DCMOC
Department of Content Management and Online Collaboration
Communities of Practice
Andrew Gruhn 2007 May 4
The following was a response to one of our previous posts, and in it’s elegance deserved it’s own post (AG)
Keith A. Morneau Says:
From Wenger’s Community of Practice book, two definition of communities of practice are of interest here -
#1 – “Communities of practice [CoP] are groups of
people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis”
#2 – “A community of practice [CoP] is a unique combination of three fundamental elements: a domain of knowledge, which defines a set of issues; a community of people who care about this domain; and the shared practice that they are developing to be effective in their domain.”
CoPs interact on an ongoing basis through different activities. From that interaction, artifacts are co-created and shared which deepens the practice. These artifacts need to be stored somewhere and where I believe content management fits.
I look at content management as a tool of a community of practice to codify the knowledge being co-created and constructed together. If you can understand CoPs, you will better understand the role of content management in the bigger picture. People want to collaborate with each other and I believe they do so in informal communities of practice.
You wrote “…appropriate experts throughout the organization…”: The right people, all over, own their content. This doesn’t say anyone can write anything; it says the right people can write their things.”
In a CoP context, you need a core members of the community who are willing to share and collaborate with others. Then, you also need folks at all different levels of participation to contribute. Some will become core members; others stay at the periphery. Everyone adds to the diversity of the collaboration.
We all belong to many CoPs in our daily lives including our personal, professional, and others. I wrote a paper on a faculty-to-faculty collaboration in the context of CoPs that you might find interesting or maybe not. The link is http://ejite.isu.edu/Volume3No2/Morneau.pdf
This is my 2 cents and hope it makes sense. Yes, it is important to understand content management, but I think you need to understand the bigger picture of communities of practice to get a feel for what drives people to want to collaborate in the first place. It will inform your definition of content management.
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I’ve got definitions on the brain…
2007 May 2
I’m also trying to “rough in” exactly what we mean by content management. Here’s my first stab at a definition, for our CM&OC purposes:
“Web content management comprises the set of tools and practices by which the appropriate experts throughout the organization are able to create and update the online content that they care about, according to their own priorities and schedules, without specialized technical or design skills and with exactly the right amount of intervention from technical experts.”
Breaking it down:
“…Tools and practices…”: it’s not enough to have a tool; you also need a set of understood and obeyed processes and policies.
“…appropriate experts throughout the organization…”: The right people, all over, own their content. This doesn’t say anyone can write anything; it says the right people can write their things.
“…create and update…”: Not only can they make it in the first place, but they can change it when necessary.
“…according to their own priorities and schedules…”: This is big. If, for example, HR wants to post 50 job openings on one day, they should be able to, and it shouldn’t dramatically affect the web team’s capacity.
“…without specialized technical or design skills…”: Authors shouldn’t have to know much about web technology or web design. In fact, they shouldn’t be able to make sophisticated technical or design choices.
“…with exactly the right amount of intervention from technical experts.”: In a content management environment, experts are certainly necessary, but they provide genuine technical, design, or editorial expertise, not maintenance/rote work.
Thoughts? Refinements?
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