Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Live KM blogging: Another realization

Communities of Practice. This seems to be a great way to help manage knowledge, to implement a knowledge management component. I've already mentioned we have a number of these in the Coast Guard, be they formal or informal, supported or not supported. I think what makes a KM community of practice difference is that is deliberate in nature and exists for the purpose of transfering knowledge, moving knowledge from one brain to another.

A key component of KM communities of practice is that it is, above all else, fairly high touch. That is to say that it is not, in and of itself, a technology based thing.

Years back I created a group in Hampton Roads to help nurture and sustain meeting facilitators and meeting managers. This was, looking back, clearly a community of practice. We gathered guarterly to discuss tools, successes, failures, opportunities. To share. We used a bang list on the GAL. We attempted to have a poor-man's document repository.

Time to reinvigorate, as the need is still there. Now, I have a few more tools, and can use proven practices from elsewhere.

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