Communities of PracticeIncreasing inclusiveness? Increasing value?Increasing collaboration? Real trends or wishful thinking?

Neil Pakenham-Walsh & Ivan Kulis(with thanks to Adrian Bannister)

What are CoPs?“A community of practice is a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do, and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” http://wenger-trayner.com/

• Virtual CoPs with a focus on international development, health and social justice.

• Some virtual CoPs work towards an agreed shared vision, eg HIFA (‘Community of Purpose’).

• For the purpose of our presentation, the term CoPs does not include:• project teams • groups that are exclusive (eg groups whose

membership is largely or wholly confined to a single organisation or professional group)

Virtual CoPs in international devt

• For the purpose of our presentation, we are looking especially at transparent, virtual CoPs that are open to anyone.

• Transformational - transcend organisations, geographical

location, and professional status.

Virtual CoPs in international devt

Examples of CoPsKM4Dev (Knowledge Management for

Development)HIFA (Healthcare Information For All)Pelican (Evaluation and communication in

development cooperation)

(The above are examples of Dgroups, but there are many other platforms, non-commercial & commercial)

Why are CoPs important?

Sustainable Development Goals:“This Agenda is a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity… All countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership, will implement this plan…”

Trends or wishful thinking?Three ‘trends’.

We think these trends are actually happening and that they are hugely important. We propose them to start a discussion and debate to continue tomorrow. You may or may not agree. You may want to propose different trends.

Vital for the future not only of CoPs, but for international development generally.

CoPs have the potential to make a huge contribution to international development, provided they are supported and enabled towards inclusiveness, value and collaboration.

1.Increasing inclusiveness?Trends:

●Increased connectivity

●Increased mobile phone ownership

●Increased social interaction and knowledge sharing

●Political commitment to increase inclusiveness

Inclusiveness: opportunities

●More and more people will be able to participate in CoPs

●Increase in knowledge sharing, joint knowledge production, content curation, etc.

●Ability to hear voices that currently can not be heard

●Increasing sophistication on machine translation and accessibility tools

Inclusiveness: challenges● Access does not mean inclusiveness

● Psychological barriers to participate in an online CoP (eg. communication apprehension)

● “Social” and CoPs could be perceived as a political threat (Arab spring)

● Personal and professional reticence to express political views in a CoP

● CoPs are mainly in English

● Technical barriers will remain

Inclusiveness: call for action

●Support CoPs towards greater inclusiveness

●Enable all global citizens to contribute to international development and social justice, regardless of their language, professional status, educational level, and sociocultural background.

2. Increasing value?Trends:

●Increasing value to ○ CoP participants

○ Organisations

○ Global partnership for sustainable development (SDGs)

●M&E is improving (although still very difficult)

Opportunities●Increasing value to

○ CoP participants ⇒ enhance social and personal learning + personal profiling

○ Organisations ⇒ capture tacit knowledge + corporate visibility and networking

○ Global partnership for sustainable development (SDGs) ⇒ catalyse multidisciplinary collaboration + inform policy making

ChallengesIncreasing value to

CoP participants ⇒ lack of time to read and engage + difficulty to find the relevant CoP

Organisations ⇒ for administrators: lack of courses on online CoP management skills + CoP open nature can be perceived negatively

Global partnership for sustainable development (SDGs) ⇒ fragmented ecosystem meaning that we are unable to function collectively + lack of research on the impact of CoPs

Call for actionCoPs committed to gathering evidence of

• Member needs• Explicit added value• Online CoP management practices that

work in specific contexts

We should support CoPs through

Research on CoPs impactProviding courses on online CoP

management

3. Increasing collaboration?Trends: - Collaboration within CoPs- Collaboration among CoPs- Growing global ‘culture of

collaboration’ (SDGs)

Opportunities

The emergence of CoPs is a new and exciting phenomenon in an increasingly connected world. Collaboration among all stakeholders in international development and social justice is possible, including and especially those who are currently excluded and disadvantaged. This has the potential progressively to improve international development policy and practice.

ChallengesThe current ecosystem of CoPs is highly fragmented and their

number is increasing, with much duplication and overlap. There is no easy way for individuals to identify the CoP that might be most useful for them. Once one is a member of a CoP it is not always easy to identify potential collaborators from among the other members.

Triangle of public sector, private sector and civil society

Political and commercial influences against true collaboration for vested interests

Call for action:• Communities of practice:

- promote inclusiveness, value, collaboration- global map of CoPs - demonstrate impact

• Organisations and funders to embrace the potential of CoPs and provide an enabling environment for CoPs to reach their full potential.

ConclusionCoPs have a huge unrealised potential to contribute to international development.

Three important contributions: Increasing inclusivneness, Increasing value, Increasing collaboration

We have outlined some of the trends, challenges and opportunities we see for the future of CoPs. There are doubtless many others that we haven’t thought of. We look forward to your comments and suggestions.

Thank you