Collective Learning: why, what and how?

This is a photo that was shot by @rotanarotana in the garden of the Museum Rodin, Paris, France.

Recently, after reading a great post from Gianpiero Petriglieri offering a different view on MOOCs, here is what I tweeted:

“Education is not just about skills, concepts, knowledge as commodity. It is also about ties/citizenship.” — @rotanarotana

So if education is also about relationships and citizenship, how do we harness new learning curves?

How do we go with learning flows?

Learning flows are already everywhere. People didn’t wait for online courses to learn from each other and on their own.

“We are moving away from the model in which learning is organized around stable, usually hierarchical institutions (schools, colleges, universities) that, for better and worse, have served as the main gateways to education and social mobility.

Replacing that model is a new system in which learning is best conceived of as a flow, where learning resources are not scarce but widely available, opportunities for learning are abundant, and learners increasingly have the ability to autonomously dip into and out of continuous learning flows.

Instead of worrying about how to distribute scarce educational resources, the challenge we need to start grappling with in the era of socialstructed learning is how to attract people to dip into the rapidly growing flow of learning resources and how to do this equitably, in order to create more opportunities for a better life for more people. ”

— Marina Gorbis

If you want to go deeper, you might be interested in diving into the Institute For The Future research: “From Educational Institutions to Learning Flow”.

Collective Sensemaking

I think that Marcia Conner describes how collective sense-making and learning are shifting.

“How do you define social learning?

I define social learning as participating with others to make sense of new ideas. Augmented by a new slew of social tools, people can gather information and gain new context from people across the globe and around the clock as easily as they could from those they work beside.

Social learning is not just the technology of social media, although it makes use of it. It is not merely the ability to express yourself in a group of opt-in friends.

Social learning combines social media tools with a shift in the corporate culture, a shift that encourages ongoing knowledge transfer and connects people in ways that make learning a joy.

– Excerpt from “Where Social Learning Thrives” (Marcia Conner with Steve LeBlanc).

In defining social learning, and what it isn’t, Marcia Conner also shares her learning experience and insights:

“Learning can easily occur anytime, anywhere, and in a variety of formats. It always has, but augmented by social tools, now it’s easy for others to see and learn from too.

Together we are better. Together we participate with others and learn non stop.

Every day I connect and learn from people across the world through social technologies. Some of these people I’ve met in person, increasingly they are people I didn’t know before social media.

From them I glean new insights about topics I set out to learn as well as get introduced to new topics and related information I didn’t realize would help round out what’s important to my life and in my work.”

Dennis Callahan also described in a terrific post how social learning is like gravity:

“Learning with and from others fosters an environment that creates the birth of new ideas, connections, products, etc.

Think about a positive brainstorming session that you had with someone or a group of people. This creates an energy that propels you into creating something new.”


The Big Shift is a Learning Shift

Since 2009, John Hagel has been talking about the big shift as a “movement from the world of push to a world of pull”. We are moving from knowledge stocks to knowledge flows. Learning is changing because ways of learning are evolving in our connected world; as J.P. Rangaswami wrote in this piece:

The ability to observe. The ability to imitate. The ability to try it out for yourself. The ability to get quick feedback. Four critical requirements for learning.

We’re in the midst of a digital revolution. Everything that happens can be observed by more people than has ever been possible before. The internet is a copy machine, the ability to share and to imitate has never been cheaper.

Tools continue to be invented to make it possible for all of us to be able to try more things for ourselves than we could ever do before.

This digital revolution is a learning revolution. As long as we don’t waste it. Waste happens when we constrain the ability to observe, to imitate, to try out, to get feedback.

Particularly when we have the opportunity to make it all affordable, ubiquitous.

Education drives the solution to so many of our perceived problems. Education is so incredibly accelerated, assisted, augmented by digital infrastructure. If we let it.

We who are here on earth today can make a difference to that earth by ensuring that we don’t waste this incredible opportunity, of using digital infrastructure to enfranchise everyone, to provide the opportunity for all to learn.”


How do you keep learning in networks?

To contribute to collective intelligence, you need to learn how you grow and learn? So then, how do you cultivate your curiosity and self-directed learning? As Jon Husband wrote:

There just isn’t any choice other than continuous learning because ongoing change—permanent whitewater—is our only remaining constant.”

So how do you learn faster, better from each other, and on your own? Are you curating smart networks? Gideon Rosenblatt said: 

The way we curate our connections shapes our networks in ways that affect their health and effectiveness.

I think Mark Oehlert nailed it when he said:

“Go with the flow…feel the Force…be the ball….focus on building your network. You don’t have a 1:1 relationship with social media — what you should be building is a many to many relationship.

Social media is a network, and you need to respond to the output of that network with your own network. I’ve got a strong network that kinda looks like a patchwork quilt.

It’s my responsibility to architect the right network. The cool thing? Me and my network are also part of other people’s networks — at absolutely zero incremental cost to any of us.

Start thinking like a Subject-Matter Network.

Across many industries, many people think and learn in networks. They are networked learners. For instance, many healthcare professionals are networked learners. It becomes a reality.

“I speak to doctors, and they tell me to just what extent they are learning from international peers through social media”. – Daniel Ghinn


Are you both mindful & networked?

