Communities of Practice in the Netherlands

I was talking with lots of people at our “cop.nl” day (www.collectiefleren.nl).

We got into discussion about what is a Community of Practice. I always thought the question “what is a CoP and what not” is not too important, the question “is it useful (for yourself or others) to name it CoP” is more important. But I noticed that I became confused when processes for deliberate change and advocating are named CoPs…
For me, in those cases, it is best to think of the social learning processes underlying CoPs and how these can be effective in other situations as well. The term Bev came up with last wednesdaymorning session: “social learning systems” is more precise and more useful than just “communities of practice”.

The “systems” are both soft systems and infra and tools, that exist within and across organizations and that can be made more conducive for social learning.

More discoveries of last monday:

• Facilitating social learning and social learning systems is sort of hot. “Letting evolve” is the most difficult thing to do for influence - intervention - and instrument focused majority.
• It is difficult to determine my “trade”; not ICT, not “just” the facilitation of events either.

Empowering non-organizations (2): Pockets

Pockets for communities paying their way, can we think of transparent ways? (by guano on flick, cc)

It takes energy to stay organized, even as an individual. So each organization spends some of its energy just to stay organized; each organization has dual objective of reaching its objective and staying organized. Therefor, for some causes, the potential benefit of organizing, does not outweigh the transaction cost involved: these causes or opportunities do not get an organization together.

Now with the collapse of costs for I, C and T, and especially also with the tools getting more usable for non-geeks, transaction costs have come down. Organizations that formerly were impossible, are now feasible.

(Again, Clay Shirky worded it very nicely; he uses the term Coasean floor. The Coasean ceiling is when a firm grows too large, transaction costs get too high; it breaks up. Under the Coasean floor are the other end of impossible organizations, those that create too little value to pay any transaction cost. As the Coasean floor is dropping, some of these formerly impossible organization now rise above the floor.)

As soon as these “non-organizations” are up and above, when the people in the group realize they are a group, they begin to see new potentials. However, working on the potentials costs energy, and before they know it the transaction costs rises and makes the organization sink back under the Coasean floor; many non-organizations dissolve again or will forever hoover around the floor level.

Despite of that, some of these ultra-lights manage to grow legs for getting places, and soon after they need pockets to pay their way. Many of them struggle, as there is no model for their group.

How can different organization models contribute to collaborative interaction?

One step is to enable communities or other “non-organizations” simple collective money management. Move from a ultra-light to light: get pockets.

Pockets might have the following characteristics:

• online bank account in the name of a group

• international transfers simplified, not location bound

• “stashes” or otherwise rules: eg only spending on books and travel

• monopolies made impossible; agreed authority levels

• almost real-time report to wider community about what is happening to their money; visible and understandable

• rules to be agreed by quorum of members, account blockable by certain (even all?) members

• contribution rules can be set by community, eg gifts, fixed contributions, etc.

• One option should be not strict yes/no membership, but “participation based contributions” on a semi-voluntary basis:“Based on your involvement the past month, our “xyz Group” agreements (as collectively decided dd…) suggest that 50 Euro might be a suitable amount to contribute this month.”

• visuals! where does our money come from (who is (not) contributing?) and what do we spend it on?

• almost like a petty cash: based on “flows” of money, not collecting it

Risks could be made manageable by:

• never allow having more than a certain maximum amount, which is fairly low, e.g. 1000 euro. Compare to Just In Time stock management: In case of an event, when lots of money is needed, it is better to have very frequent direct debits (even daily) from contributors, instead of a large amount stored.

• Members at all time control their own contributions AND can block the collective account

Related blog posts are here:
John D Smith, Learning Alliances: “Pockets and Legs on Facebook Groups”
and mine just below: “Empowering Non-organizations: Legs and Pockets”, also published here.

Empowering non-organizations: Legs and Pockets

legs for getting places… (by scottobear, cc)

Web 2.0 tools have made it easier for people to form groups; ranging from temporary flocks of people with a similar interest to close-knit communities, increasingly part of extensive interconnected networks.

