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Foundations of Communities of Practice Alumni

Foundations of Communities of Practice Alumni When I began helping Etienne put on the online workshop, I never imagined that one of my roles would be "Director of Alumni Relations"! Well, I may not have the exalted title, but I do write to workshop alums two or three times a year. The email I send them is partly a reminder that the workshop is happening and they should tell other people about it. But gradually other topics have crept in. It started with a series of plugs for books that I'm absorbed in (I tend to "live in a book" for weeks and then enthuse to one and all) such as:

• Nancy M. Dixon, Nate Allen, Tony Burgess, Pete Kilner, Steve Schweitzer, CompanyCommand; Unleashing the power of the army profession (West Point, NY: Center for the Advancement of Leader Development & Organizational Learning, 2005). (Available through amazon or Nancy Dixon's website http://www.commonknowledge.org )
• Hinds, Pamela J. and Sara Kiesler. Distributed Work. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. Reviewed: http://www.istl.org/02-fall/review5.html

The emails to workshop alums have also included updates about projects or events that I think might be interesting:

• Nancy White's workshop on facilitation http://www.fullcirc.com/ws/onfaccourse.htm. (Many Foundations Workshop alums have taken this; I'm going back for a refresher when it starts on September 5.)
• Jerry Michalski's sessions of technology and change: http://www.yi-tan.com/wiki/yi-tan/
• And even updates on long hard slogs such as our "The Tech Report": http://technologyforcommunities.com

Among other things, sending out these messages means that I have updated email addresses for people (so still in touch by email with 373 people who've taken the workshop). Occasionally I get an email message from someone who's got a copy of the message to alumni asking if they can be put on the list. The answer is: to get the alumni newsletter, you have to have taken the Workshop! :-)

My most recent experiment has been to ask people to send along some announcement about what they've been doing recently. A couple dozen workshop alumni and their doings were featured in the last newsletter. It's impressive!

One thing that didn't make it into the newsletter (but deserved to) is a report on Marc Coenders (http://leerarchitectuur.nl/ ) who took the workshop twice and then led a Dutch version of it two times. This summer he and his family went camping with Nancy White and her family, met me and my family in Nahcotta, Washington, drove to Yellowstone, Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon and visited Etienne Wenger's family in North San Juan, California. We've talked about how the design of the workshop entails assessment of outcomes from a community of practice perspective: we all aspire to be as well-connected as Marc!

Posted by smithjd at August 26, 2005 09:57 PM | TrackBack