But among the most challenging difficulties for learning from each other in our hyper-connected society is the ability to be mindful and connected to ourselves. Disconnect to connect,” said Tiffany Shlain and Whitney Johnson. If you have time, I also recommend watching her fun, short and insightful videos.

So being mindful, connected to ourselves, thinking critically, and learning in networks, imply using our five senses in smart and modern ways. Why does it matter? It matters for each of us to be networked and for tribal knowledge because, in a fragmented world, we need to go deep; as Nilofer Merchant said:

“It’s a fragmented world. And it’s only becoming more so. It used to be that when people wrote, they wrote more deeply. In the early days of the web (pre-twitter), I remember hand picking the few voices I would listen to and then putting them into my RSS feeder and checking for their essays.

Essays, not tweets, were the way we shared what we were thinking. But as “content” has become more important to maintain a standing online, more and more people are entering into the fray. More and more people who may not even have a point of view to advocate but just want to participate in the conversation. ”

— Nilofer Merchant

So how do you go fast and slow for navigating the knowledge flows?

Towards network thinking & libraries

As William Gibson said: “The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed.” So are we heading to a world of connected learning, network thinking, and networked libraries? These words from Greg Satell paint the age in which we live.

“I am also meeting and collaborating with people online that I would have never had a chance to know before. I can even gain access to knowledge in other languages through online translation.

In other words, I am to stumble over people and knowledge to a degree that wouldn’t have been possible even a relatively short time ago.

And that’s why we can expect life to continue to get better. While earlier technologies allowed us to master energy and matter, newer advances are giving us something far more valuable: They are unleashing the power of human potential.”

Collective Learning & Future Skills

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I reflect on the value of defragmenting and unifying our artefacts, our writings and ourselves in a fragmented world. Read on more in this post.

Defragmenting our Arfefacts

For past Winter holidays, I grabbed the Greenlights Journal by Matthew McConaughey. As he introduces:

“Greenlights: Your Journal, Your Journey is a guided companion to the memoir Greenlights, filled with prompts, pithy quotes, adages, outlaw wisdom, and advice on how to live with greater satisfaction.”

Sometimes it is not so easy to map our thoughts when we face the challenges of fragmented writing.

With personal knowledge mastery’s activities and tools I use, I don’t just write on one platform, but on many ones. From Slack to IM messaging tools. From my blog to a book. From Google Workspace to M365 documents and Clickup documents. Less and less on email. #NoEmail

Lately I have also been sharing a few thoughts on Mastodon and LinkedIn, one conversation at a time.

My crumbling of writings through blogging, microblogging, asynchronous and live chat is fragmented. I wonder.

How can I unify and streamline these streams of writing into one river of writing?

Grant Snider’s comic strip is full of stellar insights. Enjoy it.

“To sketch what you observe is to change the tempo of your observation. It necessarily slows your sensemaking down, and sharpens what you see.” – Fiona Tribe

Rewind: The Learning Journey sketchnoted by Klara Loots and moi.

“Slowing down is important for deep observation and learning.” – Dibyendu De

Defragmenting our Writings

The other thing I notice is that my writing time is still an unplanned activity.

I don’t do it consistently. I’m aware of it.

“I thought of myself as like the jazz musician: someone who practices and practices and practices in order to be able to invent and to make his art look effortless and graceful.

I was always conscious of the constructed aspect of the writing process, and that art appears natural and elegant only as a result of constant practice and awareness of its formal structures.” – Toni Morrison

How do things work for me?

If I notice something, I might think about it. Do some research or not at all.

Then I would make a draft and sleep on it for a while. When I come back to it, I will refine the post before sharing it with my network on social or in person and through the online communities I engage with.

But it all starts with why I am writing.

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment & in retrospect.” – Anais Nin

We write to reflect and to practice.

I have a blogroll to engage with and read deep thoughts, shared experience, reflection and musings from bloggers around the world.

Being aware of ourselves. Noticing ourselves and trying to unify ourselves could begin by blogging on our own blog. But the challenge is to unify or defragment ourselves in a fragmented world. As I noticed in this old post:

In a fragmented world, we need to go deep; as Nilofer Merchant said:

“It’s a fragmented world. And it’s only becoming more so. It used to be that when people wrote, they wrote more deeply. In the early days of the web (pre-twitter), I remember hand picking the few voices I would listen to and then putting them into my RSS feeder and checking for their essays.

Essays, not tweets, were the way we shared what we were thinking. But as “content” has become more important to maintain a standing online, more and more people are entering into the fray. More and more people who may not even have a point of view to advocate but just want to participate in the conversation. ” —  Nilofer Merchant

How can we go deep and defragment ourselves in a fragmented world?

Defragmenting Ourselves

Like this post you are reading, I wrote a first draft a while ago. Then I slept on it until I got my blogging mojo back. Because I read a good recent post by Meredith:

“That put me in mind of this quote that I found somewhere on my internet travels:

“Each person is to build his or her soul by bringing the widely scattered elements of experience into a unified whole.” – Ilia Delio

How do we unify those widely scattered elements of experience? We all have our own way of coming at that challenge, and, for me, I always turn to creativity and the arts” – Meredith Lewis

I carry on the conversation on Mastadon with Meredith on the topic of unifying/defragmenting ourselves.

@dangerousmeredith A fine piece, Meredith. You made me think. My pen pal, Daniel Durrant wrote in a conversation in 2015 this:

“A network of fragile fragmented selves gains from disorder and evolves as we become aware of their failures.”

