CPsquare

CPsquare has been organizing informal gatherings since it came into existence: http://cpsquare.org/category/events/face-to-face/

In connection with the AoIR 9 and EPIC 2008 conferences (which are quite different but happen at exactly the same times), we expect to meet for a day of conversation somewhere in Copenhagen on Sunday, October 19 from early morning (9 am or so) to late afternoon, followed by dinner. We may ask for a financial contribution from participants, depending on where we meet and how many of us there are. Generally we use an “open space” format, adapted to meet the needs of an ongoing community (we do some planning in advance, but decide the details on the spot). We always try to share back what we talked about and learned, but it’s a very informal process.

There are a handful of CPsquare folks who are presenting papers, panels, round-tables, etc. at the AoIR 9 Conference. A future blog posting will list them.

CPsquare’s password protected Web Crossing space is at: http://conversations.cpsquare.org/P/CP2aoir08 . We’ll use it for:

• posting arrival & departure times in Copenhagen
• working out lodging plans (sharing rooms, staying nearby each other, figuring out directions)
• planning our time together (beginning Tuesday night October 14)
• figuring out where to meet on October 19

Our Web Crossing space is open to:

• all CPsquare members
• anyone who’s identified themselves or expressed interest in joining us. Send an email to John Smith or use the “Ask a question” form on the main CPsquare website: http://cpsquare.org/contact/ to get access if you don’t already have access.

We’ll use cp2aoir08 to tag resources, photos, tweets, etc.: http://delicious.com/tag/cp2aoir08

Opening

We’ve moved the CPsquare website and organized it to give people a better look into our community and to provide speaking roles to more people more easily. (Of course there had to be rehearsals and bumps along the way.) It’s a blog-oriented website now, so that current news is front and center:

http://cpsquare.org/

Here’s the RSS feed that you can subscribe to:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Cpsquare

There is the “friends of CPsquare” email list for our newsletter, you can subscribe to every blog posting by email, and you can ask questions here:

http://cpsquare.org/contact/

We even have a Twitter feed! Have a look at Beth Kanter’s Twitter Primer.

Talking

Currently CPsquare is having a book club. The administrivia might mask the high quality of the stuff we’re reading:

• Vol 1, Chapter 6 – “Teaching with Technology: A Multifaceted Staff Development Strategy” by Tony Carr, Andrew Deacon, Glenda Cox and Andrew Morrison.
• Vol 1, Chapter 9 – “Reaching Beyond the ‘Boundaries’: Communities of Practice and Boundaries in Tertiary Education” by Gerlinde Koeglreiter, Ross Smith and Luba Torlina
• Vol 2, Chapter 4 – “Virtual Problem-based Learning Communities of Practice for Teachers and Academic Developers: An Irish Higher Education Perspective” by Roisin Donnelly

It’s only August and the Fall Research and Dissertation Fest at CPsquare has yet to be scheduled but is already looking really exciting with only two PhD dissertations. We invite presentations about completed research as well as research projects that are in progress.

• Pamela Stern — Serious games for first responders: improving design and usage with social learning theory
• Marc Coenders — Learning Architecture and design: an exploratory study of space and learning in work settings and close-to-practice learning

CPsquare’s Show and Tell — an irregular session about “the states of the art” — started with a video about Rio Tinto. We’re following that up with a topic that’s closer to home. Jenny Mackness and Karen Guldberg from the Foundations Workshop in January 2008 have done a series of in-depth interviews with people involved in the workshop as participants, mentors, and leaders. They’ve presented a paper at an academic conference and will be presenting in CPsquare at the beginning September 1st, covering themes such as emotion, connectivity, understanding norms, learning tensions/dualities, technology, and identity. We’ll read their paper, have some oneline discussion and top it off with a teleconference. Everyone who’s ever been a Foundations Worskshop is invited to join CPsquare members for a good think about these topics and how they can affect design for learning in many different settings.

Greeting

Connected Futures. We did a lot of experimenting in the design and delivery of our new “Connected Futures” workshop last May. There were 10 of us involved as leaders and we had 18 people registered as participants. (Despite the extraordinarily high “teacher” / “student” ratio the 10 of us were completely exhausted at the end!). One remarkable little detail was a practice of keeping a Skype chat among those 10 people open for about 6 weeks running. Any time any of the 10 of us had an observation or a question, we turned to the chat. It makes for very interesting reading to see a minute-by-minute account of those exchanges.

Foundations of Communities of Practice Workshop. We’re going to offer the Foundations workshop again this fall starting on September 15th. Please let friends or colleagues know if you think they’d be interested.

