communities of practice

.... better than communities of preaching, I say. A knowledge-management concept (coined in 1991) that's gaining currency in the development/ non-profit sector.

Some background refs:
http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/definitions.shtml

http://slashdemocracy.org/cgi-bin/page.cgi?g=Knowledge_Management%2FCommunities_of_practice%2Findex.html

and a lit review at http://www.tfriend.com/cop-lit.htm

Now, it looks like I've been involved in CoPs for quite a while. Since I got on the internet in 1991 August, to be precise. I never knew that's what they were, though. I thought they were discussion forums, listservs and bulletin boards.

Anyway, there's a conference in New Delhi March 3-4 about CoPs for attaining the Millenium Development Goals, being organized by OneWorld South Asia .

Why am I interested in this? At work I'm trying to bring together medical practitioners, counselors and other health-care providers in India who are interested in sharing their professional experience with care for people living with HIV/AIDS, especially now that anti-retroviral medication is being made available and there are lots of attendant issues such as adherence, resistance, side-effects etc.

I'm looking for suggestions on how to best implement such CoPs using ICTs. One promising solution appears to be the community software developed by Janastu, the social-software wing of Servelots in Bangalore.

Thoughts? Please email me anytime or post a comment here.