Digital Habitats (Part 8)

This is a cross-post from my blog on the military Social Media tool milBook.

This is the eighth and last  post in a series based on the book Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities (CPsquare Publishing, © 2009) by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, and John D. Smith. This post will cover Chapters 10,11, and 12 of the text.

Chapter 10 of the book is a series of checklists and other resources designed to help a tech steward put some of the other concepts of the text into action. They are worth reviewing and using as appropriate.

Chapter 11 covers emerging trends in technology stewardship and how these trends may affect the intersection of community and technology in the digital habitats of the future. The roles in the community are blurring and the process is accelerating.

The authors explain these trends in terms of the three polarities that were defined earlier in the text and a previous post. They go on to add a fourth dimension that spans all of these polarities. Here is a brief overview of these reconfigured polarities:

1. Increased connectivity across time and space (Polarity: Dynamic fluidity of togetherness and separation)
- Ubiquitous connectivity: The progression here has been from intermittent connections using modems to the current "always on" wireless and mobile technologies.
- Virtual presence: We have gone from purely text-based interaction to virtual presence, multimedia on demand, and avatar-based environments.

2. New modes of engagement (Polarity: Reweaving participation and Reification)
- Generalized self-expression: This manifests itself through the Web 2.0 technologies that enable users to publish content rapidly and easily using blogs and "personal space" sites.
- Mass collaboration: Examples of this are wikis, tagging, social networking sites, publicly shared, interactive storage spaces.
- Creative reappropriation: This is an emerging practice where remixes, social bookmarking and personalized lists, and mashups create content from existing content.

3. Changing geographies of communities (Polarity: Dynamic group formation and multimembership)
- Homesteading on the web: The proliferation of sites, tools, and links coupled with the multiplicity of places for any topic form emergent patterns of meaning and interrelatedness.
- Dynamic boundaries: These are boundaries that are defined by activities and their traces, including the tools that rank locations and direct traffic.
- Individualization of access: RSS, personalized aggregation, customized search, and personalized access to sites allow users to individualize their online experience.

4. Toward a socially active medium (Polarity: Ability to find each other and to see the social fabric)
- Social Computing: This is the phenomenon that includes social relations and interactions as data, "folksonomies" and tagging, networking services, distributed decision making processes, reputation computing, and socially directed search all have a role.
- Semantic web: Meaning-based representation, intelligent agents, and new-generation search is changing online interaction in fundamental ways.
- Digital footprint: All this comes together to create a trail of web activities that become an expression of an online identity.

These reconfigured polarities present the tech steward a variety of challenges and opportunities, including overwhelming volume, falling into groupthink, vulnerable systems, and stretching our relationships. All must be considered as digital habitats move into the future.

Chapter 12 is also oriented to the future in that it proposes a learning agenda for technology stewardship that is an invitation to explore three areas where technology stewardship will matter:

- Serving existing communities: This includes the concepts of connectivity and proximity, shifting boundaries and peripherality, new modes of engagement, creative reappropriation and community voice, transparency in a socially active medium, and dealing with multiplicity.

- Making new communities possible: Digital habitats have the potential to enable the formation of new groups and communities. They do this by allowing people to find each other on a wider scale (size and meaningful engagement), being catalysts for communities, allowing access to living practice through virtual presence, creating complex geographies of identity and domain-based relationships, and seeing the social in the technological.

- Stretching our very notion of community: The interaction of community and technology affects both to the point of challenging our assumptions about them. The evolution of Proto-communities (emerging patterns of communities and networks) is an excellent example of this. Also, the emerging practices of stewardship that allows for balancing network and community processes is important. Finally learning between the old and the new will keep everything in perspective.

The text goes into more detail on each of these concepts.  

Supporting all of this is a literacy of technology stewardship that includes a strong understanding of the concepts of technology configuration, community polarities, and community orientations that have been covered in previous posts.  In fact, technology stewardship is on its way to becoming a community of practice in its own right as it becomes more central to the learning experience of a growing number of communities. This practice of enabling learning with technology will become increasingly widespread and the stewardship of these digital habitats an important part of the success of the communities that inhabit these virtual spaces.

I hope you have enjoyed this series of posts on a very important book. Thanks again for reading, and I invite you to post comments and questions below.

Digital Habitats (Part 7)

This is a cross-post from my blog on the military Social Media tool milBook.

This is the seventh post in a series based on the book Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities (CPsquare Publishing, © 2009) by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, and John D. Smith. This post will cover Chapter 9 of the text.

This chapter deals with the ongoing role of the tech steward in the day-to-day operation of the digital habitat for a community of practice. The authors offer various guidelines and specific suggestions, focusing on the practical activities and responsibilities, highlighting the creative, inventive, and the basic work of technology stewarding. The role of the tech steward is not just to manage the configuration, but to make it a productive habitat.

Principles of Technology Stewardship:
1. Keep the vision of your community's success above the technical details of technology implementation. Be sure to participate in the community, while maintaining a vision and using your experience to guide your goals and performance criteria. This sets tech stewards apart from IT support professionals who focus solely on the performance of the technology.

2. Keep the technology as simple as possible for the community while meeting its needs. The authors point out that the technology shapes the community and vice versa. No matter what shiny new technology you find, focus on the simplest structure in the beginning. Keeping the technology simple allows for community successes and failures to guide subsequent steps.