Your latest and his thoughts made me mull over.

How can we defragment our fragmented selves in a fragmented world?

As Daniel wasn’t on Mastodon for this conversation, we’ll continue it with Meredith on Twitter. Especially as I revisited this oldie “A Networked Community of Fragmented ‘Selves” by Dibyendu De, which is fully of nudges to ponder:

“What happens if the ‘selves’ weren’t aware of each other?

What happens if the selves simply knew each other well enough to form a community of strongly networked selves that help each other grow?

What happens if a person tries to create or design synergy between different selves?

How does one become a better spectator and player in the networked community of human society that constantly interacts with nature – both within and without?

March is a very special month for me. Every year a cascade of deep thoughts, events and movements happen at the same time. As I have blogged:

March. Is it the month when I am in motion, exploring, activating, rewinding my journey, updating my toolkit, staying curious, colliding, asking myself why, innovating, developing new capabilities and mindset, and embracing the unknown.

Keep it real.

Happy Spring.

Did you enjoy this post? Check out The Tapestry Book.

Did you have a pleasant summer? Do you enjoy Fall ?

Please find below my eight seasonal gems: book readings, exhibitions and cities. Enjoy.

Gem 1: Le Continent Blanc x Matthieu Tordeur

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I read the paper book version since the early days of Summertime. What a great real story from an explorer to disconnect and wander while travelling or not.

Gems 2: Le Havre & Exhibits

Le Havre in September 2019

Source: By Martin Falbisoner – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82036024

I previously visited Le Havre and fell in love with this Normandy seaside town once again this summer. Take a look at this Les Ambassadeurs’ city exploration. I’m particularly fond of the architectural style and flair by French architect Auguste Perret, who has left his imprint not just on Le Havre, but also on Paris and Amiens. It exudes charm, refreshment, modernity, class and boasts impressive architecture.

The present displays, ‘Un été au Havre‘ in certain artistic locations both inside and outside the buildings, are splendid and captivating regardless of whether it is sunny or rainy.

Were you aware of this?

“Paris, Rouen, Le Havre, une seule et même ville dont la Seine est la grande rue.” – Napoléon Bonaparte, premier Consul. Le Havre, le 8 novembre 1802.

Translated:

“Paris, Rouen, Le Havre, a single city with the river la Seine as its main street.” – Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul. Le Havre, 8 November 1802.

Gems 3: Dublin, Howth, Malahide

In the ‘Amateur Traveler’ podcast, Chris Christensen and his guest discuss about travelling to Dublin, Ireland.

According to them, Dublin acts as the gateway to the rest of Ireland and is renowned for its welcoming atmosphere.It is also a compact city which allows tourists to easily visit all the prominent and lesser-known sites in just three days.

This is what I experienced during the transition from Summer to Autumn in three cities. The highlights of my trip included listening to traditional Irish music at O’Donoghue’s in Dublin, wandering through the medieval castle and gardens of Malahide, which is a fortress spread over 105 hectares of parkland, adorned with antiques, paintings and a fairy trail, and exploring Howth. See below a photo of the stunning landscape I photographed while hiking on a sunny and gusty morning.

learner experience propelling expérience apprenante propulser sea ireland howth

Gems 4: Exhibit Busan, the world at your fingertips, the Korean Cultural Center, Paris

I continue to develop my curiosity for Asia through my intrigue with Busan, the Korean city, and and its culture, which I explored through an exhibit I attended in Paris.

“The exhibition you’re going to see will help you explore various aspects of this southern city, which is less known than the influential Seoul, but just as appealing and vibrant. Discover the locals who, despite the twists in history, have managed to keep their bubbling optimism alive. The Korean Cultural Centre invites you to ride the wave and delve into a culture that has been greatly influenced by foreign elements.

Divided into two main sections, this exhibition gives a broad overview of what has made and represents Busan. Firstly, a first section presents its history and identity. Then, a second chapter takes over by revealing an exciting cultural part.”


Gem 5: Tous pédagogues ! Former, enseigner, transmettre (Enseignement supérieur) x Didask

My year of designing learner experiences and teaching has been engaging, rewarding and insightful. During this year, I have delved into this book to refine my teaching techniques and pedagogical skills, given that I am now in my second year of teaching.

Gems 6: Nantes & Third place

hangar a bananes 4

Source: https://www.iledenantes.com/operations/hangar-a-bananes/

I am fascinated by the futures of workplace and third places that supercharge work and collective learning. During this summer, I had the pleasure of discovering and relishing such a third place in Nantes, France.

“The Hangar à bananes, an old port wasteland located on the western tip of the Isle of Nantes, has become one of the most iconic entertainment venues in Nantes since 2007. Over the years, bars, restaurants, a nightclub, an art gallery (the Hab Galerie), and a theatre have been established there.”

Gem 7: Exhibit Le Paris de Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923), Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, Paris

I thoroughly enjoy the architectural exhibition that showcases the works of Gustave Eiffel. The exhibition is brimming with intricate details and highlights his remarkable accomplishments, which have left an enduring legacy in France.

“To mark the centenary of the death of the “iron magician”, the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine is unveiling another facet of the genius’s career.

