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2010 AAP Conference |
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We want to co-create a world that works for everyone. Self-organizing Communities of Practice (CoPs) enables us to amplify our individual efforts by sharing our existing knowledge and co-creating new knowledge. By leveraging our collective knowledge, we can bring the best available knowledge to situations and opportunities we encounter and maximize our contribution to realizing our shared vision. CoPs provide a collaborative space for ideas, goals, theories, etc. to be scoped out and then developed. The type of information that is shared and learned in a CoP is boundless. The emphasis is on creating and sharing tacit knowledge or knowledge of how to do something rather than just what to do. You can think of CoPs as part of a knowledge ecosystem or garden of knowledge seeded with thought-provoking challenges, opportunities and possibilities that result in emergent knowledge. This can take the form of "how to" articles, best practices, interviews, research papers, slide presentations, show and tell presentations at next year's conference etc. Imagine what might be possible if we had CoPs for specific clinical issues, coaching, organizational and leadership development, education, training and development, marketing, research, writing/publishing, social networking or anything members of the Psychosynthesis community have purpose and passion for. The core idea is many people working as one mind. The process typically works something like this....a group self-organizes to collaborate on a problem, issue, or opportunity over a certain period of time, then publishes or otherwise makes visible how to do something. Membership in any particular CoP can come from anywhere in the world. Free online real time audio and visual collaborative tools like Open a Circle, YUGMA and Skype enable CoP members to hold virtual telepresent meetings. For example, what if 5 or 6 people decided to form a CoP around identifying the best practices involved in counseling / coaching college aged young men and women who have gotten of course. Another CoP might co-create new strategies for facilitating/coaching the evolution of relationships. Yet another group might research and or co-create new methods for facilitating the discovery of one's life purpose. What about a CoP producing a video on Compassion like this: Getting a CoP going and keeping it going can be challenging. There is a learning curve to conducting successful virtual online meetings just as there is for in person meetings. Some examples of primary challenges are: reluctance to change meeting practices, email overload, snap judging ideas, control, impatience, poor decision making, going off on tangents, rehashing old material, the IQ trap, talking too much or too little, jumping to solutions and/or failing to learn from outcomes. Establishing a meeting purpose and process, including publishing an agenda, assigning a facilitator or moderator, keeping a visible group memory and parking lot, utilizing group thinking and decision-making processes and learning from outcomes are all key collaborative best practices that facilitate the productivity and development of social capital and the evolution of the CoP. Prior to the conference we will offer an online introduction to meeting facilitation (limited to 10 to15 people). At the conference, attendees will have the opportunity to self-organize CoPs around whatever they deem purposeful, have passion for or contributes to co-creating the world we want. After the conference others may be invited to join the CoPs. What idea, daydream, passion or hope is floating around in your heart or head? Who would you like to partner or co-create with? Let's get started. See what we can lift up together by leveraging our knowledge. Keep in mind what Archimedes said, "Give me a lever long enough and I will move the earth." Peter Stonefield |
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