At Fluor, knowledge management has always been centered around the community. KM-heads call them CoPs or ‘communities of practice.’ We call them simply knowledge communities. And these knowledge communities are the quintessential social media often touted as a Web 2.0 phenomena.
Knowledge communities share many attributes with Web 2.0 sites like Flickr, Upcoming and del.icio.us — all web sites acquired by Yahoo! in the past year. Like these social media sites, knowledge communities are fed by the members themselves. The knowledge they contain and maintain; the experts identified; the discussions in the forums — all are initiated and led by the community-at-large. Like these social media sites, knowledge communities share a common challenge: creating a thriving, vibrant community of people who willingly share their time, talent and knowledge.
Reading danah boyd’s blog today (yes, I have some catching up to do), I saw a reference to an excellent article titled Creators, Synthesizers and Consumers. Written by Bradley Horowitz, head of the Technology Development Group at Yahoo! Search and Marketplace (which includes Yahoo Research Berkeley, where danah works), the article addresses the phases of value creation.
Bradley’s conclusion? Social software sites don’t require 100% active participation to generate great value. This applies to knowledge communities just as it does to social media sites.
If you care about developing online communities, inside or outside the firewall, read his article, and tell me if you agree.