3. Let the configuration of technologies evolve as the community evolves. The tools used by the community will change over time as members substitute new tools for ones in the "official" configuration. A community's use of technology becomes more intricate over time. Focus on the configuration and the actual technology in use, keeping in mind that the important thing is how the tools fit the community's practices.

4. Use all the knowledge around you. People in your overall network can be your best source of information. The community has knowledge of the local technology conditions, other tech stewards can suggest technology to adopt or avoid, product focused user communities can provide context and/or advice, and you can bridge the expertise of vendors or other external technologists with your knowledge of the community. Connect and participate, share what you learn as a tech steward with others.

5. Finally, "back it up." This may be elementary, but the data brought in and created by the community is important, to include member lists, shared resources, and artifacts of shared interactions. While in some cases the IT department can be depended on for regular backups, other types of community configurations require more proactive measures from the tech steward to ensure community data is backed up. Make sure key files are saved in a redundant manner to avoid catastrophic loss of key files and artifacts.

Stewarding in the foreground is different than stewarding in the background
While there are different ideas about what a tech steward should do, there is only a finite amount of time. This makes it important to focus on what matters most to the community- where it is now and where it may be in the near future. The authors have devised the following list to help of tasks where the tech steward can invest their energies. There are two tasks where technology and the tech steward are in the foreground, and five where the tech steward works in the background. The text has a series of pointers regarding planning, technology, and practice associated with each task that I will not cover in detail here.

These activities are where the community faces major changes in its technology and the tech steward is in the foreground:

1. Implementing and deploying a new community platform or set of technologies (new or migration). This is covered in detail in other sections of the text, as the decision to implement and deploy a new community platform is one of the core tasks a tech steward is involved in.

2. Community closure and end-of-life issues for distributed communities. The tech steward has a key role as a community reaches the end of its lifecycle. These center around archiving data and artifacts, and shutting down online spaces, and related activities.

On the other hand, these are the ongoing technology activities that go on in the background of communities:

1. Supporting new members in their use of the community's technology. There are training, configuration, and orientation tasks that a tech steward may be involved in as new members join the community. The tech steward need to be aware and understand their responsibilities in the onboarding process.

2. Identifying and spreading good technology practices. The tech steward has a unique position in the community to monitor how the community is using technology and what emerging best practices are associated with each tool or configuration of tools. The tech steward should also look for ways to disseminate these best practices to the community in a timely manner.

3. Supporting community experimentation. A community's configuration will evolve over time, and the tech steward needs to take a proactive role as this process unfolds. The key actions here include encouraging this experimentation, spreading the word on successful new practices/ tools/ configurations, and acting on the results while preserving the integrity and effectiveness of the digital habitat.

4. Attending to community boundaries created by technology. There are a number of boundaries created by the community technology, mainly in the level of accessibility that a community has to the outside world. The tech steward needs to bridge these boundaries where appropriate, while honoring the members' preferences for tools and privacy.

5.Assuring continuity across technology disruptions.There are a variety of ways that the digital habitat can be disrupted. These can be created by the introduction of new tools or configurations, accidental actions that affect parts of the system, or other unforeseen technology problems (network outages, etc.). It is incumbent on the tech steward to be attentive to what is going on in the community tech environment, prevent these disruptions if possible (careful migration, etc.), and minimize the impact of the disruption to the best of their ability. There are a variety of maintenance tasks that can help prevent issues, and testing any changes in a non-production environment before implementation is also important.

Beyond cycling between stewarding in the background and the foreground, there are other factors in successful tech stewarding. Constant change in the larger tech environment as more Web 2.0 and even 3.0 technologies are introduced can challenge even the most knowledgeable and capable tech steward.

Stewarding technology involves knowing a lot but it also includes intuition, guesswork, and being able to tolerate uncertainty and not knowing. This uncertainty requires insight and inventiveness to understand the community's underlying needs regarding technology, and intuition to help determine what "good enough" looks like. This kind of work cannot be reduced down to one formula. Tech stewarding is an emerging and dynamic practice, where a good practitioner balances technical and community knowledge in order to help shape the evolution of the community and its digital habitat.


I hope you were able to get something out of this post. I will be wrapping up this series in my next offering. I welcome your questions and comments.

Digital Habitats (Part 6)

This is a cross-post from my blog on the military Social Media tool milBook.

This is the sixth post in a series based on the book Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities (CPsquare Publishing, © 2009) by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, and John D. Smith. This post will cover Chapter 8 of the text.

There comes a time in the life of a community of practice where the decision is made to change its digital habitat. This is a key time for the technology steward, as everyone is interested in what the new technology will be, and other aspects of the new system. Selection of this new habitat must be done carefully and diligently, as there are usually resources of some type involved. The authors suggest seven general acquisition strategies as shown below. Each strategy has pros and cons, and each implies a relationship with certain actors- something important when asking for help or permission. Orientations and context (covered in previous posts) will have an effect on which strategy to choose. There are also tips from the authors for each strategy. 

Strategy 1. Use what you have
This strategy may not be very exciting to the tech-savvy members of the community, but it is the simplest and least resource intensive. While this does not involve the acquisition of new technology, there may be some changes in the way the community uses their digital habitat. The pros include no budget, a low learning curve, and little or no extra negotiation with the IT department. Cons are the question of firewall access for external users (if needed) and possibly no commitment to supporting the community. Tips center around finding out what is working (or not), exploring new or more effective ways to use existing tools, assessing what's available, looking at backup tools, and if there is access to enterprise-level resources, check out strategy 3 (below).

