More CoP Resources: Books

Books

Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities: by John Hagel III (Author), Arthur G. Armstrong (Author) "The rise of virtual communities in on-line networks has set in motion an unprecedented shift in power from vendors of goods and services to the..."

The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (revised edition)

Written by the man known as the First Citizen of the Internet, this book covers Rheingold's experiences with virtual communities. It starts off with his home community, The Well, out of Sausilito, CA, and makes its way through MUDs and beyond. No one understands the compelling strength of online community like Rheingold.

Building Virtual Communities: Learning and Change in Cyberspace (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives): This study examines how learning and cognitive change are fostered by online communities. The chapters provide a basis for thinking about the dynamics of Internet community building. They consider the role of the self or individual as a participant in virtual community, and the design and refinement of technology as the conduit for extending and enhancing the possibilities of community building in cyberspace. The volume will interest educators, psychologists, sociologists, and researchers in human-computer interaction.

Community Building on the Web : Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities; There's been a marked shift in the philosophy of developing successful Web sites. The technologies (HTML, JavaScript, JavaServer Pages) no longer occupy center stage. Rather, functional objectives and the communities that grow up around them seem to be the main ingredient in Web site success. In her carefully reasoned and well-written Community Building on the Web, Amy Jo Kim explains why communities form and grow. More importantly, she shows (with references to many examples) how you can make your site a catalyst for community growth--and profit in the process. From marketing schemes like Amazon.com's Associates program to The Motley Fool's system of rating members' bulletin-board postings, this book covers all the popular strategies for bringing people in and retaining them.

Nine core strategies form the foundation of Kim's recommendations for site builders, serving as the organizational backbone of this book. The strategies generally make sense, and they seem to apply to all kinds of communities, cyber and otherwise. (One advocates the establishment of regular events around which community life can organize itself.) Some parts of Kim's message may seem like common sense, but such a coherent discussion of what defines a community and how it can be made to thrive is still helpful.

Read this book to help crystallize your thinking about community building, and to review strategies that work for real sites already. --David Wall

How Communities Add Value to the Member Experience: If communities are rich networking environments created to enable communication and interaction, why do we use listsrvs and discussion boards that limit our ability to provide context, personalize or harvest knowledge shared? This is largely in part due to the lack of understanding of a community's charter, it's reason for existing and the characteristics of its members. Fusion Productions and APQC recently presented together at ASAE on what a winning combination of community processes plus technology would look like.

COPs in Progress: APQC and the Texas Medical Association: APQC was enlisted by The Texas Medical Association (TMA) to help build new and better ways to work and succeed in a competitive marketplace through the implementation of Communities of Practice (CoPs). With over 40,000 physician and medical student members, TMA wanted to create a portal that would allow everyone in the organization to share solutions to the challenges of practicing medicine. Find out how APQC and TMA developed and piloted a CoP designed around one of the key issues for doctors and their staff.

~DigitalNow 2007: April 11- 14 at Disney's Yacht and Beach Club Resorts~

SOLD OUT! DigitalNow- the proven leadership conference for associations - has officially sold out - again! Conference materials, workshop notes, survey result information, and up-to-the-minute on-site news will continue to be available before, during, and after the conference. Visit the conference web site at http://www.fusionproductions.com/digitalnow