I’m reviewing my resources on communities of practice and synthesizing some of the articles I’ve come across and added to my social bookmarks or blogged about on my Communities Thread . One of the best sources of practical knowledge on online community building is Anecdote from Australia. In Building a Collaborative Workplace , they discuss As they say, “ Our purpose is to provide an understanding of the type of culture required to support collaboration. ” 8221;

As more of our social and work life moves online there is a growing demand for community managers. Betrand Duperrin discusses the differences between community managers and organizational managers (in English & in French ), stating that “Sometimes you need a community manager. I’ve discussed The Community Manager before and others have shared their experiences in the role of community manager . Sometimes a manager is enough…” From our collective experience to date, it is obvious that online community management is much more art

Mark Sylvester hosted a web conference today  on the role of an online community manager. CM is not a 9-5 job – uses twitter a lot, comments on blogs, uses back-channels for private communications the role changes as the needs of the community change There is also an internal role in explaining the role and activities in online communities to the organization, to answer, “what do you do all day other than play on Twitter?”. Here are some highlights from my notes: The session used tweetchat.com for the text chat, but this medium was very slow.

One role that will likely gain importance is that of Community Manager. As the electric media become embedded in our lives, we will all be constantly connected to many communities. The role of community manager in an organization will be to manage  organizational communities of practice, communities of interest and have an understanding of some of the other communities that touch each of us. In re-building the training function, we’ve recommended a move from content delivery to Connecting & Communicating . Some of these will overlap.

The community also needs to be nurtured, one relationship at a time, as the creators of Flickr realized: That interaction made the initial community very strong and then that seed was there for new people who joined to make the community experience strong for them too. Community trumps content online. There are several factors that should be looked at when creating a collaborative working/learning space. I’ve previously referred to Column Two’s three tiers of collaboration - Capacity, Capability & Strategy and it’s a good model to start

Fred Cavazza raises an interesting point on the difference between social and community platforms. “Community” 8220;Community” platforms allow members to fully engage in conversations, while “Social” platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, are more passive. Graphic by Fred Cavazza: Community (left) - Social (right) In the comments, Fred says that blogs are definitely social, as they allow authors to block and filter comments. Using social media is not the same as fostering a community, is what I infer from Fred’s comments.

Tags: Communities Informal Learnin I use the chasm model to explain my professional work of 1) seeing what is ready to cross the chasm by 2) staying connected to the innovators & being an early adopter so that 3) I can help mainstream organizations. It’s a good graphic summary of my consulting practice. Five years

practice communities of practice The idea that learning involves a deepening process of participation in a community of practice has gained significant ground in recent years. Communities of practice have also become an important focus within organizational development and have considerable value when thinking about working with groups. In this article we outline ideas ? thinkers ? Furthermore, we often assume that learning 'has a beginning and an end; that it is best separated from the rest of our activities; and that it is the result of teaching'

XYZ Axis of Community Modeling few weeks back, I wrote a post about a new way to think about community through a lens of emergent, collaborative, and formal elements.  In the first post, I discussed how the model could be used not only to describe and “type” communities, but also how it could streamline community development and design.  Other Posts in This Series Intro

Community Managers by Luc Legay I’ve watched the demand for online community managers (CM) build tempo this past year. wonder if those 16,000 social media specialists on Twitter will re-brand as community management specialists? Of course I’m not the only one to call 2010: The Year of the Community Manager . Perhaps it follows last year’s frequent request from clients and others for “facebook in a box” for their organization. Now they need someone to make it work.