CPsquare

Communities of practice have become a cornerstone of the knowledge strategy of leading organizations. Yet understanding how these largely informal, voluntary, and self-organizing communities actually work still presents a challenge for most organizations. Without an understanding of their dynamics and composition, community initiatives can be wasteful, ineffective or even harmful.

Join us and an international group of practitioners for this unique on-line workshop. Learn what communities of practice are, why they are fundamental to knowledge-based organizations, how to develop, nurture, and leverage them, and how to build a knowledge strategy around them.

Faculty: The workshop is taught in a seminar format by Etienne Wenger, a leading thinker and practitioner in the field, in collaboration with John Smith, a community coach and technologist and Bronwyn Stuckey, an educational researcher and online facilitator. Guest speakers and mentors augment the conversation, extend the network and deepen the connection with actual practice.

Format: Apart from email and the three telephone meetings, the workshop is taught completely on the Web. All you need to participate is e-mail access, an up-to-date Web browser and a phone. A CD with all workshop discussions and reading materials is provided afterwards. Schedule: The workshop is held over the course of seven weeks, varying in intensity and focus, as suggested below. As it simulates participation in an active community of practice but compresses the experience into a short period of time, most participants spend between 30 and 50 hours over the course of the 7 weeks reading, writing, and collaborating with other participants. Some people find themselves spending more time than that. The overview of the workshop schedule suggests the range of activities that go on during the workshop.

• Week 1 - September 15th - Community launch: software, community and workshop familiarization
• Week 2 - Domain inquiry, household formation, and leadership tasks
• Week 3 - Projects, practice, and guest speaker
• Week 4 - Projects, practice, and guest speaker
• Week 5 - Projects, practice, and guest speaker
• Week 6 - Domain inquiry: what and how are we learning?
• Week 7 - Community transition and process reflection

Topics: The workshop explores a broad range of topics, including:

• The composition and life cycle of communities of practice.
• The function of communities of practice in the development and transmission of knowledge.
• Techniques for stimulating, connecting and assessing communities.
• Uses of technology for drawing global communities together effectively.
• Successful community strategies at leading companies.

Tuition: Tuition for this workshop is $995 USD. To encourage group learning, a discounted rate of $795 is available when 4 people from the same organization take the workshop at the same time or at any time after the 4th person has taken the workshop. Groups of 4 or more, Non-profits (501-C-3), international NGOs pay $795. Full time students pay $595. (Note: you are expected to participate in at least four one-hour long telephone meetings. Calling a US telephone bridge can be a substantial cost from some countries, so attention to low cost phone connections is recommended.)