At 02:11 PM 10/25/2009, Lawrence de Bivort wrote:
I like these lines of thought, Abd ul-Rahman.
Thanks. A lot has gone into them, and not just thinking, but hands-on practice.
"Communities-of-practice" are similar to what, as I understand it, you are proposing and thinking. A substantial amount of thinking and experience has now emerged around the communities-of-practice idea, and several such communities have received significant benefit from so organizing themselves. Many of these have been on-line creations.
It works, that's known, under the right conditions. Problems only arise when the scale becomes very large, for the most part, and so when I'm suggesting organizations, I suggest building in simple, efficient methods that will allow the beneficial aspects of small-scale peer communities, that can enjoy high unity of purpose without becoming paralyzed, even if the scale becomes large. If that were difficult, it wouldn't be worth it. I believe it's easy, almost trivially simple, but because it doesn't seem necessary at the beginning, it isn't done until the scale becomes too large to do it, so more centralized structures are created, i.e., traditional organizations.
Traditional organizations work, and don't work, and we are all familiar with both.
