Thinking about a community birth process which I’ve just witnessed during August, it seems appropriate to try and generalise and seek further applications. A month long training course, open and free to attend, generates a momentum of interest, good will, and community indicators.
“what are we going to do when it’s all over?”
“I’m really going to miss the daily podcasts”
“I’m a few days behind, will the content still be available?”
“this forum is the best I’ve ever been in”
So then one of the convenors makes the announcement that the thirty day challenge goes on forever, and an ongoing community of practice is born. Of course the momentum built up during an occasional time-delimited event cannot be sustained at the same level, which is just as well, but the chances of enough residual activity continuing to get a self-sustaining community off the ground are probably a lot greater through this method, whether pre-planned or not, compared with the precarious method of trying to build up a critical mass through recruiting ones and twos, adding member by member, month after lonely month.
And yet, often the last days of a temporary online gathering are used to acheive closure, to sum up, and say ‘thanks a lot, and goodbye’. I began to wonder what would happen if…..
What if the conference on Web2.0 in January 2006 had been encouraged to continue onwards in situ?
What if a hotseat event, where people gather to ask questions to an invited guest, were to be left open and made public to generate further discussion amongst the participants and others. Maybe each and every hotseat or conference has a potential to spawn a practice community, to provide a growing public space. Many will dwindle and peter out after a while but maybe some will flourish instead of being shut down and put away.
I’m sure there are a few other examples where an online learning event has spawned a persisitent community, but nowhere near as many as have been conveniently wrapped up and dispersed. It’s not as if anybody would be forced to hang around against their will, or that any measurable resources would be consumed to allow event based learning communities to live on.
Or to put it the other way around, if you are hoping to launch a distributed community of practice then consider starting off by organising a month long conference at a specific time and space, build up a sense of occasion and then take it from there.
Andy Roberts is a writer who initiated DARnet. Contact me on aroberts@gmail.com or @aroberts on twitter
Hi – thanks for visiting my blog and adding a comment.
Interesting idea – anti-Walesism – I’ll look out for it.
Ironically our local elected Mayor is called Sir Robin Wales (a Scotsman) – quite a few people disagree with him – they are ant-Walesist!
Thanks for these reflections. They are really interesting in relation the 31-days-to-a-better-blog challenge community developed over August also.
One of the challenges seems to me to be knowing when communities do need to wrap up or integrate into existing community spaces, of when they need to continue with an identity of their own. The risk of the conference goer or life-long learning ‘accumulating’ so many communities so as to not be able to copy, balanced with gaining the maximum benefit from an ongoing extension of a community with strong foundations seems an interesting one.
How do we manage the fact that not all participants in a short-term community will want to / have capacity to – continue in a longer-term community – and the way that can change the dynamics of the larger community? In opening up all short-term conference / learning experiences to continued interaction – do we loose the benefits of the ‘wrapping up’ that can help in taking stock of what a process has led to?
I’m certainly challenged by your post to reflect on this more…
What I also see happening is that it becomes fashinonable to think that the event he/she organises should continue and become a community of practice. I think this is also not desirable, but that people really have to consider the added value of a community of practice and the effort that needs to go into nurturing this.
The big challenge: Multimembership. What is the limit to the number of groups and communities we can meaningfully participate in and what tools and processes help us do that?
I totally agree with what joitske is saying. event organization is a very good ides. and Its important for some extent now a days