Meeting

It looks like there is a group of CPsquare folks converging on the AoIR meeting in Copenhagen, spending the day together somewhere on Sunday October 19. In addition to meeting face-to-face, several of us are giving papers. I’m doing one with Patricia Arnold and Beverly Trayner that takes an autoethnographic approach to community and technology.

The International Communities and Technology conference is smack dab in the middle of Pennsylvania next year. It’s a high quality conference, so I’m sure there will be CPsquare representation.

Reading

Groundswell has an interesting typology of participation and related skills in using the Internet. It seems to me that it’s a story that could be told from a user or community’s perspective, but they mainly mostly talk about the issues from the perspective of marketing and businesses. But the book is recommended because they talk about the issues very well.

You’ve probably seen CommonCraft’s excellent videos on all things geeky. The other side of them is that they are thoughtful about how to organize their business effectively.

Imagine if you’d never seen a video screen without a mouse. You would think of the world quite differently.

Keeping track of memory, forgetting and learning in communities of practice

Context: In June 2002, twenty-five people who at some stage had met online in the
Foundations of Communities of Practice Workshop gathered at a beautiful location
in Portugal with a loose agenda to share their work, ideas and practices about
communities of practice. Many of the conversations that took place led to some
long-term relationships, collective learning agendas and new practices. One of
the practices that developed out of this Set

Several CPsquare members are going to meet at the AACE E-Learn conference in Vaouncver, BC. We’ve done this several times in the past, where we piggy-back on an existing conference. In fact the idea took root at an E-Learn Conference in Monteal several years ago. In the past, CPsquare has hosted an online discussion space beforehand, but this time it’s being hosted at Simon Frasier University. During the conference we’ll keep the backchannel on communities topics going in an IRC Channel.

Specifically, we’re organizing an afternoon of cases, discussions, and reflection on Friday October 28th, from 1 to 4:30 followed by dinner and more conversation.

This blog entry will be a launching pad for any other connectivity.

In September 2003 a group of academics and practitioners from around the world met in Amsterdam to discuss ‘phase change’ in a community of practice. Online participation preceded and followed the face-to-face meeting, providing different opportunities for exploring the issues and gathering insights. The Amsterdam Dialogue built on earlier work in 2002 – the original Setúbal Dialogue. Some participants were involved from the start; others have joined along the way; all share commitment to developing their professional practice and understanding the dynamics of community and knowledge development.

At various times in our journey we have thought about working together to create a final document, even a book, about what we learned from the experience. In fact we speculated that producing a concrete outcome is both a sign of maturity (which we aspire to) and an incentive to further development. However, as with many good ideas in distributed communities this has not (yet) come to fruition. In the meantime it would be a pity not to share some of our notes, reflections and work-in-progress and so here they are. The intention of each paper was to write a summary of the sub-topics that were part of the online and face-to-face workshop at the conference at Amsterdam. Each person, or group of people, interpreted this task in a different way so our shared learning is offered here in different forms. Each chapter remains loyal to the interpretation of the members who wrote it rather than to any overriding genre for the document as a whole. This offering represents an eclectic exposition, ranging from poems and diagrams from flip-charts to more formal and analytical papers situated within theoretical frameworks. Each section represents an experiment with genres and approaches, and provides a springboard for ongoing discussion and further research.

Download the 38 page report: Notes on Phase Change in a Community of Practice

What: CPSquare open house: a day of converstion about communities of practice, the work we’re doing and the work that needs to be done. The agenda still includes:

• Getting acquainted with others working in the communities of practice area
• Individual case studies and problem solving sessions: a case presentation and ensuing discussion could last a half hour or more
• Recently published or in progress research projects: what does the field look like? What’s not being studied?
• Scanning the horizon: thinking about the future of CPsquare, of individual projects, of related organizations and initiatives.

Who: CPsquare members and friends.

Where: ABC Treehouse, Voetboogstraat 11, 1012 XK Amsterdam, The Netherlands

When: from 10 am to 5 pm on Sunday, June 13th

How it will work: We convene on line to work on the agenda (always subject to change), share documents or links in advance, and work out logistics. We’ll have the same online space for two weeks afterwards for follow-up.

To participate: write John Smith: John.Smith@LearningAlliances.net (who can send you a list of pre-registered people if you’re interested).

Cost: To cover the cost of the room everyone pays 25 euros. AND everyone should bring some food or drink to share during the course of the day, such as pastries, a loaf of bread, fruit, cheese, a bottle of wine, or chocolate.