Strategy 2. Go for the free stuff
A growing array of free community tools and technology are available for groups with little or no resources. These are also attractive as many communities have no dedicated IT resources. Pros are the price and the ease of use and setup of many of the tools, low-risk experimentation (especially for tech-savvy members), and often the functionality of the free tools rival many expensive solutions. The cons include the presence of advertising, the potential difficulty in integration, and the need to jump between tools (which can be hard for less technology inclined members). Tips are back up your data in case of a change in the tool, consider whether archives and control are important to the community (it may make this a bad choice), consider blending free tools with other tools you already have or can acquire, and check user forums associated with the free tools to see what issues other users are having with the tool or platform- this can also give an indication on the level of support available.

Strategy 3. Build on an enterprise platform
Communities may have access to enterprise-level portals, tools for virtual teams, and collaboration platforms. They can provide rich resources for a small community of practice that would not generally need such an expensive feature-rich solution. These can be useful solutions for one community, and also support multiple communities as well. Pros center around encouragement to use the tool to make it easier for the IT department, usually not needing a technology budget, improved visibility for the community within the larger organization, and the good document management and other functionality of an enterprise solution. Cons are the potential lack of adequate collaboration facilities because the community is not the focus of the system, the need to adjust the facilities to support the community, and the possibility of needing some customizations to meet all of the community's needs.

Strategy 4. Get a commercial platform
Choosing a commercial community platform can go a long way toward meeting many of a community's needs all at once. This strategy is useful when communities prefer a "one-stop shop" or do not have a clear sense of its orientations and wants a variety of tool options. Some platforms are designed for communities of practice, and they can provide the community a distinct sense of identity. However, it may compete with other technologies in the members' daily lives. There is a separate issue of selecting the specific platform, keeping in mind the needs of the community as outlined elsewhere in the text. Pros revolve around having a community-specific platform that can provide a lot of tools, the support that a vendor can bring to the community, and the opportunity to get a quick start due to the burden of technology being on someone else's shoulders. Cons include cost- these platforms can be priced differently (which might limit the number of members), there may be resistance from the IT department- especially if it is an externally hosted solution, and the integration with back-end systems may be complicated as well. Tips are careful consideration of the list of tools available making sure they meet the community's needs, develop a relationship with the vendor, ensuring that the platform is configured properly (not just the default settings), and taking time to consider how the platform will be present in the life of the members.

Strategy 5. Build your own
Some communities or companies have the skills and willingness to create their own community platform. This can be a very flexible but risky endeavor, and implies a close relationship with a developer plus a deliberate investment of time and resources. Pros are focusing on specific needs of the community and developing tools to meet those needs, the prospect of having a unique and useful solution, and where programming costs are lower (using students or outsourcing/ off-shoring) this strategy can be very effective. The cons focus on the fact that this is not an easy strategy, can be very resource intensive, can still not meet the needs of the community, and the potential for developers to focus on functions not how members use the functions. Tips are explore the market to make sure this is the right choice, determine whether building a platform is part of your community's learning process, have a contingency budget for scope increases, and consider whether a unique tool is really right for your community given it can be a barrier to participation in some aspects.

Strategy 6. Use open-source tools
A possibility that may be present in all other strategies is that the tools selected are open-source (or Free and Open Source Software- FOSS). This means that the software itself is no-cost but usually requires customization and configuration to make it useful to the community. The community of practice may actually even make changes to the code and contribute it back to  the larger FOSS community. Many open-source projects are communities of practice themselves, and this may be a driver in selecting this type of solution. Pros include the increasing variety and quality of FOSS collaboration tools, an active user community, and the fact that as these are used they continue to mature. Cons are mainly that this type of system still requires substantial programming and configuration, there is still a cost to configure and host the software, and the fact that not all FOSS is stable and mature. Tips are making sure to evaluate the maturity of the software, consider the configuration costs, observe the community around the product, and evaluate whether commercial versions of the FOSS would be a better choice given the community's needs.

Strategy 7. Patch elements together
Advanced Web 2.0 technologies allow communities to construct their own platforms by patching together easily available pieces, sometimes even with no programming skills. These technologies allow for a level of integration that is more than the "use free things" strategy, as not everyone is adept at jumping from tool to tool. Really Simple Syndication (RSS), Open Application Programming Interfaces (API's), Widgets, and Mashups are some of these technologies. Currently this strategy still requires some technical knowledge, but as this technology advances it should become easier over time. Pros are the flexibility to add and subtract tools and content incrementally over time, it allows for creative tech stewarding (as it lets less technical individuals do the work), and it allows gradual evolution instead of migrations from platform to platform. Cons include the tendency for "cool" enhancements to not serve the full community all the time, the ease of change which could allow for casual introduction of widgets which can disrupt some community members, the withdrawal of support for some of these widgets, and the potential for the introduction of malware using widgets as an attack vector into the community. Tips are make sure to have the ability to test new feeds, mashups, and widgets "off to the side" before allowing widespread use in the community and to remove feeds and widgets that fall into disuse.

Each strategy takes a slightly different approach to acquiring software for the community. Each one can build upon community circumstances and needs and has budget, resource availability, and technology comfort implications. As the community makes incremental changes to its digital habitat, the authors also have a few overall tips:

Start with the simplest, least expensive solution that will work. Identify tools that are available and make sure that you need to do anything at all, especially if it costs money. Justify the decision with real community experience.

