Design

  • What if you build it and they do not come?

    We understand the yearning to find a low-cost or no-cost way to spontaneously create a thriving community of practice in which participants engage intensively, volunteer undue amounts of time and effort to keeping the community alive, support other members, and make use of the resources and sharing that emerge. I have seen many ambitious projects…

    Patterns of flow
  • Imagining a new kind of community of practice

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    Busy managers may enjoy connecting socially and exchanging informally with their peers. However, they are likely to find it difficult to justify time doing so. They may say “I’m too busy” but what they usually mean is that the opportunity cost is too high. The Achilles heel of communities of practice is that – just…

    Colorful paint splash
  • Experience and blended learning: two heads of the humanitarian training chimera

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    Experience is the best teacher, we say. This is a testament to our lack of applicable quality standards for training and its professionalization, our inability to act on what has consequently become the fairly empty mantra of 70-20-10, and the blinders that keep the economics (low-volume, high-cost face-to-face training with no measurable outcomes pays the…

    Peter Paul Rubens. From 1577 to 1640. Antwerp. Medusa's head. KHM Vienna.