledge management in development – for and by development practitioners and researchers. The journal is closely related to the KM4dev community of practice, and can be read and downloaded at: www.km4dev.org/journal
Vol. 3, Issue 1, to be published in June 2007, will focus on innovative practices and uses of ‘technologies for knowledge sharing’. This focus comes on the wave of new web based tools and processes supporting knowledge sharing, knowledge management and organizational learning that have emerged. Sometimes called "Web 2.0" technologies, these tools allow people to collaborate over time and distance in both new ways and in new networked forms. It builds on previous issues on the importance of networks, working across boundaries and even sustainability.
Guest editors are comprised of Nancy White, Beth Kanter, Beverly Trayner, Partha Sarker and Brenda Zulu, in combination with Chief Editor, Lucie Lamoureux.
Proposed deadlines
- Submission deadline for the title and abstract 28 February 2007
- Acceptance of paper proposal 15 March 2007
- Submission of paper 15 April 2007
- Peer-review completed 15 May 2007
- Author revision completed and final version of paper submitted 31 May 200
- (e)-publication date 15 June 2007
If anyone wishes to submit a paper, or be actively involved in this initiative in any other ways, you shoiuld send your abstract (minimum one paragraph – maximum one page) or your message by email to km4dj-editors@dgroups.org
All you wanted to know about Web2.0 in just under 5 minutes! An excellent video by Michael Wesch. No voice explanation necessary. Just sit and watch the pictures. Brilliant!
I was reading an article by Martin Veitch in last week’s IT Week about the release if IBM’s Lotus Connections, a set of tools that brings MySpace-like social networking to big business. IBM has been reported as saying that …"Connections will offer a way to automate knowledge management through the usability of social software combined with security, authentication, directory, storage management and integration with enterprise software such as Lotus Notes". This coming hot on the heals of Microsoft providing wiki-like functionality to Sharepoint.
What I’ve not been able to detect with all this Enterprise 2.0/Web 2.0 hype emanating from the big vendors is any real understanding of the human side of social networking and how to cross the divide between the hobbyist and fun culture underlying environments such as Myspace and Flickr, and the culture of big business or government. Control and command cultures still dominate, particularly in the world of central government, where the very thought of having self-organising communities of practice that might threaten the unitary culture is tantamount to encouraging revolution! Encouragingly, there is growing evidence that social networking and use of software to facilitate more effective networking and knowledge sharing is gaining some foot holds in local government. However, even here, interference by IT departments (wherever they detect some loss of control) and managers who ‘just don’t get it’ can still deter all but the resolute. Maybe its not quite a revolution yet, but the natives are definitely stirring. The IDeA’s version of Enterprise 2.0 - its Community of Practice platform - has grown from nothing to supporting 29 CoPs in only 4 months. My own experience during this time has been that developing the software tools is the easy bit; getting people to understand that this heralds an entirely different way of working is the challenge. I’d like to see some of the big vendors in this space, such as IBM and Microsoft, devoting a bit more time and attention to the cultural shift that must occur before there is any significant take-up of social software within business or government. The revolution is coming, but the rebels need some help!
I thought this Flash animation from the University of Ottawa was a neat introduction to facilitating a Peer Assist session for a community of practice. A Peer Assist is an established knowledge management technique for gaining input and insight from "experts" and practitioners from a wider sphere, in order to reuse and reapply any relevant knowledge and experience to a particular (peer) problem or issue.
I notice that eGov Monitor has partnered with Socitm for the launch of GovXchange, which, according to the press release is “a knowledge-sharing platform that can support communities of interest around specific topics. GovXchange will not only collect and disseminate published information (like its forerunner, egov exchange), it will also enable users to create and share new knowledge and information by building private or public ‘spaces’ around their professional interests.”
Sounds great, but having signed up to several of these ‘spaces’ back in December 2006, I’ve yet to see any sign of collaboration or knowledge sharing. Despite having an average of twenty or so other members in the communities (spaces) I have joined, there are no discussions, no forum entries, no wiki contributions and nothing in the ‘knowledge’ sections – in fact, they are probably better described as ‘empty spaces’. And before I’m taken to task on this, I have started the one and only forum thread in the ‘spaces’ I have joined.
The key issue here, is the belief that a community of interest or practice can self-germinate. This is not the approach we’ve taken in developing the IDeA Communities of Practice. Similar in concept to GovXchange in terms of providing a platform for providing (and encouraging) knowledge sharing, but with no commercial baggage, and with each community being professionally facilitated. There is little risk of having empty spaces, because the facilitator ‘seeds’ the forum and knowledge library as part of the pre-launch planning activities.
However, this might prove an interesting experiment in community dynamics – i.e. how effective is a non-facilitated community compared with a facilitated one? I’ll keep an eye on this and provide an update in a month or so.
This is a riveting good read! Released under a creative commons licence from Demos, available here for download (87 pages) (Download receivedwisdom.pdf ). Extract:
Since 1997, there has been a flowering in bodies such as the Health Protection Agency, the Food Standards Agency and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) that turn science into policy. At the same time we have seen more and more ad hoc expert groups pop into existence, tell the government what to think about public issues such as mobile phone risks or radioactive waste disposal, and fade into the background. All feed the growing need for evidence-based policy. But expertise has always been about more than evidence. Expertise is also about judgement, about wisdom, about asking new questions and challenging convention.] …[The physicist Werner Heisenberg defined an expert as ‘someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in their subject and who manages to avoid them…
The pamphlet provides a further contribution helping government and its stakeholders to challenge existing ways of practice with a view to ensuring the best possible policies for delivering environmental protection.