He is known the world over for his famous 300-metre-high “Iron Lady”. But who knows about his department stores, his synagogue, his church or his secondary school? The Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, located in the Palais de Chaillot, is revealing a completely different facet of the illustrious architect’s career with its exhibition The Paris of Gustave Eiffel. To mark the centenary of the death of Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923), the builder’s sometimes overlooked achievements in Paris are presented. Behind six of them, only the most initiated know the imprint of the genius.” – translated from the article from Le Figaro

Gem 8: À l’aube de nouveaux horizons x Nathalie A. Cabrol

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I listened to a fascinating fifth episode of “Who We Are” on the “À voix nue” podcast by France Inter, featuring the author of the book. This episode piqued my interest and curiosity. I have added the book to my reading list.

Your turn. What are your favourite seasonal gems?

Did you enjoy this post? Check out the Tapestry Book.

Fall is here. The switch between sunny days and rainy grey days is constant. The weather is still lovely and windy. Then, the leaves start falling, and I can see how the trees change while walking.

Like leaves that morph in different shades of colours, which personal growth evolutions have you noticed from Summertime to Fall?

It makes me think of teaching at a French apprenticeship school.

Step by step

Teaching requires a lot of energy, patience and optimism.

Subjects covered will include creativity and innovation, digital project management, communication and marketing, entrepreneurship, IT and digital literacy.

Each session per course or workshop includes a deep dive, an individual or team activity, templates to use, a deliverable to produce, a space to drop the deliverable for evaluation, and resources to go further. The content is integrated and shared in a dedicated Moodle space per class, one session at a time. The activities are done in-person or remotely, live or asynchronously.

For each course or workshop, I go through the same process.

Step 1: Scoping

The aim is to identify the specific profile for the learner experience. To do this, I answer the questions below related to the specific theme I will cover.

Question Response What’s in it for my learner experience?
Who is the person ?

What is his/her profile?

What does he/she knows in the subject?
Any bias?

Any wrong habits?

What is he/she doing today that needs changing?

What’s in it for the learner?
How is the learner experience likely to be welcomed?


Step 2: Designing & integrating

This step is the one I enjoy the most.

I ask myself the following questions:

  • What changes do I expect?
  • What does a beginner do?
  • What does a skilled person do?
  • What do people find difficult?
  • What steps, situations or themes should learners have in mind and in practice?

To do this, I specify the learning moment, the suggested activity and the time spent for each learner’s goal.

My pedagogical sequence should contain more exercises than passive transmission. The activities must be spread out over time, and must include sufficient breaks. I start by setting aside these breaks.

I don’t forget to give reminders and alternate subjects.

A teaching sequence looks like this table and can have several teaching methods.

Learner Moment

 

Face-to-face learning approaches

 

Remote learning approaches

 

Self-assessement Coaching session Quizz
Deconstruction Immersive session Quizz
Content delivery Course, book, practical guide Webinar, how-to, wiki
Practice Role play, Learning by doing through innovative project co-design & development Learning by doing though innovative project co-design & development
Reflection Mentoring, knowledge sharing & co-creating workshop, book club Forum, chat
Automation Flashcard, Q&A in duo or trio, game cards, icebreakers Icebreakers
Evaluation Peer evaluation, exam Quizz

It involves curating and connecting the dots between the knowledge I pull. From my blog, archives, environmental scanning, experiences, use cases, conversations and knowledge sharing from my network and the communities I engage. It takes time and involves sensemaking, content management and clarity. At the same time, use personalized templates from decks to sheets and documents.

Here is how I go each time: I create the outline, frame questions, share deep dives on basic skills, approaches or tools, roadmaps for an individual or collective activity to practice and reflect on, and resources to curate to go further.

Designing in-person live and asynchronous learner experiences is an individual craft. This work can also be done in collaboration.

Rotana, a quality person, I particularly appreciate his calmness and, at the same time, his liveliness of mind. We built modules for apprentices BUT TC in the second year of their specialization.

The exchanges were fluid and fruitful, and we were able to build on each other’s skills.

He brings a lot of advice and tools that he proposes to his clients, and that favours the methodology.

A rich and relevant relationship: we were meant to work together.” — Christine, Digital Learning Manager / Learning Designer

Once the outline and content are ready, I integrate them into a Moodle space so each class can explore it one session at a time.

Step 3: Coordinating

I am planning live and asynchronous sessions – remotely and in-person over months on the school’s learning portal, Clickup and my calendar. That way, I can anticipate which session is upcoming and has been hosted. Which time estimated and time done are per session to scope, design, host and review each session.

I often block slots on my calendar to dedicate time and energy to each step of managing pedagogical projects.

Step 4: Onboarding

Each course or workshop comprehends four to six sessions of three hours spread over several months. To get an overview, I send an onboarding message to the class. In that way, they can save the dates in the calendar and know the intent, the skills to develop, the theme per session, the on-demand support, and the next step for the first session.

Step 5: Hosting

For each session, three possibilities

Possibility 1: Live session in-person

Hosting gatherings per cohort and team takes patience, refinement and practice. When it is in a physical classroom, I often start with the traditional setting of the space with tables and chairs in rows, especially when I introduce the session, take deep dive into an essential skill, approach or tools, show and explain, share instructions and tips to produce the expected deliverables.

Sometimes I use a wheel of names to nudge participants to share their experiences or Learning of the week collectively.