Thanks to Web2.0 people can connect and organize, without a manager or a managing structure to lead or frame this organization process. “The power of organizing without organizations” is how Clay Shirky calles it. Others have used the term “non-organizations” or “ultra-lights”. Many Internet mediated groups are non-organizations, in the sense that they do not have a traditional structure or legal entity like a foundation or a association, or a company.

An example is the group of dairy farmers in rural Portugal I am part of, convening around a blog and an email group, and meeting f2f a few times a year for an excursion or study day. There is real value for learning and socializing, there are some shared values, a shared identity. But it comes without the things that used to be part and parcel of more traditional organizations. There is no mailing address, no letterhead paper, no statutes or articles of association, no official “Committee” and no member administration.

When the dairy farmers network wanted to liaise with the traditional Farmers Union in Portugal, they were not accepted unless they would be a “real” association. The “ultra-light” can not be eligible for EU subsidies for training or extension, even though that is what it does.
When hiring a venue to convene, or a leaflet to print, one member has to personally take the financial responsibility up-front. When afterwards members chip in, they can not be given a receipt. The group can not own anything, not hire anybody.

A solution for the non-organizations might be to go the traditional way: formalize the group and rig an organizational structure along traditional lines, depending on the preferences: an association, a company or a charity. But this seems more complex than strictly needed, it would raise transaction costs, and more importantly: what would be lost in the process?
The lightness is a relief, it is felt that the lightness is conducive for learning, for attracting the right people for the right purpose. The agility, the single focus of a group to do its thing, and to stop being a group in case the energy ebbs is unique and refreshing.

This was the conclusion of the case study i did last year:
“Web 2.0 supported communities have the potential to support social organization for development, linking different actors to local development. The organizational models that we avail of at present do not match the new dispersed form of organization. To promote autonomy, sustainability and replicability of communities, further thinking is required.”

John D Smith and I have done some “further thinking”.

We have looked at existing communities, many of them “ultra-lights”, we have reminded each other to look and read with the question in mind:

“How can communities get legs and pockets”?

Legs for getting places, doing the thing it is they want to do;
pockets for being able to pay their way for as long as they want to.

You need legs before you can have pockets, but too large pockets might get in the way for good walking.

We have come across many communities that are -in whatever way- struggling with these questions: some for lack of pockets, others for getting their pockets filled and stopping walking to spend money or get more.

Trying to think of what would be needed to get legs and pockets, one thing might be collective money management tools. A tool to make international online banking “visible” to a larger community, in order for the community leaders to move money in an accountable way. It should be simple, but not too simple; communities probably want to differentiate several “stashes” of money. Read John’s blogpost about it here.

Waar blijft de tijd?

Hoe kan ik toch aan zo weinig toekomen, terwijl ik toch ook de hulp van een oppas heb? Wat heb ik vandaag gedaan:

• ontbeten en kinderen naar school geholpen
• nieuwe flessen gas besteld
• regels veetransport nageplozen op de site
• gebeld over veetransport met Isabel en veearts Zé Maria
• blogpost Kennisclub geschreven
• gas-bezorger te woord gestaan en gas afgerekend
• echtgenoot bijgestaan in bedrijfsgerelateerde stress
• vriendin die mogelijk steun behoeft geprobeerd te bellen
• Inga herhaaldelijk tevergeefs gebeld in verband met achterstallige uitbetaling van melkpremie van vorig jaar
• koffie gedronken achter de compu
• onze lakse jurist herhaaldelijk tevergeefs gebeld
• veearts ontvangen, bijgepraat en van koffie voorzien
• even kort geassisteerd bij lebmaagoperatie bij een koe
• blogpost aangepast zodat hij ook geschikt is voor “De Boerderij”
• collega boer die een stier komt brengen opgevangen, papierboel afgehandeld
• gelunched in het restaurantje hier in het dorp met veearts, collega boer en echtgenoot
• oppas begroet en smalltalk
• e-mails gelezen en een paar beantwoord, o.a. een onderhandeling over nieuwe opdracht
• jongste kinderen opgevangen van school
• middelste kind geknuffeld en getroost omdat ze wil dat het al morgen moederdag is en niet pas overmorgen
• samen met middelste kind per fiets het oudste kind opgehaald
• eventjes feeds gelezen
• de (print) post behandeld
• superluxe aarbei-shake geserveerd gekregen van de oppas -die het huishouden en veel van de kinderaandacht voor haar rekening neemt. Wat een luxe…

