Building an Effective Ecosystem for an Integrated Community of Practice and Frustration-Free Technical Knowledge Hub that Maximizes Engagement and Participation of Local and Field Resources Across Multiple Operating Countries
Authors: De Sousa Drumond Jose David , Kotsiopoulou Georgia 
Published: October 2022

Developing local resources and effectively transferring knowledge among young and seasoned practitioners, are key elements to enable the continuous creation of value in a transitioning energy market where sustainability, diversity and equity are in the spotlight. This paper presents the strategies employed to develop an integrated ecosystem within a Technical CoP, and the analytical criteria used for the record-time deployment of an almost cost-free and massive Knowledge Hub, resulting in an effective community-wide engagement.

The current global challenges, and the need for transformation driving our industry, requires the development of new and cost-effective ways to ensure the training and development of the maximum number of resources. In this context the focus of this work was the creation of a Highly Integrated Ecosystem between two familiar and company-wide used platforms. A detailed blueprint identifying the components and interfaces required to link Exchange, Support, and a comprehensive Knowledge Hub was developed. Ice-breaking, Collaboration, Volunteering and Branding elements were also successfully integrated. Curation and Completeness criteria was developed ensuring Learning Objects remained diverse, relevant, and up-to-date.

Navigability, Mesh Interconnection between objects, the selection of diverse learning approaches in the curation and cataloging, and a friendly "frustration-free" visualization of detailed attributes, proved extremely successful in engaging the whole Community of Practice. Learning Elements embedded include: University Lectures, Models, Simulations, On-Demand Webinars, How-to-Demos, Animations, Conference Presentation, and Self-Assessment Tools, and CBT modules. Current topics include: Control & Optimization, Functional Safety, Automation, Digitalization, Industrial CyberSecurity, Process and Production Equipment Troubleshooting, Condition Monitoring, and others with high impact to the business. Use of Analytical tools, detailed KPIs, and of dashboards to analyze the depth and completeness, Gaps and ID learning actions allowed for an extremely efficient and short time for the deployment, and for the growth of the newly created and continuously evolving Knowledge Hub. In just 3 months the Knowledge Hub grew to have 1000+, highly job-relevant, Learning Elements, and the visits and the average time invested on the learning site by users surpassed 5x-10x what was being observed in all other CoPs that employed a more traditional approach to both CoPs and Learning.

The paper explores specific examples of novel and exceptionally successful strategies and elements that were used in the design and implementation of the integrated ecosystem for exchange and learning. Analytical tools, Subject Matter Expert crowdsourcing, active engagement, lead and moderation of the platform allowed the creation of a Knowledge Hub exclusively composed of high quality, relevant and free learning opportunities. Sustained grow indicators include +112% of Active Users, +745% on Traffic/Posts, +52% in Knowledge Contributions.