When it is time to gather and collaborate to co-create a deliverable per team, I invite the cohort to stand up and move the chairs and tables to bundle two tables with chairs around them to create a pod. In that way, they are in a better mindset and conditions to communicate, reflect and collaborate. In addition, I often leave an empty chair on a pod to come, observe, jump into the conversation, share feedback and leave anytime during the session.

The roadmap per expected deliverable with the deadline and resources to use to produce it is always visible on the physical whiteboarding of the classroom. I project one of my slides with the instructions on it.

Possibility 2:  Live session hosted remotely via Zoom

There are always five moments. The welcoming, the icebreaker, the collective moment in the same room, the activities and virtual peer assistance in breakout rooms, and the regrouping for a debrief and wrap-up.

How to foster conversation with remote learning and distributed work?

“If there are 120 people in the room and you set the breakout number to be 40, the group will instantly be distributed into 40 groups of 3.

They can have a conversation with one another about the topic at hand. Not wasted small talk, but detailed, guided, focused interaction based on the prompt you just gave them.

8 minutes later, the organizer can press a button and summon everyone back together.

Get feedback via chat (again, something that’s impossible in a real-life meeting). Talk for six more minutes. Press another button and send them out for another conversation.

This is thrilling. It puts people on the spot, but in a way that they’re comfortable with.

If you’re a teacher and you want to actually have conversations in sync, then this is the most effective way to do that. Teach a concept. Have a breakout conversation. Have the breakouts bring back insights or thoughtful questions. Repeat.

A colleague tried this technique at his community center meeting on Sunday and it was a transformative moment for the 40 people who participated.” Seth Godin


Possibility 3: Asynchronous session guided remotely

The session is asynchronous. I use email, Google Chat, Google Meet, and Moodle to communicate and bring virtual assistance on demand. The apprentices are autonomous and often in teams to get the work done.

On the D-Day of each session, I provide a roadmap, templates and resources to go further via a programmed email. In that way, I am ahead and not drowned by the workflow.

The templates and resources to go further are canvases, tools, and questions to nudge apprentices and encourage them to share their inputs to create added value and share. Name a few: business strategic analysis tools, digital strategy map, personal business model canvas, whiteboarding, agile project management tool, brand identity and essence canvas, and marketing tactics.

Step 6: Supporting

I teach to share knowledge, questions, experience, and use cases and highlight the reflections, insights, deliverables and results brought by apprentices. I am also here to support, coach and level up each person regarding their strengths, skill set, IT and digital literacy, drive and leadership.

Providing links and resources before each course or workshop is another way to nudge the apprentices to be responsible for their learning and team projects. Especially when I am away, they are learning and working outside the school building.

Next steps: Evaluating, Debriefing, Improving

The following steps are evaluating, debriefing and improving a learning experience. Stay tuned for deep thoughts. In the meantime, here are actionable insights from my network:

“Teacher is a hierarchical title to approach learning with students. Go beyond that with coaching and not being above the students but at the same level as them. You learn among and with them.

Create the environment so that they learn and reflect, you encourage them to learn on their own, together by doing.” — Paul Simbeck-Hampson

I try to embrace what Harold Jarche shares in his post on modelling as the best way to teach:

“(…) With a standardized curriculum and constant testing, there is never enough time for most school students to fully learn. There is too much information and much of it is without context. But mastery often comes from modelling. It is how the apprentice becomes a journeyman and in time a master. It is not done in isolation.

The core method (of six main components) for the teacher/master in cognitive apprenticeship is modelling. This can be aided by external coaching and scaffolding, but it is up to the learner to spend time on articulation, reflection, and exploration. Developing mastery requires deliberate practice over time.

Testimonials

“The whole of Team Perso* (brought by Clara, Amin, Jordy & Andy). would like to express our satisfaction with the project we carried out alongside Mr Ty. Your guidance and the skills you passed on to us played a crucial role in our collective success. The chemistry between us has been remarkable, with each member adding their share of quality, which has greatly contributed to our collective success.

This message helps to celebrate our shared achievement and to identify areas for improvement for our future projects.

Thank you for your support and contribution to our professional development.” 

*Perso, the inclusive BeautyTech project, make-up for everyone

“You hosted Digital Marketing workshops at CFA Descartes, which enabled me to develop a strong passion for the field of digital marketing.  Your teaching style and guidance throughout our projects and deliverables truly made the difference.”

“The Sneak’Renov project, carried out as part of the workshop dedicated to business startup co-design, was a very rewarding experience for me. Despite certain difficulties encountered with my team, we were able to demonstrate great perseverance and remarkable discipline.

Team spirit, often considered a stumbling block, was an innate notion for us throughout the project. Everyone’s ideas and experience enabled us to be effective at every stage.

What’s more, the experience enabled me to develop new skills and reinforce those already acquired. Finally, Sneak’Renov proved to me that the collective aspect is stronger than the individual.” 

“Being able to create a project from scratch as part of the workshop dedicated to business startup approaches like this has been an instructive experience. It teaches us to stand on our own two feet, collaborate and build a common project. For me, the group work was a great success, with everyone pitching in and working seriously. This enabled us to work quickly and productively. Finally, I’m proud of my team.

It’s not always easy to work with several people, and it’s even harder to stay motivated on a project like this.”

“Co-creating the Sneak’Renov project as part of the business startup workshop was an enriching personal experience for me.

