CPsquare

Some field trips take longer to pull together than others.  The CPsquare / SCOPE visit to and with KM4Dev has taken longer than most and feels like a much bigger deal than most.  For one thing there has been a great deal of overlap between the two communities.  KM4Dev is notable for being very productive and quite informal community in a global sector that is both complex and with its share of command-and-control style organizations. Also, it seems like this is an inflection point in the life of KM4Dev.  It has grown from about 500 members at the beginning of 2008 to over 1500 today.

Because KM4Dev is big and a bit sprawling, because there has been an overlap between CPsquare and KM4Dev membership, and because this is an interesting inflection point for KM4Dev, this field trip will have both synchronous and asynchronous components.  The asynchronous part will begin on April 20 where we look at several different facets of KM4Dev.  We will collect pointers to historical events such as face-to-face meetings or notable transitions as well as tools that have been developed, platforms or tools that have been tried.

For example, recently (in the current “My Practice” session) Joitske Hulsebosch mentioned a blog posting by Nancy White describing the effort to “translate” from the D-group email list discussions to a wiki page: it’s a great idea but hard to do.  We will try to collect such stories and examples more systematically.  Another example is that at one of the KM4Dev face-to-face meetings, Josien Kapma and Beverly Trayner practiced and developed the craft of social reporting so as to benefit the KM4Dev community (and spread good practice) and develop their own learning as well.  When I went to a KM4Dev meeting in Brussels a couple years ago, I observed a Bingo game as part of a community warm up (the video has an advertisement at the beginning):

I have to say I was pretty skeptical, but when I saw it translated into Spanish, being used at the KM4Dev meeting in Cali, I think I “got it.”  So the question is, how can KM4Dev’s history of innovation and learning be kept alive and developed further?  All successful communities face this kind of question sooner or later, and having a field trip like this is a great way to explore the question and come up with possible answers.

Although this event is different in scope and structure than our regular field trip visits, it will be open (and free), as in the past.  If you are interested in spending some time on this project, write to john (dot) smith (at) learningalliances (dot) net for enrollment in the online, asynchronous discussions.  We hope to have a good number of KM4Dev members participate in the conversation along with CPsquare members and (some) guests.  Also, if you would like to participate in just the synchronous part of field trip (which will last for 90 minutes and will be held on 27 April 2011 at 15:00 GMT, come back here for details that will be posted the day before.

For this field trip we are intending to produce a more comprehensive and systematic summary of what we learn than what has been the norm in our previous trip reports.  The final report will be published or linked from here and we have allocated some funds for an honorarium to the CPsquare member who undertakes writing the summary.

CPsquare quarterly Field Trip

A CPsquare Field trip to Wikisourcing Sustainable Enterprises on Monday, February 22, 2010 12:00 PST 20:00 GMT. Free. No RSVP. Just show up.

EW Tweets at 30K’!

Etienne Tweets at 30,000 feet. Nuff said.

The CPsquare Foundations Workshop redesign

The Foundations workshop has been running regularly since 1998. (We’re getting close to the 30th time!) Now Etienne, Bronwyn and I are giving it another facelift. It will only be 6 weeks long. It’s more concentrated. It’s scheduled to start March 22. Register now.

CPsquare gathering in Aalborg, Denmark on May 2nd 2010

Immediately before the 7th International Conference on Networked Learning (Aalborg, Denmark) 3rd & 4th May 2010, some of us will be gathering for a day of conversation. Want to join us?

“My practice” series at CPsquare

In a way, CPsquare has been a very outward-looking community, focused on the communities that members lead or support. We haven’t paid as much attention to the work that members themselves do. During the last several months we’ve had sessons with Sue Wolff, Jack Merklein, and Joitske Hulsebosch talking about their work in their settings. Quite fascinating stuff. (There is a kind of avalanche of announcements that “a community of practice has formed” out there on the Interent. I’ve captured a few of them in this mind-boggling list with the “copexample” tag.)

Current books

• Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning With New Media,
  by: Mizuko Ito, et al.
  (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009) 419. pp Http://ISBN.nu/9780262013369. You can download the whole book in a PDF. An in-depth look at genres of participation – reporting on a huge ethnographic project.
• Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur, Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers http://businessmodelgeneration.com/ http://isbn.nu/9782839905800 The business models for independent communities of practice has been a theme in CPsquare’s Shadow the Leader series this year.
• Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, and John D. Smith, Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities (Portland, OR: CPsquare, 2009). It was published on August 15, 2009 but our first group “plug” was last week, in a session with the SIKM Community. A really enjoyable experience. Maybe we should do more such.

Join CPsquare, SCOPE and friends in our next quarterly field trip, when we will visit the Wikisourcing Sustainable Enterprises community:

People gathered around http://open-sustainability.org/wiki/WSE

Our field trip starts here:

• Monday, February 22, 2010 12:00 PST 20:00 GMT (your time zone)
• Elluminate

Jenny Ambrozek will be our host.  In her invitation she said:

As creators we think Wikisourcing Sustainable Enterprises community is essential, based on hearing the need from practitioners at The Sustainable Enterpise Fieldbook launch events and exchanges in the Sustainable Enterprise Network.

However, currently WSE is a grand vision, a serious aspiration and the seed of a network (as captured in the network map, slide 27, of this “Collective Intelligence” presentation). Our learning so far is about:

• The practical realities of crowdsourcing, and the challenge of getting contributions and interest.
• Network thinking and approaches to convene, and interconnect, the stakeholder networks we’ve identified as essential to WSE’s success.
• sustainability. (For more context see slides from ODNetwork NY presentation.

The CPsquare / SCOPE field trips use an informal community comparison framework

C4P model as we’ve adapted it:

• Content: What explicit knowledge objects such as documents or video clips are created or shared in this community?
• Connections: What interpersonal contacts between community members (e.g., that facilitate relationship-building between community members) can you observe?
• Conversation: what face-to-face or online conversations are going on?
• Context: what context gives meaning to the content, connections and conversations in this community?
• Purpose: what is the reason for which the members come together in this community?

More about the C4P (see description and references)

Our visit page is on the CPsquare Wiki:

http://cpsquare.org/wiki/Visiting_Wikisourcing_Sustainable_Enterprises

Join us for a virtual field trip of WikiEducator, an international community dedicated to the design, development, and delivery of free content for learning. Randy Fisher, Strategist, Facilitator, and Community-Builder for WikiEducator, will guide us through several important projects within the community, and our discussion will focus on the community’s purpose using the C4P model, developed by the US Military. This model uses uses 4 overlapping elements to describe a community’s purpose: Content, Connections, Conversation and Context. This session is moderated by John Smith and Sylvia Currie and is open to everyone. Please spread the word!

When: Monday, August 10, 2009, 22:00 GMT (your time zone)

Where: SCoPE Community Enthusiasts Elluminate Room

Information about the Virtual Field Trips project is being developed on the CPSquare Wiki. This visit to WikiEducator also marks the launch of a 3-week seminar in SCoPE: Collaborative Projects on WikiEducator, August 10-28, 2009.