Learn from other communities and their tech stewards. Once a strategy is picked, reach out to others that have used the strategy and talk with them.

Develop a testing plan. Depending on the strategy, find a way to include your community in testing the technology solution. Ask for test space from the vendor (and if they don't give it to you, beware...) and use free tools for small experimental activities with the community.

Once you recover from the first round, keep an eye out for what is next.  This is a cyclical process, and the strategy may change in the next cycle. Evaluate the community's experience and learn how to better meet the community's technology needs, then prepare for the next cycle of decision making.

Please comment or ask questions below. Thanks for reading.

Digital Habitats (Part 5)

This is a cross-post from my blog on the military Social Media tool milBook.

This is the fifth post in a series based on the book Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities (CPsquare Publishing, © 2009) by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, and John D. Smith. This post will cover Chapter 7 of the text.

This chapter describes the contextual factors involved in making pragmatic technology decisions that shape a community's digital habitat. These factors are important because neither communities or technologies exist in isolation.

The first context is the community's state of readiness for technology change. The stage of community development is important, as the technology needs of a community will change over time. The diversity and complexity of the community is another factor in the technology needs of a community. Experience with the use of technology can influence whether the community will be able to adopt new technology easily, or will be disrupted by the change in digital habitat. Finally, the community attitudes about technology can substantially impact the decision to make technology changes, and how the changes will be implemented.

The community's relationship with its environment has direct technology implications. Organizational relationships are very important, especially if the community is completely contained in one organization, as this has a wide range of impacts including resources, accountability, and compliance with various organizational standards. The relationship of the community to an IT department or provider has wide-ranging implications on a community's digital habitat. The IT department may have standards or procedures that will need to be followed that may or may not be optimum for the community. Another factor is the community's need to be connected to the outside world, as this will need to be facilitated by the technology. Multimembership must be considered when making technology decisions, as there are ways to make it easier for members to be part of many other groups in addition to the particular community of practice. The way the community addresses security is very important to how its technology is configured. Security touches many parts of the digital habitat and is a key part of its environment.

Time and sequencing issues can influence the decision about what and when a new technology is implemented. Community schedules are a very important consideration, as the change can be more or less disruptive depending on the timing and coordination with the community schedule. There can also be external schedules that need to be taken into account. Although a current decision may be pending, sometimes it is in the best interest of the community to wait, keeping in mind there will be other chances to make the change.

Budgets and resource considerations have a large impact on the technology of a community, as it usually serves to constrain any decisions about changing the digital habitat. Resources usually affects the scope of what can be changed as there is a tradeoff between scope and available resources. Contributors, decision makers, and stakeholders are generally the controllers of the community's resources, and having them on board before making changes is very important. Technical resources and expertise will have a big impact on the technology of the community and the choices that are made. Above all, the tech steward's time is a key resource to be taken into account when any technology decisions need to be made, as this can affect what technology is chosen and how it is maintained and operated.

Finally, the infrastructure considerations are very influential in the technology decisions around a community of practice. Online access and the individual technical settings must be accounted for. Hosting and vendor relationships have wide-ranging impacts on community technology. The options of using an Application Service Provider (ASP), internal hosting, working with software vendors, or programming a solution internally must be carefully evaluated in light of what the community's needs entail. Relationships with internal IT resources and system requirements also need to be part of the assessment of technology and how it will be configured and/or changed. The need for single sign-on and the potential installation of client software can affect these relationships substantially.

Due to the complexity of a community's digital habitat, a tech steward many need to pay attention to a daunting number of contextual factors when making technology decisions for the community. The bottom line is that the tech steward should try to stay aware of the context of the community at all times as it evolves and understand how that context affects technology stewardship.

Please post comments below as you are so inclined.

Digital Habitats (Part 4)

This is a cross-post from my blog on the military Social Media tool milBook.

This is the fourth post in a series based on the book Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities (CPsquare Publishing, © 2009) by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, and John D. Smith. This post will cover Chapter 6 of the text.

People experience being part of a community in a variety of ways: communities have different styles. That's why different habitats work better for different communities. The text refers to this as having different orientations toward the process of learning together. An orientation is a typical pattern of activities and connections through which members experience being a community. The authors have observed nine orientations that have implications for the selection of technology (the order does not suggest ranking). Orientations are not mutually exclusive, and they reflect the importance communities place on various ways of being together. This post will briefly review these orientations, what constitute signs of life and success factors, some key questions, and the technology implications for each orientation.

1. Meetings: Communities with this orientation place emphasis on gathering at a certain time to engage in shared activities. These meetings can be face-to-face or blended, online synchronous, and/or online asynchronous. Signs of life for this orientation are regular, well attended meetings, with enthusiasm to participate, connections with others, and successful outcomes. Success factors center around meeting practices, the member experience of the meetings,and the flexibility in the agenda to allow for spontaneous interactions. Questions have to do with the details of the meetings (size, composition, and logistics). Technology implications for this orientation include the use of technology for online meetings, and how technology can facilitate the face-to-face meetings of the community.

2. Open-ended conversations: Some communities never meet, but instead learn through ongoing conversations. These open-ended conversations can be single-stream, multi-topic, and distributed. Signs of life are a sustained flow of contributions and responses. Success factors include having enough variance in the topics, enough contributions to feel active but not overwhelming, active participation by a representative segment of the community, and a well-organized conversation archive that prevents circular conversation and allows newcomers to get up to speed quickly. Questions center around user preferences around conversations, accessing and harvesting conversations, and multilingual requirements. The technology implications are a selection of the right tool for the conversations (email, chat room, wiki, blog, threaded discussion) and how to configure these tools to best facilitate the conversations.