I learned about business creation and developed my leadership, planning and teamwork skills. This experience has given me confidence as an entrepreneur and helped me grow personally and professionally.” 

“This workshop, dedicated to the process of setting up a business, was very well supervised and gave me a good grasp of the business creation process. What’s more, handing in deliverables enabled my team and me to make faster progress despite the workload involved. Mr TY guided us well in terms of task organization and was always looking for us to outdo ourselves.”

“This workshop, dedicated to the steps involved in setting up a business, was very enriching and enabled me to get a real idea of the stages involved in carrying out my project. There are often stages that are overlooked, but which are essential if the project is to succeed.

We were really supervised for this project by Mr TY, which was beneficial because we felt the daily support of the workshop host and had a complete framework for our work.

The expectations were clearly stated, and with each intermediate deliverable we had feedback on the work done, which enabled us to improve and deepen the work for the final rendering.” 

“We would like to express our deepest thanks to our workshop host Mr Rotana Ty for his help and involvement in this entrepreneurial project.” 

“I enjoyed the work; we were able to divide up the work well. Thanks to this project within the workshop on entrepreneurship I was able to use the skills I had seen in place to apply them in class and learn new skills. I developed my document writing skills as well as my presentation skills thanks to the various appearances in front of the class during the face-to-face sessions.” 

“This workshop on the theme of the marketing mix was very stimulating and instructive. The fact that we were able to develop our project over the year enabled us to immerse ourselves in the startup spirit. Indeed, we imagined a concept in small groups and developed it over the course of the sessions: from competitive analysis to marketing and communication plans and costs, we were able to practice all aspects of the marketing mix and discover new digital tools.

Despite the difficulties we encountered, we were able to organize ourselves and to build on each other’s strengths to bring the project to a successful finale. ” 

“Carrying out this project during this workshop on the theme of the marketing mix was both very rewarding and very interesting to accomplish. I particularly enjoyed having to apply what we’d learned in class to our personal project.

However, thinking about how to design an application in its entirety is not an easy task. Nevertheless, our group managed to meet the workshop’s expectations. I’m very proud of the work our group accomplished.” 

“This workshop on the theme of the marketing mix enabled me to develop new skills. We were able to clarify our ideas according to our passions and interests. I liked the project because it highlighted our creativity as well as our priorities.” 

“This workshop on the theme of marketing mix gave me confidence in my choices, more organization and a certain satisfaction with the product chosen and produced.” 

“I learned how to analyze a market for a product and build a detailed study using the different methods proposed.

The project carried out during the marketing mix workshop was very interesting and rewarding. In fact, as the sessions progressed, we were able to learn a little more about how to carry out a project properly, and what needed to be done/achieved in order to be able to create it in the best possible way.” 

“We were able to consider all the steps involved in designing and promoting a product/service, which isn’t exactly easy because there are so many stages and so many things to think about.

We learned a lot from this project, which we carried out during the marketing mix workshop. It even made all seven of us project ourselves into the future.

What’s more, our host was with us from the start to the end of our project.” 

“This multidisciplinary workshop was a different experience for me from other workshops, with a very thorough follow-up by the host, who made himself available. I was able to understand all the steps to follow and the development of the project. The expectations were concrete and useful.” 

“Our experience on the project during the multidisciplinary workshop waś extremely positive and waś a valuable source of learning for our team.” 

“I found this work during the multidisciplinary workshop very interesting, there are several steps that I often find in my daily business life. It helped me visualize certain points more clearly and improve them.” 

“This multidisciplinary workshop was very different from the others, in that we had to draw on our coursework to come up with ideas, but also on our general culture. Our project also involved the aspect of civic awareness, and I also enjoyed working with new and enriching people.” 

“This multidisciplinary workshop was more than enriching; I was able to develop many skills that I think I’ll use every day for my future projects. I learned a lot about project management and environmental issues. I was able to put my finger on things that seemed abstract to me, and that enabled me to assimilate them.” 

“It was an extremely rewarding learning experience. I learned how to set deadlines, break tasks down into achievable steps and set priorities to reach our objectives. I was also able to develop my skills in researching and gathering official information. Gain valuable experience in using analysis and planning tools.

Although there were challenges, the positive results were achieved, and the lessons learned were invaluable.” 

An enriching experience that confirmed the importance of working together. This multidisciplinary workshop required a great deal of effort and a great deal of thought in terms of our work and the coherence of what we said.” 

“Through this multidisciplinary workshop, I developed a huge number of skills, in particular: autonomy, creativity and responsibility. The theme was extremely enriching and captivating, and I developed new skills in particular: REX, Clickup, SMART Objectives, and so on…”

“We would like to thank Mr Rotana Ty for his commitment and availability during this multidisciplinary workshop.” 

Did you enjoy this post? Check out Future Skills.

Pluarity of seasons.

Summertime is almost over. Fall is around the corner. I can’t wait to see the best of all Autumn.

leaves london learning engagement pluralité plurality autumn automne fall

A photo I took while walking through the London woods.

“We are plurality.

Our individuality is a temporary manifestation of relationships.

Relationships with the multitudes.”

Ecosystems are built on the conversations between interdependent partnerships.

When we cut these conversations the ecosystems fall apart.


Without the network the single disappears.

