Communities of Practice
Posted on January 5, 2008
There has been a lot of discussion lately about community. Do you know where I have heard this discussion? In one of my communities, Twitter. I have other communities, many others, actually. The fact that you read this blog makes you part of the CTM community here and you even have the opportunity to participate if you choose to. My church is a community for me, there are many people there that I interact with regularly and who interact with me. My office is another community, but I don’t know if I would consider all 800 people part of my community but there is a smaller subset of that community that I would consider to be part of my community. The people I work with directly and talk with and email back and forth with on a daily basis.
I am mocked by some, you know who you are, because I essentially have a community in my cell phone. For the most part, anyone who calls me gets saved in my phone, which makes total sense to me. If you call me, chances are, you will call me again and I want to know it’s you. The people in my cell phone community are made up of all kinds of people, neighbors, people around town, family, people from church, people from other churches I have worked with, people I have met as a result of CTM, business clients and other types as well.
What makes a community? The examples of community I have given are all different, some are online, some are face to face, and the reality is that I have never actually met some people in my community.
Specifically, what we are looking at is called a Community of Practice:
The concept of a community of practice (often abbreviated as CoP) refers to the process of social learning that occurs when people who have a common interest in some subject or problem collaborate over an extended period to share ideas, find solutions, and build innovations. It refers as well to the stable group that is formed from such regular interactions.
Furthermore, in today’s world, it’s acceptable to be part of a community where you have not met face to face, simply due to the fact that we can participate in the community via e-mail, forums and comments. A definition of an online community has been carved out on Jeremiah’s blog and boiled down to this:
“Online communities are bodies of people joined together by a common interest”
I have other communities I participate in, as well:
- church tech community
- church leadership community
- church community
- Monday morning breakfast with 2 guys from my former church
- Tuesday morning breakfast with the men at my current church
- many more……(need to make a list)
This concept fascinates me, so I hope it interests you on some level. Let me know your thoughts on this and that will help me to know what your role is in this CTM community. If you don’t comment, that will enlighten me on what your role is, as well. We’ll discuss that next time.
Sources:
- Jeremiah Owyang, fellow Twitterer and Web Strategist and Senior Analyst, Social Computing at Forrester Research (posts I favorited in Twitter, which is where the remaining links came from)
- Strait’s Knowledge
- GreenChameleon
- Patrick Lambe
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The church we go to had a sermon this morning about community.
Hmmm. Discussions about online communities make me feel uneasy - I think because it never discusses the quality of community (but not the quality of the community). Perhaps that’s phrased badly, but I hope you get the idea.