News

Preliminary Invitation to Prato Dialogue October, 5-8th, 2006

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 Setúbal Dialogue was immediate reporting on some of the results of the dialogue to a wider audience of people (although we did not formally publish anything) at a local conference. Two other practices following this one have been: first, to organize small, informal meetings of CPsquare members and friends adjoining large conferences and, second, to explore and extend the idea of a face-to-face workshop with an online set-up and follow-on open both to members who could attend the conference workshop and some who could not. These events include a workshop on “Phase change” at the Communities and Technologies (C&T) conference in Amsterdam in 2003 and a workshop on “Context and the role of narrative” at the C&T conference in Milan in 2005.

In October 2006 with an agenda that we will negotiate online and a culture of sharing ideas, work practices and living arrangements we are holding a Dialogue at a beautiful location in Florence. “The Prato[1] Dialog” will take place a few days before the “Prato Conference” that is organised by the Community Informatics Research Network (http://www.ccnr.net/?q=taxonomy/term/50). “Communities, Memories and Technologies” is the theme of the Prato Conference and our Dialogue will harness this theme and develop some of the threads of our inquiry to participants in a workshop during the Prato Conference. All those who participate in the Prato Dialogue are invited to help present the workshop at the Prato Conference.

For many of us, where a social perspective on learning is the subject and the means of inquiry and the rallying point that brings us together these events are works of love. They are produced in moments stolen from our jobs, families and friends. We often find ourselves swimming between disciplinary and professional boundaries trying to articulate more clearly what we do, and looking for ways to justify, legitimize and finance our way to learning and improving our practice. At this Dialogue we want to make these stolen moments an open and discussable subject of inquiry – part of our community memory as we join ideas and forces for making such events a sustainable part of our repertoire of practice, and our gift to the world.

When: late afternoon of Thursday October 5th through lunch on Sunday October 8th, 2006

Where: in or near Florence, Italy. Although we have reserved accommodation similar to those that will be used for the CIRN Conference, we’re considering alternatives along the lines of http://www.casanuova.info/ or http://www.fattoriadimigliarino.it/ . We are still looking for a venue and need your help.

Why: meeting with peers is part of practicing our craft. We want to create an opportunity to reflect on our own work and on the work of others. We want to pursue specific lines of questions, enjoy the community & face-to-face meeting as a source of inspiration for our work.

Who: we are inviting people who are interested in reflecting on theory and on practice. Initially it will be launched by Beverly Trayner, Patricia Arnold and John D. Smith. We are explicitly working on involving others in shaping the event and leading it. In fact, each participant is expected to play a role in producing the dialog.

Cost: we are aiming for a self-organizing event where costs are covered but none of the organizers make money from the event. We anticipate that the cost of infrastructure, organization, possible guest speakers, and outings will be covered by registration fees.

The big question:

• How do communities of practice function and what is their effect in terms of memory & organizations?

We will choose one ‘reference case’ that we will attend to as our thinking progresses during the Dialog.

Initial questions about domain:

• What are our practices for keeping track of memory and learning in communities of practice? What do we forget? When do our practices fail us?
• Similarly for claiming a role in the world, do we claim our contribution properly? Do we disguise it? Forget it?

Initial questions about practice:

• Through what relationships do we discover new skills and share what we know? How do we reinvent our view of the world for each other? How do we coach each other (before, on the spot and afterwards, at a distance)?
• What traces are we leaving for our work on communities of practice? What technologies and practices are there for supporting these traces? How do we get people to sponsors us in our practice?
• What is the nature of rigor in our relationships of sense making about our practice? How do we formalise the reputation that comes with our expertise? How do we live and engage with the ambiguities in our practice?

Initial questions about community:

·         Who is here? Who is not here? Why?

·         What does that say about how we’ve spoken about our learning in previous interactions? What relationships have we sustained and what relationships have fallen away? Is there tolerance of the ambiguity of being a peripheral participant?

Included in the event:

• Daily plenary dialog sessions
• In-depth case presentations
• Small groups discussions that explore specific subjects (some agreed-upon in advance; others to be negotiated on-the-spot)
• A systematic and disciplined summarisation process to build up memory while at the same time being reflexive about our dialog
• Eating and living together in one setting (probably some time set aside for sleep)
• Online preparations & teleconferences as well as online collaboration after the event
• Experimenting with “new” technologies for our memories such as podcasting and wikis
• A balance between planned content & format and some improvisation
• Muckabout outings (e.g., contact with a Reggio Emilia school, visits to a kindergarten, factory or hospital where we can observe, relax and spark our thinking)
• Light facilitation: listening to our listening and reflecting on our forgetting
• Publication of the story of the event

Leads to:

• Presenting discussion results to CIRN conference attendees in the attached CIRN workshop
• Structuring & facilitating CIRN conference attendees’ input and the weaving together of two conference events and of online & offline modes of collaboration
• Preparing a joint deeper inquiry on prioritized issues of the dialogue / the CIRN conference with a focus on memory and not forgetting what is in it for every one of us and our communities
• Long-term collaboration

What we still need:

• Your expression of interest (by March 1^st, 2006):
  an optional 100 word topic proposal with your expression of interest in participating in the dialog
• Your suggestions for sub-themes that we could use for organizing our inquiry;
  So far a range of possible subtopics, ranging from learning fixed gender roles in kindergarten to identity in the Ku Klux Klan have been proposed
• Your help or suggestions for raising the funds necessary (for the event itself and for the follow-on activities)
• Your help or suggestions in creating the Muckabout outings

Discussion: In our study and leadership of communities of practice, we naturally focus on what is memorable: the beautiful, the good, and the positive. But our critics score the word “community” as too romantic and inherently carrying an overoptimistic view. The power of communities of practice also includes a rather darker side that supports forgetting, unlearning, denial and not-knowing. Even at their most positive, communities of practice play a critical role in UN-learning old practices and views of the world; mal-practitioners are taught or shunned.

Communities of practice include a whole range of subtle social and intellectual manoeuvres, including:

• Organizing exploration and confirmation of new knowledge – agreeing upon what the difference that makes a difference is in their knowledge domain
• Communicating ambiguity and claims about “not knowing.”
• Unlearning old paradigms or ways of thinking.
• Inventing a “them” (or “not-us”) with respect to which a practice has meaning.
• Holding secrets from the outside world as a part of identity and group membership
• How communities hold certain topics as “un-discussable” or irrelevant.

We look forward to hearing from you by March 1, 2006…

and wish you inspiring days over the holidays and a good start in 2006!

Beverly, John and Patricia