Online Communities of Practice are a sweet spot!
A while ago I wrote a post called Enabling communities, and today I had exactly the same experience that inspired me to write that post.
Here are some points from our discussion.
- I am trying to set up a CoP for people with experience in 3D animation and visualisation.
- This is a specialist area with only a few of us officially doing this role.
- But recently I have noticed a lot of people with experience coming out of the woodwork ie. engineers and the like who have experience with some of the software…I know that around the globe there are several people with this expertise.
- I would like to set up a CoP for a couple of us, and then attract some of these people
- the CoP as a way to amplify what’s already happening - We have a lot of work, and it would be good if anyone could help us out, rather than sourcing outside help
- why spend money externally, when we have the talent internally
- this ties in with my post, We are more than our job title describes - We also want to use the CoP to gather what our company needs are for 3D animation.
- Besides conversations, the CoP will also be a great “place” to showcase our gallery.
- We are inhouse specialists, and we want the word to get out that we exist
I really like this last point
- email is not a place
- the Intranet is not going to promote these guys (it’s not interactive anyway)
The online CoP is going to harness their talent, and offer a space where they can be known…then only after this grassroots effort, where they may one day prove themselves as a viable component of our workplace, will they get an official spot on the Intranet.
I mentioned similar CoPs eg. Software Development, Learning and Development…and that some people here in Perth are flash gurus.
He said, ohhh…we just required a flash guru for a job here in the Canada office, we couldn’t find one and had to source externally.
Need I say more, if we are visible and participate, we can then connect and converse, and ultimately collaborate…and generate work (connect the human resources so they are optimising the collective talent).
The theme of this post is do it yourself enabling tools, that allow grass roots efforts to emerge and be seen.
These new bottom-up social tools are surfacing opportunities that the top-end of the business are not thinking of, but are getting traction as knowledge workers now have a way to engage and propel.
KM or Enterprise 2.0 is not only about aligning to business strategy, but instead allowing workers to actively participate, creating their own value, where ultimately what they are doing can be noticed and officially be added as a strategy.
Top-down crowdsourcing is one thing, but bottom-up emergence of invention is another thing…we are not here to just give input to top-down ideas, but the top can notice what we are doing at the street level, and say “I like that, I’m glad we give you tools to demonstrate your talent.”
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