Comments on: CoP Series #2: What the heck is a Domain and why should I care?

By: Full Circle Associates » CoP Series #6: Community Leadership in Learning

Full Circle Associates » CoP Series #6: Community Leadership in Learning — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 03:16:12 +0000

[...] Sidnick. I am finally getting the rest of the series up. You can find part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 , part 5 [...]

By: Full Circle Associates » CoP Series #7: Roles and Scalability

Full Circle Associates » CoP Series #7: Roles and Scalability — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 03:12:46 +0000

[...] Sidnick. I am finally getting the rest of the series up. You can find part1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 , part 5 and part [...]

By: Full Circle Associates » CoP Series #8: Content and Community

Full Circle Associates » CoP Series #8: Content and Community — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:48:52 +0000

[...] wrote for Darren Sidnick late last year. I am finally getting the rest of the series up. Part 1, part 2, part 3,, part 4, part 5, part 6, and part 7 are all here on the [...]

By: Nancy White

Nancy White — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:00:53 +0000

Mark, it takes me months, sometimes, to respond. Terrible. First of all, I really like the magnet analogy. I think I shall borrow it for a workshop in 2 weeks.

I’d be very interested to see sample venn diagrams to see how domains interrelate. I think I could learn a lot from that. Any public examples?

By: Full Circle Associates » CoP Series #5: Is my community a community of practice?

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 19:47:14 +0000

[...] Sidnick. I am finally getting the rest of the series up. You can find part1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here and part 4 [...]

By: Mark Bennett

Mark Bennett — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:56:05 +0000

Hey Nancy – I love your comment that a “domain is what we care about together”. I guess it resonates strongly with me as when I try to explain the domain / community / practice model to people in Rio Tinto, I start off by saying something like “a domain is a fancy word for a subject – but there’s more to it than that”. And then I go on to say that a well designed domain should act as a magnet to people (I can never let go of my physics background!), and therefore the way that we articulate the domain should ATTRACT people (like a magnet does). The people who are attracted the most are likely to become core community members and be the most active – this fits well with the diagram that Etienne uses with the concentric elipses to represent community participation.

If a domain doesn’t attract people, then they probably don’t care about it. I guess we’re articulating the difference between an individual-centric view versus a community-centric view? I wouldn’t say that it’s about top-down versus bottom-up, as most of our Rio Tinto communities are bottom up; the trick either way is to get the right nurturing ingredients happening to make the CoP work.

Even if we get the domain right, but fail to use the language to describe (sell?) it properly, then we will not be doing a good job of nurturing it correctly. This language changes as a function of time, as do specialities (sub-domains) within the core domain.

One of the key subtleties about domains is to figure out how one domain relates to another – either by mapping relationships between people or Venn Diagrams.

Happy New Year!

Mark

By: Library clips :: The top-down and bottom-up creation of enterprise communities, and wikis :: December :: 2008

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 22:27:57 +0000

[...] I review that form I meet with the proposed community leader and talk to them about communities, domain, people (community), practice (output), tools, methods, participation, facilitation, structure, [...]

By: Ken Allan

Ken Allan — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:01:11 +0000

Kia ora Nancy! Gotcha!

By: Full Circle Associates » CoP Series #3: Community - without people?

Full Circle Associates » CoP Series #3: Community - without people? — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 20:54:49 +0000

[...] Part 2 is here. [...]

By: Nancy White

Nancy White — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:28:13 +0000

Ken, I’m chewing on your comment because it is not clear if we are actually talking about the same thing, or not. I see domain as the same as shared interest. In some CoPs it is very wide, some narrow, but it is interest in learning about that shared interest thingie. Not, as you say, an agreement to complete a set of interdependent tasks (at TEAM!) which of course has a natural end point.

So when a community defines its domain AT THAT MOMENT in time, it is about find ENOUGH shared interest, enough clarity, that they want to learn and practice around that domain. Does that make sense?

Shawn, my gut response on the definition — narrow or broad — is entirely contextual. For me the practical test is “is this domain important enough for me to find time to participate, to learn, to be part of the community?” I’m interested in a ton of things, but not all of them to the point of engagement in a CoP. So chocolate – VERY general topic, but I’m engaged all right. Facilitation? Too broad at this point in my personal learning trajectory, so I’m interested in specific types of facilitation, while someone new to the field may want a very broad community and may be very motivated?

Thus, your suggestion about sub-domains to me, is very relevant. The article above was written in the context of CoP as a strategy in more formal educational contexts. So again, context matters. What have you found about domain identification? (I realized I just used the word IDENTIFICATION vs DESCRIPTION. I suspect discovery is an important human pleasure!)