The center, the fundamental, isn’t the single, the “self”, rather the network.” @FBanishoeib

Plurality of Actionable Insights

Digital Sobriety

This excellent article by Livio Hughes, As our world burns, is it time for digital sobriety shared by Cat Barnard got me thinking and triggered the intent to include some habits and tips to reduce my carbon footprint. Even to tweet and write fewer posts.

“At the individual level, and in our private lives, there are many small actions we can take which, repeated at scale, can create powerful network effects. See for example some of the tips for reducing your digital carbon footprint hereherehere, and here.

Good luck to us all!”


Learner Experience Design

As I currently explore an opportunity to design a learning experience with one of my clients, I’ve been thinking about what needs to be included when creating effective and engaging learning experiences. The article Professional Learning: Path to Agency and Impact’ by Melissa Elmer brings some insights and actions to take.

“My last post focused on the future of learning. I emphasized the necessity of community, content, and events becoming interdependent. All of that is true, and the designers of learning experiences should definitely design experiences with those interdependencies at the base of the design.”

(…) “Instead of creating slides aimed to deliver information spend time figuring out what questions need to be asked.

Instead of making a list of activities or a list of boxes to be checked, schedule some time for conversations around the questions.

Here’s the bottom line. If the learners check out, the organization loses and the people don’t notice or care. If the learners check-in, everyone wins. Organizations that figure out how to invite the learners to the learning and create the conditions for the people to have agency in the learning process have a better chance of having an impact on learning.

What will you do to create the conditions for learning?


Leadership

Dear social ties in my network from the UK and the countries of the Commonwealth, my deep condolences. R.I.P. Queen Elizabeth II. Sending warm thoughts.

Let us not take ourselves too seriously. None of us has a monopoly on wisdom.” ― Queen Elizabeth II, Christmas Broadcast in 1991 via @write2tg

 

“Queen Elizabeth is an amazing leader. She has a clear purpose to provide stability, validation, coherence, and a cultural touchstone for the UK and she has done so in service to the country. She is a great example of how leaders can quietly and modestly be strong.” @rhappe

Plurality of Nudges

Glorious Pasts

“What do you think glorious pasts mean for organisations?” asks David Ross.

My two cents: successes and failures, and learnings from them. Retrospectives or looking back to look forward. Community legacy, artefacts and contributions for a better world/organisation.

Creativity Skills

“What are creativity skills? asks Meredith Lewis.

Do you see yourself as curious, open-minded or imaginative? Read more in her post to figure out what may be your creativity skills and unique strengths.

Knowledge Sharing Muscles

“I miss the office chit-chat.” Sound familiar? Office banter is not the same in the era of distributed and remote work. Sharing knowledge and creating a personal connection with your team members requires a more conscious effort and learning to proactively tell about what you do and what you know.

In this bite-sized podcast episode, Luis Suarez shares his tips on how to grow your knowledge-sharing muscle and start creating conversations in your digital workspace.

Hear the 14 minutes of Arado Podcast: Learning to share knowledge and create a personal connection when working remotely to become aware of your work habits and develop new ones.

Some notes I took while hearing Luis:

Check your plan to clarify your objectives and share them with others. Develop a concise one-liner to describe your event. Do it for your emails, tasks, and meetings, too.

Choose a topic that you are passionate about and be willing to share it. Shared knowledge is power and a muscle to build with practice. Prioritise what you want to share. Do so with discernment.

Facilitate serendipity to yourself and your peers. Become comfortable sharing knowledge. People will get back to you as they find your shares helpful.

Silos < distributed work = abundant and infinite knowledge.

Build your muscles by sharing knowledge daily—one or two sentences to post on social or your schedule. It becomes a reflective exercise in your workflow. It also becomes a learning exercise from one to many times per day.

Plurality of Future Skills

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Following up on my latest post, ‘Seeds’, I continue to share my working and learning out’s activities for the past few weeks with a new post.

“Seed, feed, weed and breed.” — @Quinnovator & Dave Ferguson

Question #1

What does hybrid work mean to you?” asks @rhappe

Embracing synchronous and asynchronous ways to collaborate, co-create and cooperate within a distributed organization, team, network, and community – F2F and online.

Rachel Happe also tweeted:

“I like that definition a lot. Many miss the important place of asynchronous work.

I am finding that some people define hybrid as everyone remote most of the time, some as everyone comes to the office a few days a week, and the best are rethinking HOW they work.”

And this tweet:

“I was thinking recently about meeting roles and how all participants should have one (to make it a collaboration vs a presentation) and in those situations make one person in the room responsible for one person joining remotely to ensure they are included and can participate”

Question #2

Community professionals, what do you do to either give yourself a break or to refresh your creativity and productivity?” asks @jenny_community

I disconnect to find and connect the dots. Biking and walking, going to art exhibits, listening to music, watching movies/sports/fashion shows/documentaries, engaging in weekly or monthly community chats, and resting.

Question #3

How do you focus in a fragmented world?

“Is ‘not well’ an answer?

Otherwise, good network management hygiene, email tagging rules, and a structured notebook/planner to set intentions every day.” — @EngagedOrgs

Excellent practices—a blend between manual and automated efforts for the win.

For example, for setting daily/weekly intentions, I find it helpful to use Clickup and time blocking in my calendar to stay focused and manage better my energy.