3. Projects: In some communities, members want to focus on particular topics and really go deep and collaborate on projects that solve problems or produce artifacts. Learning is not just a matter of sharing knowledge or discussing issues, but instead is something done together in order to develop their practice. Projects usually involve a subgroup of a community, and can take the form of co-authoring a document, a practice group, project team, or instruction. Signs of life are committed engagement in producing some change in the community's world, such as developing a useful artifact, addressing a recurring problem, or responding to a challenge. Key success factors include collective definition of projects, coordination and leadership, adequate communication between subgroups and the community, and compliance with internal project management process and procedures (if applicable). Questions center around project activities,the requirements to enable project completion, and how the project will connect to the rest of the community. Projects create several technology implications mainly around virtual spaces (including space creation and security), collaboration methods for the team, technology to allow sharing from the project to the community, and how to enable creation and storage of artifacts.

4. Content: Some communities are mainly interested in creating, sharing, and providing access to documents, tools, and other content. Valuable and well-organized content is useful for members; can attract new members and makes it possible to offer a community's expertise to others. Content orientation can include a library, structured self-publishing, open self-publishing, and content integration. Signs of life include the regular creation or identification of new material and frequent downloads or use of existing material; active involvement with content- discussing, tagging, commenting, remixing, reorganizing, and exploring relevance. Key success factors are a careful and ongoing organization of content, a flexible taxonomy, ease of publishing internally and externally, ease of creating new content, archiving of aging material, use of tools that invite active involvement with documents,and excellent search capabilities. Questions refer to frequency of activities around content, use of content, types of artifacts, responsibility for maintaining content, and access to content. The technology implications focus on content management: uploading, organizing, combining, search, application of taxonomies, and editorial functions. In addition to managing artifacts, enabling conversations around the content is also important.

5. Access to expertise: Some communities create value by providing focused and timely access to expertise in the community's domain, both internally and externally. Communities with this orientation focus on answering questions, providing advise, or engaging in just-in-time problem solving. This includes access via questions and requests, direct access to explicitly designated experts, shared problem solving, knowledge validation, and apprenticeship and mentoring. Signs of life are rapid and reliable responses to requests for expert advice and assistance; well-established methods for eliciting community expertise- people should know who to approach for specific expertise. Key success factors consist of known or designated holders of expertise, quick access to reliable sources of information and quick responses from experts, accurate routing to best sources of help, reliability of responses established by reputation or through a validation process. Questions to consider include how to get rapid access to information and advice, the importance of formal validation, discovery of experts and expertise, status as a center of excellence, the employment of outside experts and their support requirements, and the size of the group that needs to interact, as this makes a difference in the type of support needed. There are several technology implications with this orientation, including determining the best mode of communication (synchronous or asynchronous), the level of automation of discovery and archiving of expertise, and the technology around validating the answers provided by experts.

6. Relationships: Some communities focus on relationship building among members as the basis for both learning and being available to each other. Communities with this orientation place a high value on knowing each other personally. This is done by connecting, knowing about people, and interacting informally. Signs of life are networking, bonding, friendship, references to personal lives in conversations. Key success factors consist of ways for people to get to know each other and build their identities, opportunities to connect informally beyond community events, networkers acting as connectors with other people,and having individual control over personal disclosure and exposure. Questions revolve around how members are drawn to the community, how important trust is to the ability to learn from each other, the level of curiosity and willingness to disclose information and investing the time to get acquainted outside the domain-oriented interactions, and the size of the community and the need for widespread connections coupled with whether the community is open or closed. Relationships are between people, technology seems less relevant. However, the advent of online social networking  and social media have enabled the creation of online relationships. These relationships can grow without the participants ever meeting each other face-to-face, to include immersive environments such as Second Life. In these cases the technology can actually foster the creation of communities.

7. Individual participation: Learning together happens in the context of a group, but it is realized in the experience of individuals. Increasingly, their participation in any community takes place in the context of multimembership in many other communities- a factor that is bound to give them a unique perspective in any given community or facet of community life. The main variants of this orientation include varying and selective participation, personalization, individual development, and multimembership. Signs of life are where members develop their own style of participation and are aware that others develop their own styles, they feel they have a meaningful connection to the community regardless of the form of their participation, and the community welcomes, supports, and thrives on this diversity. Key success factors center around valuing diversity, supporting and facilitating different levels and modes of participation, practices and tools that are used to bridge between interaction modes, communicating preferences, availability, and multimembership, obvious customization options, and the ability of members to manage their interactions across different tools and communities. Questions go to the extent that the community's success depends on uniform participation experiences, the degree of diversity of the members in terms of proficiency in the core practice and learning styles, the amount of ownership members take in their own learning compared to how much they expect this to be defined by the community, and how many communities members belong to simultaneously and if they require the use of different tools. The technology implications of this orientation are mainly focused on the individualization of the experience using technology, bridging the the various modes of participation, and supporting the multimembership paradigm.  

