Knowledge Communities and Technology - The Connection Between Culture and Computing
- Dr. Moria Levy
- May 31, 2001
- 3 min read
Knowledge communities, also known as expert communities or Communities of Practice, are groups of individuals who share a common body of knowledge. Typically, this refers to a cross-functional group of people within an organization who do not sit under the same organizational affiliation, but are scattered in different locations and sometimes even in different roles.
The need for community management stems from the desire to share knowledge and expertise. These people share a common topic, but the knowledge is scattered among them. Sometimes, it is learned anew by each person as they invest organizational time and money. At other times, unfortunately, the lack of knowledge sharing leads to errors being made when knowledge is missing. The need for knowledge sharing is clear. Sharing enables Reuse (across the time axis) and enables Multi-Use (across the people axis), but more than that, it creates smart use— a platform for exchanging opinions and shared judgment. This leads to the creation of new knowledge - New Use and leveraging growth.
Community management in the technological era is easier in the long run compared to past times. Technology supports and complements face-to-face meetings. Human meetings can convene occasionally. However, these meetings are usually insufficient for creating a "living and breathing" community, as the lack of working in a shared physical location and under a uniform organizational roof can create a void. Technology's purpose is to help fill this void by creating complementary means for conversation and meetings. This is achieved by bringing people closer together, creating communication channels between them, and transferring information and knowledge that is convenient for them.
A virtual knowledge community can be built on many platforms, the most prominent being the organizational portal.
Here are several technological components that can serve as infrastructure for a virtual knowledge community:
Shared Documents: Shared documents on various topics relevant to the community.
FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions. Frequently recurring questions, along with their answers.
Banner News: News updates.
Meeting Calendar: A schedule of community meetings. For future meetings, reminders and awareness raising; for past meetings, including documentation of the meetings. Effective for enabling community members to update themselves on the content of meetings they did not attend, or if they recently joined the community, and want to update themselves on the past.
Community Member Profiles: Personal pages for all community members, including contact options. Allows learning about each community member and contacting them via email.
Feedback: Contact the community manager.
New in Community: New items. Allows everyone to receive information about new items that were added to the community and that they haven't seen yet.
Bulletin Board: Notice board.
Discussion Groups: A tool that allows each community member to present a question and direct it to the community. Effective when there are questions where it's unknown which community member knows the answer or where the answer can be found. Critical component!!!
Instant Messaging (such as ICQ): Allows you to know which community members are connected and can assist in solving a problem immediately. Effective when an immediate solution is needed while working; also effective for conference calls.
Chat: Allows entering different discussion rooms. The conversation takes place online and is not like forums, where the discussion can continue for several hours or days.
Questionnaire/Survey: Allows conducting surveys and questionnaires among community members, for example, to know which topics interest them.
Not all means will always be used, and each community or organization must choose the tools and means appropriate for them, according to the work processes they are accustomed to, their specific needs, and, of course, the technologies already existing within the organization or available to it.
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