Dissident

Online Information 2007 - Communities of Practice in Local Government

A thought-provoking and highly entertaining presentation from Roo Reynolds (IBM's 'Metaverse Evangelist') at today's Online Information Conference. I came away with a resolution to spend some time getting to grips with  Second Life  with a view to seeing how 3D virtual worlds  might be used to support the development of communities of practice. At the very least, it's a good alternative to Webcasts as a synchronous collaboration tool/application. Probably a step too far for the public sector, where I'm currently doing work on developing a CoP strategy for local government - but if nothing else, I'll learn something from the experience.

Thanks also to Roo for blogging on my presentation yesterday. I was slightly disappointed that there was no-one from the IDeA at the conference, who may have been in a better position to respond to the question I had from a number of delegates about why the community of practice platform was not being more actively and vigorously promoted and marketed across local authorities. I understand there are plans to do this in the New Year, but would have been good to have heard this from the IDeA.

Overall, I thought it was a very good conference this year, though all the presentations I attended seemed to lack sufficient time for the delegates to get properly engaged in the Q&A. 

I wonder if Web 2.0 will still be the prominent topic next year? My guess is it will, and hopefully we'll have some more case studies on the practical deployments of the technologies and applications.

I'll be putting my presentation onto Slideshare within the next day or so.

Responsibilities and Guidelines for Communities of Practice.

I was looking for some inspiration in putting together some guidelines, rules and policies for online communities of practice. Nancy White over at Full Circle Associates is always a good starting place for this sort of thing.  Here is another example. Feel free to use or elaborate on:

Responsibilities of Use

For many, participating in an on-line community maybe a new experience. In this particular community we hope you'll be able to be honest, open and informal with each other, share experiences, ask and give advice, create new knowledge together through collaborative dialogue and provide examples of best practice. It wouldn't be much of a community if you didn't challenge each other's ideas, assumptions and working practice either.

In order for us to collectively build such a place, where many of you may not previously have known each other, may never meet and be new to an on-line community, there are certain responsibilities you need to accept in order that a trusting and friendly atmosphere can be created and sustained. By logging into the system, members are agreeing to these responsibilities of use.

They are as follows:

This is a private community, treat everything within it as confidential
Without the non-verbal cues, please always assume good intent

• Do not lie or give false information
• Respect the opinions of other members
• Do not use bad language
• Do not "borrow" other people's work without prior permission - where discussions are concerned, they are the property of all the participants
• No advertising is permitted
• Do not share people's contact details with anyone outside the community unless prior permission is sought
• Protect your password - the success of this community is based on its confidentiality

Online Information Conference 2007 - Communities of Practice in Local Government

I will be presenting at the Online Information Conference 2007 on Wednesday 5th December, on the topic "Communities of Practice in Local Government", which is part of the overall theme of connecting users and harnessing intelligence using social networking and social media technologies/applications. The presentation is a case study of the project I've been working on for the Improvement and Development Agency.  The following is a synopsis of the session:

Social tools and technologies are changing the KM landscape, making it far easier to connect with peers and experts, and facilitating far more effective knowledge sharing and collaboration. We are moving beyond the factory model of ICT, which focussed on centralisation, standardisation and storage to a more diverse and less regulated environment.

For some, this provides the opportunity to break out of the silo working practices so prevalent across the public sector, and encourages a more productive and collaborative approach to online knowledge sharing. Others see this as undermining the integrity and quality of established (and centralised) knowledge repositories and best practice procedures, and equate social networking with purely leisure and entertainment activities.

The presentation will describe how the IDeA established Web 2.0 technologies and social media applications as the foundations for a new KM strategy for supporting communities of practice that would deliver service and productivity improvements across the local government sector, and how
resistance to this de-regulated environment was overcome. The key points covered in the presentation are:

1. moving from a culture of knowledge repositories (people-to-information) to one of knowledge collaboration (people-to-people),
2. introducing a sceptical and mature staff demographic to the concept of virtual collaboration using social computing/Web 2.0 facilities and
3. creating, developing and growing effective communities of practice in local government.

I'm hoping the session will be of particular interest to library and information professionals, since I believe these have a key role to play in support of these new collaborative KM initiatives, and communities of practice in particular. For example, they could be promoting the merits of personal content tagging to aid search and retrieval, and establishing best practice procedures for sharing knowledge and information via blogs and wikis. They could also be influential in the future development of Web 2.0 technologies and social media applications, ensuring librarian disciplines and standards are accommodated at the design stage and not introduced as afterthoughts.

