Denham Grey's Knowledge Community has a great and growing selection of links on communities of practice, who's doing what, and who the players are. Participating on The WeLL taught me more about community than anything since. Check out the companion web site . Don't leave out the fun. Beware of generalities.
Nothing is as simple as it seems.
Well-written argument that kontent is not king. And for this expanding universe of companies, communities of practice promise to radically galvanize knowledge sharing, learning, and change. A community of practice is a group of people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise. Communities of practice can drive strategy, generate new lines of business, solve problems, promote the spread of best practices, develop people's skills, and help companies recruit and retain talent. The paradox of such communities is that although they are self-organizing and thus resistant to supervision and interference, they do require specific managerial efforts to develop them and integrate them into an organization.