Vervolgens deze opsomming gemaakt…. en nu is het vijf uur. Eindelijk kan ik beginnen aan mijn werk. Maar nu is het nog hooguit een uurtje achter de computer, dan is het tussen 6 en 8 tijd voor kinderrituelen: oppas uitzwaaien, broodje, spelletje, opruimen, tandenpoetsen, voorlezen, bed. Nog wat opruimen, om half 9 kan ik nog even aan het werk. Wéér een dag voorbij, weer een dag “niks” gedaan….

More on CoPs and web

(written last year after ever interesting talks with John Smith on “CoPs and finances”. See also yestereday’s post.)

Cops and Web:
How Web2.0 trends influence learning communities.

Web 2.0 is not merely the next step in technology, it contributes / is the embodiment of deeper changes in society, some even speak of a transformation of interaction and organization of professional practice. Current trends on the Internet have changed the way we socialize and is changing the way we work.

Some key words that illustrate the changes going on:

user co-creation
wisdom of the crowds
the long tail
publish then filter
miscellany
third order organization
folksonomies
tag
remix
user created content
radical decentralization
viral spread
conversations
experimenting
perpetual beta
cheap failures
creative commons
emergent
transparent

This paper reflects on the consequences for communities of practice and social learning.

Some current Trends

1. New services based on information/communication
Dramatic drop of costs of ICT (server space, memory, user hardware, bandwidth etc), combined with improved access and usability have transformed information and communication from scarce to abundant products. Control over sources of information or channels of communication are no longer the privilege of few, and hardly worth paying for. Industries or services with business models that are based on granting access to information or communication, are struggling to reinvent themselves.
Media, music and entertainment industries, travel, business, copyrights, learning: all are affected.
Eg the music industry: their product, musical tracks, has become free or almost free, their business is moving to merchandise, events.

2. Community hype
Social interaction and networking, thanks to Internet, has greatly increased its span; geographically and thematically. People trace and track others who share the same interest, and interact with them even if they are on the other side of the earth. ´The long tail´ principle ensures that even the person interested in a very specific niche theme can find or attract a group of likeminded others.
People flock together, for shorter or longer times, - online and often, eventually also in real life. The resulting `flocks´ of people who have an interest for a certain theme in common, have some characteristics of communities. In a fragmented media landscape, marketeers recognized the value of such communities; communities are called the new markets.
The organizational form community, before almost exclusively the domain of not-for-profit and learning sectors, is hyped and hijacked by business, by brands, by social networking applications.
Some of the ´new´ communities become communities of practice but very often, learning is not the objective of these “new” communities. The hype is both an opportunity and a threat for our domain of communities of practice.

3. Fuzz and flux
More than before, the constellations in which people flock together are changing constellations. For web2.0 tools open-ness, porousness, compatibility with other uses, are determinants for success. Nowadays people flow in and out of multiple communities; they move organically in, across and out, forming their personal network along the way. Boundaries are becoming more and more fuzzy. Groups are porous, flux and change is a permanent state. The professional and personal, formal and informal increasingly get intertwined.

4. The suffocating ethos of “free”
The ethos of “free” on the Web is strong, including for communities. Free is never free but rather there is a three-way-payment structure (sponsor-service provider-user), e.g. throught advertising or charity funding. Three way relations are often problematic because: -accountability is harder to ensure; -communication is more complex; -relations are unequal; -paternalistic behaviour is a real risk.