A small group of CPsquare members (and people who’d consider becoming members) will meet for a day-long, informal session in Amsterdam on June 13th, 2004, the day before the International Conference on Communities of Practice on June 14 and 15 (where several CPsquare members will present work on technology, learning, design, and improvisation). The CPsquare meeting is member-organized and facilitated and will include the following kinds of discussions:

• Getting acquainted with other CPsquare members — leaders in the study and practice of cultivating communities
• Individual case studies and problem solving sessions: a case presentation and ensuing discussion could last a half hour or more
• Recently published or in progress research projects: what does the field look like? What’s not being studied?
• Scanning the horizon: thinking about the future of CPsquare, of individual projects, of related organizations and initiatives.
• Networking and informal conversations over lunch, dinner, or drinks.

Write John.Smith (at) LearningAlliances (dot) net for details. There will be a fee (for both members and our guests) to cover expenses and CPsquare’s administrative costs.

The day after the Vir-Com conference (on June 16), Nancy White and John Smith are offering a one-day workshop on “Strengthening the Heartbeat of Distributed Communities: online events, planning and facilitation“. See the flyer that describes goals and take-aways.
Originally we were planning to hold the CPsquare Open House event in The Hague, but did not find a place for the envet, so it’s being held in Amsterdam

Part of the evolving model of CPsquare is the generative but loosely connected meetings organized by CPsquare members. There are several instances of these, and a “muckabout” is the most recent name we’ve come up with:

• The Lisbon Dialog
• The Montreal E-Learning Thread
• The Amsterdam C&T Workshop on Community Phase Change
• And finally, the Nahcotta Muckabout

Notes from the After Action Review

(edited version of notes captured by Amy Kiel of the AAR led by Pete Kilner)

AAR Framework: What were your expectations? What did we do? Were our expectations… Met? Not met? Exceeded? What were the unexpected benefits? Next time…. do the same? do differently? add to the agenda?

Expectations:

• “Thought is would be “B” quality presentations.”
• “Came for both people/relationships and the content”
• “Came to see what type of problems people have and see how people solve them.”

Things we did:

• (Several full papers early in the week got us to the conference)
• Wednesday from 5-6 there was a SIG meeting. Mostly introductions and some conversation.
• People went out to dinner on Thursday night.
• After Etienne Wenger’s keynote, Friday was spent together in workshops and presentations.

Where our expectations met:

• Learned that it’s not the technology that drives a community—but it is the culture that emerges.
• Expectations were surpassed… had unexpected benefits. I met a rushing flow of people and ideas coming together. I’ve changed my thinking
• I got some ideas that I immediately implemented (I went on-line to my courses and set up three “clubs” for the students to meet. Changed some discussion questions to prompt interaction between the students)
• In the KM space these days there is a lot of labeling of things that have already been done – repackaging old ideas. This notion of CPs seems to break from the mold. Even though this is something that has been done in the past…there seems to be more substance here.
• I’ve been dying to meet Brownyn. And it’s been nice to connect with John and Etienne as well. I like to share my knowledge with others. I accomplished putting together an E-learn site where we can continue our conversation.
• Inspired by the companycommand presentation. I didn’t know what a big deal it is. This was way past my expectations.

What will we do next time?

• Have an online community space set up already so that the interaction can take place before, during and after
• Have some way of finding each other during the conference.
• Take responsibility and follow up on your ideas. Find other opportunities to come together.
• Would have like to have heard from other people who did not present. It would be good to hear what people’s biggest challenges are. Maybe we could have a “town meeting” of sorts.
• Make the idea of weaving our thread into the E-Learn conference more formal. We should fill out an evaluation for the conference and note our suggestions.
• One or two sessions on what’s out there in public domain software that can be used to enable these types of communities
• If we could possible have a virtual workshop, create subjects for the next time that we meet together.
• We could bring a problem to the table and see if get people in the group to help solve it. (e.g. tell us about freeware software)

Etienne chairs the panel session with Mary Lynn, Tom, Roy and Céline.	Reflection on investment	Audience questions

An impromptu After Action Review, conducted by the real deal: Major Pete Kilner from the US Army.	Of course, the day’s proceedings were also rigorously reviewed in one of the hotel’s bars at the end of the day

Learning on the social side One of our strategies, to save money and to concentrate energy, was to invite everyone we knew who was attending the conference to stay in the same rather less expensive hotel, which we dubbed “the communities of practice ghetto”, just a few blocks from the more expensive conference hotel. We arranged for people to share rooms. As our thread gathered momentum, business and other meetings were attached to the schedule. (A formal CPsquare meeting about technology strategy took a full day on the Wednesday but conversations among the four of us who were in the midst of conducting the Fall 2002 Foundations workshop (Bronwyn, Etienne, John and Marc) had to fit in and around everything else.
Impromptu talk — no notes and no shoes	As intended, the conversations about communities of practice went on till very, very late at night

Have I heard this one before?

All photos by John D. Smith. Bronwyn Stuckey and John Smith, the organizers of the event wish to thank all who participated.