8. Community cultivation: While many communities are content with loose self-organization, other thrive on attention to community cultivation. For different reasons, the success of the community comes to depend on a high level of ongoing attention to process and content. Variants to this orientation include democratic governance, strong core group, internal coordination, and external facilitation. Signs of life are that the community's activities are well planned, its reference materials are well produced and well organized. and members find someone that is always very responsive to their requests, contributions, and changing needs. Key success factors consist of efforts made to support the community are appreciated by other members, enough time is available to engage in cultivation, the personality, skills, and leadership of those who take on the community cultivation roles, and good succession planning for transitions. Questions refer to the needed information to cultivate the community, the actions the cultivators should take in regards to technology and how it affects participation, and what the community culture is around feedback tools so they are not "gamed" and give accurate results. The technology to support this orientation can be fairly basic (telephone, email, etc.) but can also include online polls and conversation management systems.

9. Serving a context: All communities of practice are oriented to their members' learning experience, but they also exist in a context that can influence how this learning takes place. In some cases, serving a specific context becomes central to the community's identity and the ways it operates. This context may be inside or outside of a larger organization, and can even be global. Variations on this orientation thus can be organization as context, cross-organization context, a constellation of related communities, or a public mission. Signs of life are community members fully engaged in the mission defined by their context, and reciprocal recognition and resources from people outside the community. Key success factors include clarity on the community context, channels for negotiating the relationship of the community to its context (such as organizational sponsorship), recognized and supported boundary roles that serve the orientation to context, tools that enable outsiders to interact with the community that reflect their needs and openness of the community, and ease of granting controlled or open access to the community. Questions are around the goals, agenda, or mission that the community is serving, the extent that the community has to keep track of its activities and it learning to justify itself to outside constituencies, the importance for the community's technology infrastructure to be integrated with broader information systems, whether the community is open or closed, the importance of having the community visible and accessible to non-members accounting for their needs and current methods of interaction, and how members integrate their community activities with their other activities, such as their job in their organizations. There are major technology implications for a context orientation, mainly in regards to integration of the technology with other systems and also the ability to control access to the extent needed by the community.

Understanding the orientation of a community of practice can improve the performance of its tech steward, but also can assist a member in being a better participant of that community. Orientations create specific technology-related challenges in many different ways, especially around compatibility with existing infrastructures. Also, many communities span different orientations, and also can change orientation over time. All of this will affect the technology needed to support the learners of the CoP.

The last few posts have established a frame of reference for both communities and their digital habitats. This has been done both from the perspective of how technology can affect communities, and how communities can influence their supporting technology. The next few posts will use this context to go into more detail around specific practices of technology stewardship.

Thank you for reading this post. Please ask questions and comment on your thoughts around this topic.

Digital Habitats (Part 3)

This is a cross-post from my blog on the military Social Media tool milBook.

This is the third post in a series based on the book Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities (CPsquare Publishing, © 2009) by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, and John D. Smith. This post will cover Chapters 4 and 5 of the text.

This post will deal with the central concept of the book, the idea of the digital habitat. Communities of Practice need habitats to learn together.A digital habitat refers to the portion of a community's habitat that is enabled by a configuration of technologies. Just as a natural habitat reflects the learning of the species, a digital habitat is not just a configuration of technologies, but a dynamic, mutually-defining relationship that depends on the learning of the community. It reflects the practices that members have developed to take advantage of the technology available to create a sense of  "place" for the community. A digital habitat is first and foremost an experience of place enabled by technology. 

To help make sense of ways in which technology can be experienced as a habitat for the community, the authors propose four perspectives called the Constitution of the Habitat:

Tools that support specific activities. Tools are a discrete piece of technology that supports a specific activity or activities in the community. The tool perspective is important because it addresses the functional adequacy of the habitat is supporting all the relevant activities. Tools are the primary entry point for tech stewards, as they anchor the construction of the habitat in the specific demands of what a community is trying to do.
 
Platforms into which vendors and developers package tools. Platforms in this context are technology packages that integrate a number of tools available in the marketplace (for purchase or for free) that one can acquire, install, or rent. Even Skype, something normally considered just a tool,  is actually a platform as it supports voice calls, conference calls, presence, chat, directories, and other capabilities. Platform focused considerations include questions that reflect the feasibility of acquiring, deploying, and using one or more tools together. There are several factors when selecting a platform such as features, usability, scalability, and sustainability which need to be evaluated against the needs of the community. Platforms are a secondary but important entry point for tech stewards as it reflects the availability of the technology for constructing the habitat.

Features that help make tools and platforms useable and "liveable". A feature is a characteristic that makes a tool or platform usable for a specific purpose. Some features define a tool, others add to its functionality or to the enjoyment of the experience, such as the ability to preview posts, and flagging of new content. Some features are very concrete facilities that are almost "mini-tools". Other features serve as subtle and pervasive design characteristics, such as a consistent user interface across a platform, consistent navigation, or adherence to data exchange or platform interface standards. The features of a tool or platform determine its usability for a given community, and thus determine the "habitability" of the habitat. Tech stewards need to evaluate features in context, and balance features that enhance functionality, flexibility, or security, with the need for simplicity and ease of use.

Configuration of technologies that sustain the habitat (which is rarely confined to one platform). This means the overall set of technologies that serve as a substrate for a community's habitat at a given point in time-whether tools belong to a single platform, multiple platforms, or are free-standing. For communities with complex sets of activities, the full configuration often involves multiple platforms, or selected tools from different platforms combined with a main platform. The configuration perspective includes all relevant technologies in play, both those used "by everyone" and those brought in by individual community members, either temporarily or permanently. Tech stewards need to view the community's configuration broadly enough to include all relevant tools yet narrowly enough to make visualization of the whole practical.