So implications of web2.0 for CoPs include: Easier formation and communication, but intense competition and “hype” of the term community. Trend towards outward orientedness, fuzz and flux, in an increasingly interconnected and networked world. Collective ADHD, so net effect is that the transaction cost of organizing is at least as high as before web2.0.

Or is this too dark a conclusion?

Connected Futures Workshop by CPsquare

In this cool workshop by cpsquare we were asked to reflect on the following questions prior to the workshop.

1. What brings you to this workshop?
2. What is your role in the selection of and support for community technology?
3. What ways do you think CoPs may benefit from using Web2.0 tools?
4. How does your working environment affect your work? How does it differ from that of others?

I will focus on the third question by pasting something I wrote last year after talks with John Smith on “CoPs and finances”. See also the next post.

Cops and Web:
How Web2.0 trends influence learning communities.

In short…
Internet technologies support the emergence of new organization forms; more groups and communities than ever before are formed, with lots of potential for collaboration and learning. The criteria determining the use, leadership, organizational and financial models, and legal attributes of these new forms are generally flexible. They may evolve where before no communication existed (or was possible), like with many geographically distributed communities. They may also complement or take the place of former membership organizations.

What are suitable organizational forms for these “non-organizations” and how can they organizational models contribute to such collaborative interaction and learning?

Our experience indicates that many communities are struggling. Some more commonly used models, such as the ultra-light or the fully funded model, have important drawbacks. Trends make learning in communities more popular, but enabling the learning is not an easy task.

The organizational and business models that we avail of at present do not match the new dispersed form of organization which such technologies herald, nor are they particularly conducive to the paradigm shift that marks the transmission from web1.0 to web2.0. Web2.0 supported communities have the potential to support social organization for learning, but to promote autonomy, sustainability and replicability of communities, further thinking is required.
———–

Agenda for learning

Agenda for discussing with Bev after cycling

1) Identity and connected futures
I wrote in another blogpost:

Instead of having one physical surrounding, one social circle where everyone else knows each other as well, we live in different life worlds; for school, work, family and Internet. Different parts of my life, of my social circles, are very much separated. E.g. People I meet, do not read anything of what I read (or write, ha!). And I find I do only dosed cross-pollinating as a bumble bee, more often just butterflying from one scene to the next.

So instead of connecting, building bridges, varying diets, it sometimes only seems we are collectively practising our capability to live dis-jointed lifes. I think we have come to accept, even appreciate these separations. We are becoming very good at switching from one “life-world” to the next. We are all become more used to living in multiple different (sub-)cultures. Where we have sub-identieies.

Now Connected Futures arrive.
What happens?

Will our now dis-jointed life-worlds increasingly connect? How will we manage the different sub-cultures?

2) Community management by Chris Brogan and Nancy White

3) Bev’s view on World 3.0, slow community and attention economy
To do with increasing collective ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and how to re-appreciate attention and express value.

Attention to express value

Having waded through feeds this is what stuck.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ attention_economy_overview.php
An overview of the attention economy by Iskold, on ReadWrite web (already last year)
We both enjoy and drown in information and the growth of info causes scarcity of attention. This is a problem for individuals as well as for organizations. The Attention Economy facilitates a marketplace where consumers agree to receives services in exchange for their attention. What we do online (what we browse, what we say and read) increasingly represents who we are and as such has real value. And what we do online can be (is) captured in data; this is called “attention data”. To ensure that businesses do not monopolize users information, AttentionTrust has outlined the basic consumer rights in the AttentionEconomy: control over your data; being able to move it; exchange it for value where you wish; and transparency.

Is this feasible? Iskold continues with some tech-talk; a lot is needed still to make this technically feasible. Another important point is Education: People need to be educated about the value of their attention and the principles of attention economy.