I'm personally looking forward to the keynote presentation from Jimmy Swales, the session from Lee Bryant from Headshift and Euan Semple's keynote session. However, I will be following all the presentations that have a Web 2.0 and knowledge collaboration theme.

Measuring the value of KM and Communities of Practice

I came across this post from Andrew Gent today, regarding 'Management's' precoccupation with measuring the value of KM in their organisation, and - for example - using ROI as a measure of the effectivenes of CoPs. I suspect this will resonate with most KM practitioners, who must balance the demands of their managers to provide an empirical measure of value with the cummulative benefits to the organisation of establishing a learning and sharing environment. In other words, you don't dig up a tree to measure the roots in order to verify that it is growing!

Communities of Practice in Local Government

The Community of Practice platform at the Improvement and Development Agency is an integrated set of Web 2.0 tools that is being used to support and facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing across local government communities. I produced the specification for the platform early in 2006, and the platform was launched in September 2006. I was encouraged by a recent news item on how the strategy continues to flourish, with the following quote from Marilyn Leask, the IDeA's Head of Knowledge & Learning:

"This is a terrific example of how the knowledge and learning of local government colleagues is being better harnessed. Having an avenue where peers can voice their opinion, share their problems and seek assistance on a national network is another step forward in the journey towards ensuring best practice is disseminated across local authorities. A benefit of these CoPs is that they are both secure and confidential. CoPs are part of the Knowledge's team's structured progress with web2."

"There are more than 110 communities listed at the website www.communities.idea.gov.uk. The CoPs have proven to be of assistance to councillors and senior managers who have used the medium to discuss issues of concern and use their collective knowledge to deliver the best outcomes for their community."

"At the IDeA we believe that the sector has within it the knowledge to support improvement but that this knowledge needs to be more easily accessible".

I will be working with Marilyn and my IDeA colleagues again in the near future, so looking forward to participating in the support and cultivation of the CoP's that have been established, and evangelising the benefits of the platform to those areas of local government that haven't yet grasped the benefits of this new way of working.   

Interview with Etienne Wenger

Knowledgelab have posted an interview with Etienne Wenger, and a full (90 min) lecture given by Etienne on the topic: "What if we assumed that society itself is a large-scale learning system?"

Etienne Wenger is one of the founding fathers of Social Learning Theory and the concept of “Practiced Communities”. People are learning together – every individual deals and engage in many different communities of practice. Here people negotiate and define what competence and knowledge is. To know something or to be competent builds on the individuals experiences of being in the world - learning is a constant transformation or journey of the self.

Online Community Organizer

Reading Seth Godin's blog this morning I came across what was a very relevant item for me, about jobs for the future - the Online Community Organizer. The proximity of Seth's description of this role with the position I've identified and am currntly recruiting for the Information Authority couldn't be closer. I trust Seth will not mind me replicating the post here:

"If you want to hire a union organizer, you probably know what to look for. Someone with resilience, passion, persistence and excellent interpersonal skills.

What if you want to hire someone to build an online community? Somebody to create and maintain a virtual world in which all the players in an industry feel like they need to be part of it? Like being the head of a big trade association, but without the bureaucracy and tedium...

It would help if that person understood technology, at least well enough to know what it could do. They would need to be able to write. But they also have to be able to seduce stragglers into joining the group in the first place, so they have to be able to understand a marketplace, do outbound selling and non-electronic communications. They have to be able to balance huge amounts of inbound correspondence without making people feel left out, and they have to be able to walk the fine line between rejecting trolls and alienating the good guys.

Since there's no rule book, it would help to be willing to try new things, to be self-starting and obsessed with measurement as well.

If you were great at this, I'd imagine you'd never ever have trouble finding good work."

The problem for me (and anyone else seeking this skill set) is that we're fishing from a very small pond, which I can verify from the very few applications I've received to date.  However, if you're out there and see something of yourself in this role description, please apply via the Information Authority web site. A more detailed description of the role is included in the attached PDF document.
Download lsc_ia_ia_community_and_stakeholder_management_sd_final.pdf

               

What if you want to hire someone to build an online community? Somebody to create and maintain a virtual world in which all the players in an industry feel like they need to be part of it? Like being the head of a big trade association, but without the bureaucracy and tedium...

It would help if that person understood technology, at least well enough to know what it could do. They would need to be able to write. But they also have to be able to seduce stragglers into joining the group in the first place, so they have to be able to understand a marketplace, do outbound selling and non-electronic communications. They have to be able to balance huge amounts of inbound correspondence without making people feel left out, and they have to be able to walk the fine line between rejecting trolls and alienating the good guys.