As a substrate of the habitat, the notion of configuration suggest pieces that "fit together". However, nothing guarantees that the tools in a given configuration will be integrated is such a way that the community will experience them as a coherent habitat. There are both functionality and usability questions that determine the level of integration needed for the habitat. There are four perspectives that suggest different ways that integration can be achieved and sustained, ranging from mostly designed into technology to mostly dependent on the on the community:

Integration through platforms: This method of integration relies on the use of a single platform to achieve a uniform user experience. While this is a simple solution technologically, there may be tradeoffs in regards to feature or configuration for the community.

Integration through interoperability: Using this method of integration involves a combination of tools or platforms that come together using interoperable standards or technology to provide a more uniform and simpler user experience. This can be a technologically complex undertaking, but the ability to use disparate tools and/or (and maybe leverage existing technology) makes this an attractive option.

Integration through tools: This method takes advantage of a separate tool, like an RSS aggregator or a tool that can connect to multiple chat systems, to provide unified functionality for the user. While this could add another tool to the habitat, it is also a less technology-intensive solution.

Integration through practice: Using practices to piece together disparate technologies is not generally the best method to integrate tools, but sometimes it is the only way. The concept of  "sneakernetting" or moving data using physical media from one computer to another is an example of integration through practice. Using practices to integrate tools or platforms does not involve making changes to the technology, but it can detract from the user experience of the habitat.

The best way to understand how technology contributes to community life is to consider fundamental challenges communities face in trying to learn together. We can use these challenges to make sense of the broad landscape of tools that have been adopted by communities. Here are three key challenges that drive communities to adopt technology as pairs of concepts called polarities:

Rhythms: togetherness and separation. Time and space present a challenge for communities. Forming a community of practice requires many sustained conversations over a relatively long period of time. Tools can foster these conversations by either bringing the community together for a synchronous collaborative session or foster asynchronous collaboration that allows users to interact while separated by distance or time.

Interactions: participation and reification. The polarity of participation and reification is a process of meaning-making that is fundamental to the learning theory of communities of practice. On one hand, members engage directly in activities, conversations, reflections and other forms of personal participation in the learning of the community. On the other hand, members produce physical and conceptual artifacts- words, tools, concepts, methods and other forms of reification- that reflect their shared experience and around which they organize their participation. (Literally, reification means "making into an object".) Technology contributes to both of these polarities, and complimentary tools and platforms can be used to support either participation or reification as needed for community members to further their mutual learning.


Identities: individual and group. Learning together is a complex achievement that weaves communal and individual engagement, aspirations, and identities. While learning together is a key component of any community of practice, often members cannot always participate in this group learning experience. This is usually due to being in multiple communities, or online social networks that can consume an inordinate amount of an individual's time and energy. Technology contributes to the tension between individual and groups and also can increase the complexity of the polarity. While a tool may be designed for groups, it is largely used individually, often when one is alone. Technology can help manage this complexity, and also open the possibility of more meaningful multi-membership in many communities.  As this multi-membership becomes more common, tools to manage this group/ individual polarity are an increasingly central contribution of technology.

These polarities do not cover everything there is to say about the challenges of community formation and development. However they do capture something fundamental about communities- something that has to do with their physical, social, and political nature, not the technology. The authors used these polarities to compile a diagram (this version located here) that maps the relationship of general categories of tools to the various polarities:

Much of the balance of the text goes into more detail about selecting tools for communities based on analysis using many of the concepts shown above. Tool and platform selection is a key part of being a tech steward. A good working knowledge of the ideas of constitution, integration, and polarities is very important to providing quality technical stewardship to a community of practice.

I hope you found this post interesting and thought provoking. I encourage you to post comments and questions.

Digital Habitats (Part 2)

This is a cross-post from my blog on the military Social Media tool milBook.

This is the second post in a series based on the book Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities (CPsquare Publishing, © 2009) by Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, and John D. Smith. This post will cover Chapter 3 of the text.

One of the key concepts of the book revolves around the idea of Technology Stewardship. Every Community of Practice (CoP) that uses the Internet for its learning environment should have someone responsible to make sure that digital habitat is meeting the needs of its members. This person is known as a tech steward. They take responsibility for the community's technological resources for a time, working at the intersection between technology and the community. Technology stewarding adopts a community's perspective to help a community choose, configure, and use technologies to best suit its needs. Tech stewards attend to both what happens spontaneously and what can happen purposefully, by plan and by cultivation of insights into what actually works.

Technology stewarding is both a perspective and a practice. It can be considered a collection of activities carried out by the individual tech stewards and as a role within the community. The perspective is a natural outcome of taking care of a community that's using technology to learn together. Adopting the perspective means becoming sensitive to many different social and technical issues, and developing a language to give the perspective voice and precision. Good tech stewards provide the level of technical expertise needed by a particular community. Their role may be invisible or limited if the technology does not grow beyond the initial needs of the community. Other develop complex configurations that need constant and deliberate attention.

The text provides this definition:

Technology stewards are people with enough experience of the workings of a community to understand its technology needs, and enough experience with or interest in technology to take leadership addressing those needs. Stewarding typically includes selecting and configuring technology, as well as supporting its use in the practice of the community. 

This definition is meant to clearly distinguish between technology stewardship and traditional IT support. By emphasizing the experience with the workings of the community, this highlights the insider perspective that shines a very specific light on the potential fit between community aspirations and technology. This insider perspective also emphasizes the practices that community has to develop to leverage technology. Most tech stewards are members of their community, and may take on other leadership roles as well.

