Blog # 6 Communities of Practice

Etienne Wenger is known for his work on communities of practice.  He believes communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other cope.  An important point Eitenne Wenger makes is that not everything called a community is a community of practice.  A neighborhood is often called a community, but is usually not a community of practice. 

http://www.ewenger.com/

Communities of Practice:

Domain=Relevance 

Community=Reflection

Practice=Contribution

Communities of Practice and Web 2.0

Tomoye Ecco is a .net-based community of practice software application. 

An online Community of Practice where members can ask and answer each other's questions, find experts, and share documents and other web accessible content.  The community of intelligence that gets shared includes tagging, bookmarks, most helpful and active users, the most connected people, and the highest ranked content.  

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/06/08/tomoye-ecco-and-sharepoint-integration-how-we-did-it-and-what-we-will-do-next-aspx