The Wales-Wide Web

There's a lot of discussion at the moment about Communities of Practice. On the Emerge site Neil Witt writes in a contribution headed 'I Community therefore I Practice'

"OK, what is it with COPs?

Why is there an assumption that just because you have a community of made up of random individuals that you have a CoP? How can anyone “set up a CoP” ? Surely they evolve from a community?."

Last weekend I was at a workshop in Bucharest organised by the Work and Learning Together project. The project is aiming to set up sixteen (!) different CoPs in the tourist and travel sector.

So far it is a pretty mixed picture. Some are going well - some are yet to get off the ground. We held a quick brainstorm on what works and what doesn't and why. This was the conclusions (thanks to Sanne Akkerman for the notes):

Underlying difficulties:

• Do they feel a need / problem?
• Do they believe in the idea that COPs can be useful for their company? (win-win situation)
• Do they believe in sharing with competing companies?
• Do they identify at all with the sector/with each other? Are you seeking for the right target group? Just the fact that they belong to the same group, doesn’t mean that they want to be a community.

      - Not be able to share together?

      - Are they in competition?

• Do they believe in internet as writing/contributing medium as opposed to information source? Do they believe in internet at all?
  

Lessons learned:

It takes time

• Don't look with too narrow criteria at what constitutes the COP and the success of it. A group can be COP like, despite lack of virtual communication and visibility for us. 
• Think of the participants both in terms of

      - practice

      - geographical relations. This is a way how they can feel related.

• Find concrete shared activities (instead of 'you do A, so I do A too', think together, 'you do A, so I do B', or even 'together we can do C'  (produce packages).
• Find a field where there is a need / problem
• Use your personal relations and social networks to organize first meeting/activities
• Create ownership immediately based on shared need, recognition and feeling 'important' (food & wine; serieus talking). Key factor is motivation and belief.
• Make clear they are expert in some aspects, for other aspects we (as project partners) are experts
• Create recognition that all companies are unique, have their specificity (e.g. have meetings at each company). Let them define how each of them are special.
• Offer technical support (e.g. informal training courses on ICT);
• Access to internet, habit to use internet. Perhaps associations can have intermediary roles in providing access.
• Not only  virtual environment; face to face meetings & Skype. Importance of social presence.
• When a COP already exists, try to add on what they already have and do. Add supporting tools
• Try to have the additional tools look and feel the same as they are familiar with
• Top-down vs bottom-up approach. Bottom-up is important for ownership and self-sustainability, but top-down can also be used if there is a central organization that already does a lot of work in the field. Top-down may be a way in. Depends what type of central organization / association it is and how participants relate to it.
• Use COP in already existing framework (does not necessarily have to be a COP). E.g. in training activities and networks, where people already meet regularly.

I guess the most important observation was the importance of social presence. Elmo D'Angelis talked about how in Italy they had held several evening events with food and wine. This has helped break the ice and the CoPs there are really taking off. Finding the key individuals was seen as important too. But it was noted that where official organisations took ownership - Tourist Associations for instance, there was generally little take up. Ownership was seen as the critical issue. And I guess this is one of the lessons for Emerge. If the CoP is to work it has to be seen and felt as belonging to the members and not as an 'official' JISC site.