just one more thought for the recipe, in terms of a possibly overlapping network of people who are involved with the same sort of thing, in a large organisation not *that* far away.

[OK, there's a risk that collating a toolkit shades over into maintaining (gardening?) the community of interest around it, but...]

In May this year the British Institute of Health Informatics (an NHS-sponsored thing I think) ran a day on ‘The Power and Perils of Social Networking in the NHS’ and then set up a wiki to develop some of the themes highlighted at the event. This does contain some useful material, and those concerned in each could constitute a support circle somewhere on your (necessary) multiple-venn diagram?

The wiki needs an invitation to access it though, and perhaps here Rowan Purdy (was Head of Knowledge Services at the Care Services Improvement Partnership) may be able to help with this and the dynamics of bringing the two circles into contact?

Just a thought,
Peter

just one more thought for the recipe, maybe, in terms of a network of people who would be interested in the dynamics of encouraging online engagement – I’m not sure of the point at which collating a toolkit crosses irretrieveably into weaving the various interested communities together (probably when you realise that the thing has grown into a full-time job!) – but…a group of NHS folk met back in May for a day on the Power and Perils of Social Networking in the NHS and subsequently set up a wiki to develop some of the themes involved, further. It contains some useful material, but needs an invite. Rowan Purdy, of Surepoint.co.uk and previously head of Knowledge Services at the Care Services Improvement Partnership, was one of the organisers.

Could be a useful venn-diagram-opportunity, perhaps, so long as it doesn’t get too complicated

cheers,
Peter

I’m sure Laura will be happy to provide you with access, and to have another practitioner contribute news of their own experiences to the wiki in due course. One of the things that has come up during the development of the guide and the continuation of the CoP afterwards is the suitability of a wiki as the main tool for facilitating communication between the community members. Basically, like all good wikis, it’s a great way to build an information repository and to aid collaborative writing/editing, but as a technology, it does have shortcomings with regard to assisting stimulate CoP activity/meetings. At a workshop recently, the possibility of using Ning to help with this was floated. How that would work, and how you might migrate useful conversations on the Ning group back to the wiki are possible challenges. Otherwise, you’re back to email lists and the problems they have w.r.t. capturing the knowledge sharing in those.

You might also want to take a look at this post from Che Tibby, who’s also grappling with how to get his departmental colleagues to use social media.

I actually found my way to your blog via a comment that Whitehall Webby made on Che’s blog, so this should help to close the loop as it were…

You might already be aware of it, but if not, the New Zealand State Services Commission has produced a guide that might be of use. If you’re interested in discussing the issues further, the community of practice that helped SSC create the guide has a wiki that I’m sure they would be happy to give you access to.

I’ve also found this diagram by Ross Mayfield to be quite helpful in terms of thinking about the stages you need to move colleagues through, towards greater online engagement.

Thanks everyone.

cheers, and thanks again for this space,
Peter

Quite by co-incidence there’s a useful post just recently on RWW about the role of (and need for) ‘Community Managers’ to support the engagement between any organisation and its customers/stakeholders/etc.

Various caveats, but..
- It’s all a bit online-only-oriented, to be sure, but, surely some useful pickings, I hope.
- It says it’s for start-ups (and Whitehall Depts aren’t exactly new) but perhaps could be read in terms of ‘new to this approach’?
- Also the material’s not to be taken literally of course, but I thought I’d point you to it in case it helped people think about what they might need to do differently – it’s quite a switch mentally to move from “I’m here to ship product (a.k.a policy)” to “I’m here to garden(?)/shepherd(?) my community”.

Plenty of useful links in the material if it sparks any interest, for example to a role outline/job spec from Connie Bensen (noted CM). Again, perhaps one could mine various elements from this for different people, rather than we all think we just have to write a cheque for another specialist.

Cheers, and thanks all for thought and EM for starting it off; this is a very topical question for me here (not Gov’t – at least, not that Gov’t – but not that far away).