Technology stewardship is something anyone can do. It does not require absolute expertise with technology, but enough to play the role- for instance, to see the potential usefulness of a tool or represent the community's needs to other technologists. In some communities, technology is the focus of one individual or a small group. In other cases, the work can be shared more widely or even be dispersed across an entire community, as often happens in technology-oriented communities where almost everyone shares the responsibility. Stewarding technology should be treated as a team sport for two reasons. First, it helps to have a group within a community share the work-or at least share in the understanding of the role. Second, it helps to connect with other stewards (from whatever community) who can provide a larger context, offer support, share ideas, tips, and innovation, and help in pressuring a tool developer to address community needs. Still, many tech stewards struggle alone. For the purpose of the text, tech stewards are referred to as if it were a distinct role carried out by one person.

Technology stewardship involves several streams of activity. These streams can become more or less salient at various times,but they should not be thought of as a sequence. They mostly run in parallel and constantly inform each other. 

Community understanding: The first and foremost activity of a tech steward is to understand their community and its evolution well enough to be able to respond to its expressed and unexpressed needs with respect to technology. This understanding of how the community functions includes its key activities, member characteristics, subgroups, boundaries, aspirations, potential, limitations, as well as its context.


Technology awareness: With the community perspective in mind, tech stewards need to have enough awareness of technology developments to have a sense of what is available and possible. Technology awareness requires an informal but ongoing scanning of the technology landscape-through personal experience, playfulness, conversations, reading, or participation in technology-oriented communities.

Selection and installation: The combination of community understanding and technology awareness should enable tech stewards to help their communities make informed choices about technology. This involves both small and large decisions, such as selecting a whole new platform, choosing to upgrade to a new version of a tool, or advising the community to settle for what is "good enough" at the moment. The technical aspects of selection and installation may necessitate additional expertise to help in the process.

Adoption and transition: Selection and installation are only half of the equation. Tech stewards also need to shepherd their community through the process of adopting (or rejecting) the new technology. Tech stewards can play a a critical role in taking their communities through the learning curve usually associated with technology adoption and transition.

Everyday use: Tech stewards need to integrate the use of technology into the everyday practice of the community as it evolves. This stream of activities involves all sorts of tasks, from the mundane to the sophisticated. It has technical aspects such as tool management, upgrades, access and security, and backups. It also has community aspects such as onboarding newcomers, and spreading new practices associated with the use of tools, helping craft agreements about technology use, and building capacity for stewarding in others. These tasks require observing, listening, inventing, and teaching. They also help tech stewards maintain the ongoing understanding of the community necessary for seeing emerging needs and participating actively in its evolving self-design from the technology side.

While the role of the tech stewards play depends on the communities they serve, there are some characteristics that the authors have observed in practice:


About technology and practice: While knowledge of technology is a key asset, tech stewards pay attention to how technology is used to achieve community ends. The alignment of tech stewards with the values and direction of a community makes them able to contribute in ways that technical experts might not.


A broker: Tech stewards often server as brokers between the community and the technical resources in its vicinity, such as an IT department, an open source community, or a vendor's support organization. A broker is in a position to appreciate the concerns and knowledge resources of people who can't always talk to each other directly.

Part-time/ voluntary/ paid: The tech steward role is usually part-time -whether it is an ad hoc response to a need or a longer-term commitment. Since participation in most communities of practice is itself part-time and voluntary,the amount of time available for for the role of tech steward is also limited. Having the technologists in an IT department recognize the legitimacy of the tech steward's role will save wear and tear on voluntary tech stewards.

Occasional visibility: In periods of stability the role may not be very visible- until problems arise or new technologies are introduced. There is work to be done in the background, nevertheless. When technology problems arise or new technologies are introduced, the visibility of and demands on tech stewards can change dramatically.

People take on the role of tech steward for very different reasons, from personal interest to curiosity to generosity. Others are thrust into the role without much of a choice. Why would anyone accept the role, much less volunteer for it? Even though the role is important to the community, tech stewards need to be clear about the benefits for signing up for a role with a steep learning curve. Some of these benefits include: satisfaction in serving the community (and taking up the role if no one else is doing it), leadership opportunities, learning and growing technical skills, and building a reputation among the community and its leadership.

The nature and relevance of technology stewarding depends on the community and its circumstances. The role presents different kinds of challenge, depending on the community size, stage of development, diversity, level of support, membership age, organizational setting, and interest in technology. A key factor affecting stewarding is where the community is situated. Stewarding within an organization involves control of resources (and interacting with an IT department), being involved in standard-setting activities, and facilitating the interplay between the organization and the community. Stewarding across organizational boundaries or outside organizations usually means that the tech steward must find resources and support for the community, bridge organizational boundaries between organizations, defining a community space outside of an organization, and establishing responsibility to the community or defining connection to other communities. There is also a circumstance where a tech steward may be stewarding across multiple communities within or across organizational boundaries. This involves a different and potentially complicated method of stewardship, but can also allow for sharing of resources and expertise across several communities.

Are you a tech steward for your community? Do you have the role and the skills to support a community of practice with technology? There are many such positions across many different organizations, and I have the privilege of fulfilling this role and find it to be very rewarding. The subsequent posts on this topic will delve more into the details of tech stewarding, including characteristics of digital habitats, evaluating and selecting technology, and more about supporting communities.

As always, I encourage your comments and questions.