Communities of Practice Resources, KM Site, Online Courses at Kent State, Web 2.0 Reading Lists

04-Dec-07 Archive of Weekly KM Blog by Stan Garfield

KM Question of the Week

Q: I am wondering if there are some good articles you have found on communities of practice.

A: From Communities of Practice:

25 Posts about communities of practice

1. Communities Manifesto: 10 Principles for Successful Communities
2. 10 Tips for Leading Communities
3. 90–9–1 Rule of Thumb: Fact or Fiction?
4. Community of Practice Tools: e-SCENT-ials
5. Community Managers Survey
6. Email is the Holy Grail for Threaded Discussions
7. Low-Tech Webinars are the Most Reliable
8. 10 Tips for Successful Face-to-Face Meetings
9. What’s your community’s culture?
10. Communities: Using local chapters and engaging millennials
11. A dozen community management communities
12. Community Goals and Measurements
13. Types of Communities: TRAIL
14. How to Be a Great Community Manager
15. Community of Practice: A Real Life Story
16. Trust me, I’m a community evangelist
17. Why won’t people ask questions in the open?
18. The Sound of Silence
19. Open the gates and tear down the walls; moving from “need to know” to “need to share”
20. 5 questions to answer before starting a new community
21. To control or not to: only you can prevent redundant communities
22. What are you supposed to do in a community?
23. Online Community & ESN Platforms
24. Community Managers: What’s Needed?
25. Does Size Matter in Communities?

For more information on communities, see:

1. Introduction to Communities of Practice by Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner
2. Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier by Etienne Wenger and William M. Snyder
3. Communities for knowledge management by Steve Denning
4. 10 Critical Success Factors in Building Communities of Practice by Richard McDermott
5. A bibliography on communities of practice by CPsquare and com-prac
6. Books for Community Building by Michael Burns
7. Communities of Practice Resources by Fred Nickols
8. Caterpillar Communities of Practice: Knowledge is Power by Sue Todd
9. The Camelot of Collaboration — the case of VAX Notes (PDF) by Patti Anklam
10. Community of Practice Metrics and Membership by Lee Romero

For more in-depth understanding, read one or more of these books:

1. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity by Etienne Wenger
2. Cultivating Communities of Practice by Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William M. Snyder
3. Digital Habitats: Stewarding Technology for Communities by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, and John D. Smith
4. CompanyCommand: Unleashing the Power of the Army Profession by Nancy M. Dixon, Nate Allen, Tony Burgess, Pete Kilner and Steve Schweitzer
5. The Social Life of Information by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid
6. Knowledge Networks: Innovation Through Communities of Practice by Paul Hildreth and Chris Kimble
7. Going Virtual: Distributed Communities of Practice by Paul Hildreth
8. Leveraging Communities of Practice for Strategic Advantage by Hubert Saint-Onge and Debra Wallace
9. Beyond Communities of Practice: Language Power and Social Context by David Barton and Karin Tusting
10. Online Communities: Designing Usability and Supporting Sociability by Jenny Preece
11. Building Virtual Communities: Learning and Change in Cyberspace by K. Ann Renninger and Wesley Shumar
12. Designing for Virtual Communities in the Service of Learning by Sasha Barab, Rob Kling, and James Gray
13. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier by Howard Rheingold
14. Communities in Cyberspace by Marc A. Smith
15. Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom by Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt
16. Collaborating Online: Learning Together in Community by Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt
17. Communities of Practice: Lessons from Leading Collaborative Enterprises by Simon Lelic (archive)

KM Blog of the Week

Knowledgeline by Tom Baldwin

New site on the KM scene

Every now and then, something comes along that is compelling to spend time with. I received an e-mail from Matthew Parsons with a link to his new site (co-authored by Neil Richards), Knowledge Thoughts. I’m hard pressed to classify it as a blog or a wiki, I suppose it really a bliki — combining elements of both. Here’s Matthew’s description of the site:

In my initial scan of the site, it’s already rich with a variety of content for those seasoned vets in the KM space, or those just starting out and wanting to learn more. There’s a wiki section and a section with a ton of rich media content, aimed at helping explain KM. Much of this comes from outside legal, which is a great thing. A section bound to be on everyone’s “to be seen” list is their leading people and thinkers page. If you’re looking for ideas to kick-start your knowledge management initiatives, there’s even a thought starters section.

KM Link of the Week

Document, Records and Content Management course at Kent State University

Document, Records and Content Management for the Enterprise was offered in Spring, 2008 in the IAKM online program at Kent State University.

The course instructor-facilitator was Len Asprey, who heads a consulting agency, Professional Information Management and Technology Consulting, with world-wide clients. He coauthored (with Michael Middleton) Integrative Document & Content Management: Strategies for Exploiting Enterprise Knowledge, which won the “Mander Jones Award” in 2003. He was the founding Chair of the Institute for Information Management (IIM) and is a member of AIIM International.

This course led to a certificate in Knowledge Management or a Master of Science with a concentration in Knowledge Management.

IAKM online also offered Effective Knowledge Management in Organizations.

The course tutor was Robert Frey, a Principal in the consultancy Successful Proposal Strategies, LLC. He held the position of Senior Vice President of Knowledge Management and Proposal Development in RS Information Systems, Inc. (RSIS) from 1999–2007. Mr. Frey developed and implemented knowledge-sharing and knowledge-transfer mechanisms throughout RSIS to capture and leverage best practices, project success stories, lessons learned, client intelligence, and emerging technologies.

KM Book of the Week

Web 2.0 Reading Lists by Bill Ives

Google results:

• The Quintessential Web 2.0 Reading List
• Web 2.0 Reading List — VC Mike’s Blog
• Tame the Web — Web 2.0 reading list
• Web 2.0 List of Lists — actually the better list is found on the right side bar in his book suggestions
• Bill’s prior post on Enterprise 2.0 Reading List

Bill’s latest picks:

• Wikinomics by Don Tapscott
• The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson
• The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded Version]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman
• Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder by David Weinberger

And the classics:

• The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
• The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, David Weinberger