I've been lucky enough to be involved with the planning and curriculum development as well as the instruction for Connected Futures: New Social Strategies and Tools for Communities of Practice workshop with John Smith and Brownyn Stuckey as well as Beverly Trayner, Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, Nick Noakes, Shawn Callahan, Shirley Williams, and Susanne Nyrop. The workshop design looks at how to considering the role and activity of the technology stewards in authentic situations as well as exploring the uses of social technologies to stay in touch as well as for sustained inquiry.
Last week was the first week of our workshop as laboratory and Brownyn offered her meta reflections here and Sus Nyrop shared her thoughts here and Nancy White here.
The second week of the workshop started last week and it is a week of "field trips" to existing communities of practice. I followed to lead trip into the NpTech Tag Community. This was an excellent opportunity to reflect and look back of the last 3-4 years of community history, consider what's coming down the pike, and have a group of colleagues who pondering the question of how to integrate web2.0 or social technologies into community of practice work ask amazing questions.
I put together an informal presentation and readings that covered the overall community considerations, domain considerations, and practice considerations. The participants will write up some more formal reflections towards the end of this week.
Some initial quick reflections:
- Listening is a key skill of a community technology steward (Nancy White, Etienne Wenger, and John Smith has working on a book about this topic). It's about paying attention to members, welcoming new members, knowing when to stand back and when to push.
- Having a facilitator - the summaries helped make the tag stream accessible. The social tools have now evolved to the point where there is easier person-to-person or networked information sharing.
- The community was always a loosely coupled community, porous and is able to grow organically first and then structure second.
- Fragmented conversations are a part of the culture and the community's agility and comfort with using tools is part of that. May not translate to other communities.
- Pondering the question of whether we're a networked community of practice or community of practice whose members use networks or what Nancy White describes the sweet spot between communities and networks - oh, I wish I had the time to ponder and reflect, but not yet.
- An important skill set is filtering what's useful
I'll facilitating week 5 along with Shawn Callahan and Susanne Nyrop that is focused on helping participants summarize their learnings and think through implementation the day after I return from Australia.
Connected futures: New social strategies and tools for communities of practice
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