———
Actually this is not what I intuitively understood by the attention economy. I was thinking of how “attention”, people’s time and focus, is increasingly becoming scarce in anything we do. Instead of reading, we only skim. Have you struggled yourself to focus on the things you value? Had emails unanswered? Really nice projects die out for lack of attention?, not because people don’t want to give attention to it but because they cannot muster the attention needed. While we can seldomly pay attention to anything, we crave and beg for others to give it to us.

Shirky (”here comes everybody”) explained how the cost of social organization has come down dramatically. But the attention needed from people to really connect is still the same and just as “expensive” as ever, only now you have to compete with bigger competitors. To gain and collect a number of individuals attention is costing more energy than ever. So again, I wonder whether non-organizations, ultra-lights, or organizations formerly below the Coasean floor are as feasible as we now think they are.

So I understood the “attention economy” as a more useful way of expressing value and appreciation of projects and services, in the era of free-conomics, where money is no longer (if ever) a useful unit of measurement.

Homophily and butterflies

I just l-o-v-e reading about exactly the things i think about, and I am delighted with some of the readings harvested from my feeds.

So I too, am subject of homophily, which is what I called groupthink before. Although the word groupthink is not very good either, I find homophily confusing as 1) in Dutch it means homosexuality; and 2) to me, thinking of “homo” as “mankind” (as in homo sapiens) and not “likeness / similarity” it sounds like something very positive, something like super-sociability, lovers of mankind.
It is however, the effect that the Internet enables us to consume only those news/themes we like and connect only to likeminded: we now can select a (news, contacts / media) diet to our taste and as an effect our taste will be affected. The fear, off course, is it will make us dumber and less tolerant. Ethan Zuckerman has lots of thought and links and juicy goodies about this here. He finds that people who are transliterate and used to crossing boundaries, especially third culture kids or xenophiles, seem to populate certain corners of the Internet. (Another thought I have had, how homophile am I and should I vary my Internet diet?) His view at the end: Xenophiles will thrive in a globalizing world… is not much supported when describing the hard time the very same xenophiles are having when trying to vary the “Internet -diet” of homophiles.

I agree in thinking that people who are experienced in venturing out alone in a new culture, express themselves in a language not their own, (the third culture kids and xenophiles) have an advantage discovering and experimenting in the new territories of the read/write web, and be the early population. But at the same time Web2.0, or the blogosphere, for a long time seemed disconnected from the rest of the world (the “echochamber”). I am often surprised how little certain “scenes” are connected…. and comfortably continue to be disconnected.

Looking at myself, I use three languages every single day. Different parts of my life, of my social circles, are very much separated. E.g. People I meet, do not read anything of what I read (or write, ha!). And I find I do only dosed cross-pollinating as a bumble bee, more often just butterflying from one scene to the next.

So instead of connecting, building bridges, varying diets, it sometimes only seems we are collectively practising our capability to live dis-jointed lifes. Instead of having one physical surrounding, one social circle where everyone else knows each other as well, we live in different life worlds; for school, work and family. I think we have come to accept, even like these separations. We are becoming very good at switching from one to the next. We are all become more used to living in multiple different (sub-)cultures. Internet, for a long time to come still, will be only one of these sub-cultures present in our lifes. Looking from that angle, I am not so fearsome of the negative effects of homophily.

rephrasing last post’s questions

Rephrasing the questions from last blog posts:

1. Aren’t we collectively underestimating the transaction cost involved in (really) bringing people together? Sure, it has come down, but there is also the issue of externalities: costs not borne where they belong, in this case the costs are energy of many altruistic conveners and facilitators. Have these groups really climbed up to the “Coasean floor” or are we fooled by cheap tools?

2.
The groups formerly too expensive to organize, that are now forming (the ones below the coasean floor, non-organizations), can be places for people to learn. This we know. Can they themselves be learning organizations? Can non-organizations be learning organizations? How, with ensuring the transaction cost remain low? If not, what is their real use?