Since there's no rule book, it would help to be willing to try new things, to be self-starting and obsessed with measurement as well.

If you were great at this, I'd imagine you'd never ever have trouble finding good work."

The problem for me (and anyone else seeking this skill set) is that we're fishing from a very small pond, which I can verify from the very few applications I've received to date.  However, if you're out there and see something of yourself in this role description, please apply via the Information Authority web site. A more detailed description of the role is included in the attached PDF document.
Download lsc_ia_ia_community_and_stakeholder_management_sd_final.pdf

               

Job vacancies at The Information Authority

I thought I should make the most of this blog to publicise a number of job vacancies that will be advertised in the Guardian this coming week. The positions have been created as part of the strategy I'm developing for the Information Authority Secretariat. The Information Authority has been established as an independent body to set and regulate data collection and reporting standards for all organisations involved in further education and training in England and Wales. A key component of the strategy will be the creation and development of communities of interest and practice across the further education sector to enable a more open, collaborative and transparent environment for information and knowledge sharing.  A community platform is planned, utilising Web2.0 technolgy and social media applications. The community platform will be available to all data providers and users across the further education sector, including schools, colleges, training providers, agencies and non-government department public bodies.

Quite an ambitious plan, and hence why I'm recruiting the key individuals make it all happen. A copy of the job adverts that will appear in the press and in various web site this week, including Jobserve, Gurteen and TFPL is attached to this posting.  Anyone interested should apply through the information authority web site where an application form will be available from Tuesday 17th July.

Download info_sec_lsc_x126.pdf

Supporting Community of Practice Facilitators

The IDeA have published a report on the Community of Practice 'Facilitator's Workshop' I organised for them on 27th April. The purpose of the workshop was to bring together the various facilitators of the on-line communities supported on the IDeA CoP platform, to learn from their experiences in facilitating communities of practice across local government, and in response to issues raised by the facilitators through their own dedicated CoP, namely:

• how can I keep momentum going?
• who can I turn to for support?
• will my opinions be seen as ‘novice’ compared to others in the community?

Community adviser and activist Ed Mitchell spoke on ‘Nurturing communities from networks: the gritty bits’. There was also a session from Hilary Messeter from the National College for School Leadership (NCSL).

As with many of these type of events, the coming together and sharing of knowledge can be a therapeutic  process, i.e. the realisation that you're not alone and that someone else has the same concerns and issues as yourself, and better still,  finding someone who has solved the issue you've been worrying about.

One particularly encouraging piece of information that emerged from the workshop was that most of the CoP's across local government have a 10% contribution rate, which is well beyond the '1% rule'.

Dave Briggs, who facilitates the Collaboration and Social Media CoP, and the LGNewmedia site summed the day up very well in saying:-

“We're trying to sell two very ambitious concepts with this [IDeA CoP] platform. Firstly, we are asking people to tear down silos and start working together and sharing our knowledge – something that is an anathema to some elements of local government culture. Secondly, we are asking them to do so using the web, with blogs, wikis and forums!”

It was apparent to me that there is a close relationship between effective CoPs and effective facilitators - i.e. you can't have one without the other.

Asking the wrong questions about colaboration

Reading David Wilcox's blog this morning entitled 'Asking the wrong questions about collaboration'. The following question resonated with me:-

"Effective collaboration requires trust, relationships and understanding that take time to develop. Why are so many on-line systems still developed on the basis of "build it and they will come and work together" ... ending up with empty Forums and a lot of money wasted?"

I was determined to avoid this problem when I set up the IDeA communities by de-emphasising the technology and promoting the fact that there was a central team of people who were there to support project and programme managers in setting up their communities of practice. This extended to facilitating face-to-face launch events which were used to build trust and introduce users to the social media tools they could use. Given this now has over 2000 members and more than 60 CoPs working across local government, I think the approach was reasonably successful.

This is the model I'm also going to use for the contract I'm working on for the DfES, where a network of CoP's will be established across the Further Education Sector as part of a business change management process. The first priority is recruiting community managers who will be out there meeting with various stakeholder groups (e.g. LSC, LLUK, OfSTED, MIAP, QIA and many others) and encouraging greater collaboration within and across these groups as a precursor to developing a purpose-design on-line community (social media) environment. I've never believed in just providing the technology and waiting for people to use it.

Thus, I think my approach is about as far as you can get from what they've done with GovXchange!