Subscribe
« Storytelling in Canberra |
Main
| Communities and networks connection »
Community Orientations
Filed in Communities of practice.
A couple of weeks ago I ran a workshop for a community of practice, that I helped establish a 18 months ago, to reflect on what had been achieved. One of the exercises was to compare the community's current state with the nine community orientations described in Etienne Wenger, Nancy White and John Smith's forthcoming book Digital Habitats. A community orientation reflects the tendencies the community adopts to learn together. Here they are:
- Meetings
- Open-ended conversations
- Projects
- Content
- Access to expertise
- Relationships
- Individual participation
- Community cultivation
- Serving a context
As I was preparing for the workshop it was clear to me what orientations 1 to 6 meant but I was unclear about 7 to 9, so I left them out of the exercise with a note to self to find out more. So today I gave Nancy a call and got her to explain the last three orientations and I recorded the conversation so you can listen in.
Digital Habitats will be an important book for all community of practice co-ordinators, especially the technology steward who is the focus for the book. To keep an eye on when the book will be published I recommend you keep an eye on the book's blog.
BTW the community orientation exercise simply involved getting the participants of the workshop to plot on a radar chart, which I'd drawn on a whiteboard, where they thought the community was currently and then do this again for where they would like to see the community of 12 months time. It generated a terrific conversation and a feel of mutual purpose. Here is what the result looked like.
Send this entry to: 
Comments
Thanks for sharing this. We run a similar exercise for networks to reflect on their functions. See http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/details.asp?id=579&title=strengthening-humanitarian-networks-applying-network-functions-approach for the six functions we recognise.
Posted by: Simon Hearn at February 17, 2009 11:59 PM
Thanks Shawn for describing the orientations (the first 6) as you used them with your group and then exploring the additional ones with Nancy to get clearer. (love the audio) Seems like each provides a reference or reflection point for the community to see and learn about itself. In thinking about this I wonder how often (or if) groups are drawn to a particular orientation based on the tools available to them e.g., Sharepoint, GoToMeeting, conference room, cms, conference calling, etc. Thoughts?
Posted by: LaDonna Coy at February 19, 2009 8:37 AM
That's a real chicken or egg question. A beauty. I reckon many communities' orientation is heavily affected by what the original coordinator's view of what a community of practice actually is. For example, I often hear people describe a CoP as a discussion forum, so that must affect the orientation. So now I think of it the first technologies put into practice will have a big impact on the orientation.
Digital Habitats and the discussions is triggers will help coordinators be mindful of the orientations in play and what members want to develop and the two perspectives will inform each other.
Posted by: Shawn Callahan
at February 19, 2009 11:42 AM
Post a comment