John Smith is the community steward for CPsquare, a community of practice about communities of practice. The group brings people together from around the world through online, telephone and face to face meetings to share their knowledge and learn together about how communities of practice can best function and learn in any field.

The following is a summary with key excerpts from a recent interview we did together. Discussion included John's thoughts on group learning and new technologies and those are what I've focused on here. You can click the "excerpt" link next to any of the summary points to hear John in his own words.

John Smith Interview Highlights

• Social connection is the prime vector in which knowledge is created. CPsquare regularly invites outside practitioners and past participants to assist in the evaluation of the group's work and assist new members in learning the group's processes and technologies.
  Excerpt 1 (1 min 10 sec)
• Standards, reference points and what's called tacit knowledge can be shared through conversation and relationship building. This is the most important way that knowledge is shared but it's not as simple as "passing a football" from one person to another.
  Excerpt 2 (1 min)
• Communities of practice are where technologies are developed and used. These communities create a sense of accountability and value for those who would spend time creating or implementing new technologies.
  Excerpt 3 (1 min)
• Face to face communication is too important to not support and augment it with online communication.
  Excerpt 4 (1 min)
• Online communication upends traditional ways that communication goes on in groups in favor of more complex, collaborative and decentralized communication. This is part of CPsquare's efforts to make their communication community-centric instead of vendor-centric, because this is how skills are built, knowledge is shared and plans are implemented in reality.
  Excerpt 5 (1:40)
• Conference thoughts: Discussing how social interactions are actually organized is an intimate matter that requires vulnerability. The building of community is what's most important.  For example, when organizing a conference making sure that people know who will be there before hand and are able to continue communicating with each other afterwards is key.
  Excerpt 6 (1:30)

If you are interested in participating in CPsquare's community of practice about communities of practice, I can't recommend it highly enough. The group brings people together from around the world with skilled facilitation and organizing, offering participants a large dose of learning that they can then apply in their own communities of practice, whatever they may be. To learn more about the group's work, you can visit CPsquare.org. To learn about the coaching services for communities of practice and leaders within them that John Smith offers through his private practice, see his page LearningAlliances.net.

 

 

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