Inner Development Goals (IDGs)

“Creativity is a mindset, an attitude, a way of life. It could also be seen as a set of habits. If you want to bring your creativity to the fore, then explore ways of bringing it into your life in myriad small acts” — Meredith Lewis

At the end of April, I participated in the online workshop ‘Wayfinding: Traveling between imagination and agency with the IDGs’, hosted by Meredith Lewis, Professional Listener. Serendipitist. Pamphleteer. Fascinating conversation collectively and in the breakout room with fellow smart creatives worldwide.

Thanks to Meredith again for hosting this gathering exceptionally. I very much enjoy the experience. She created the successful conditions and atmosphere to make insights and creativity emerge.

As she shared with us following up on the workshop, the IDGs website has excellent resources and information, including the deck she used, which is free for anyone to download and use.

Great. That is useful for hosting workshops on those skills.

In her IDGs blog post series, Meredith shares her thoughts and creative prompt for one of the sub-skill of each skills family. Here are below my thoughts and activities through my tweets, posted and upcoming in my stream:

#IDGs Being (Relationship to Self)

“How does the universe speak to you?

Which moments help you to ‘see’ yourself and, simultaneously, to see your place within the universe?”

Through activations & learning moments #WCIW

 

#IDGs Thinking (Cognitive Skills)

“Whose vision of the future do I want those who have yet to be born to be living in?” #WCIW

Workplace Futures

Learning futures

Futures thinking²

 

#IDGs Relating (Caring for Others & the World)

“(…) recall the last convo you participated in that was attended to with imagination and devotion.” #WCIW

A fantastic community explorers chat two weeks ago.

 

#IDGs Collaborating

“Who expanded your horizons? When? How?

Do U show others “new music”? Do U feel able to – why or why not?” #WCIW

Explorers

Insights patternists

Neo-generalists

 

#IDGs Acting (Driving Change)

“How did you come to the #IDGs Framework – what was your point of entry?” #WCIW

Thanks to you, @DangerousMere, on Twitter & via your newsletter ;-)

+ A 21st Century skills project a few years ago

Curated feeds

If creativity is about connecting dots, then you need to be intentional about collecting dots. As individuals, we have to continually expand our reference points, as teams, we have to deliberately curate conversations.” – Jillian Reilly

Did you enjoy the post? Check out the Tapestry Book.

“The first bud of spring sings the other seeds into joining her uprising.” ― Amanda Gorman

Happy Spring!

Enjoy below some gems I notice through my network and beyond.

On Blogging

“Why do you blog? What is your strategy behind blogging? What do you blog about?” — @bill_slawski

 

I blog to make sense. These are often half-baked ideas. Over time my blog has become my outboard brain. I blog mostly for myself. I write about learning, work, complexity, democracy, innovation, etc. My strategy over 18 years is just to write — http://jarche.com/blog” — @hjarche

 

“Same :) Blogging since 2008 for myself!” — @write2tg

 

To explore new territories (semiotic trails)@TheodoraPetkova

 

“I blog to learn. Every article I publish is an opportunity to dig deeper into a subject, simplify something complex, or clarify something confusing.” — @JonasSickler

I blog to research. Sometimes I turn the crème de la crème of posts into a book.

I blog to share deep thoughts about what caught my attention. I blog to observe ideas from interesting people, and to anchor/revisit stories, experiences, and practices.

Communities Engagement

Entrepreneurs Grand Jury

Being a Grand Jury member for the yearly Students-Entrepreneurs Contest Pépite made me engage locally with the academic and entrepreneurial ecosystem.

It was refreshing to hear work in progress and learnings from young instigators in higher education, construction, community building, social services, and environmental services. I am still pondering Silicon Valley’s model to build and scale startups.

Urgent optimism

According to Jane McGonigal, urgent optimism is a mindset and a practice. It combines mental flexibility, realistic hope and future power/actions for self-efficacy and collective efficacy. In addition, imagination, courage and deep collaboration skills are activated.

To practice and develop urgent optimism, I have been learning with a global community of urgent optimists/futurists since March 2022.

Travelling in Norway

I’ve enjoyed a few days off to Oslo, Norway and a few Norwegian cities one hundred miles away to hike in the woods and mountains, stroll in Oslo’s boroughs, and explore historical museums.

Great views from the Operahuset, Holmenkollen, and Sognsvann. I enjoyed walking in the boroughs of Vulkan, Bla, Vigeland and Frogner. Discovering Fredrikstad was quite an adventure!

It was refreshing and uplifting to travel and explore abroad again during the pandemic. But it felt weird and risky, too.

Next: Feed.

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“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

March. The month between the Lunar New Year and the Cambodian New Year. The month of World Futures Day. The month in which the world lives in uncertain and strange times with the pandemic and the crisis in Europe.

So what is the present and futures of Europe look like? Feeling powerless, so sad. What can we do?

We can donate and help, we can educate ourselves, we can make sense in networks, and perhaps activate our urgent optimism.

March. Each year, 8 March is International Women’s Day. I am so grateful for the women in my network and the communities of practice I engage.

Thank you for your empathy, kindness and nudges. Thank you for your questions, actionable insights and support. Thank you for your boldness, uniqueness, resilience and elegance.

Thank you for your exploration, curiosity, creativity, beauty and artistry. Thank you for your humour, ingenuity, vulnerability, attention, vibrancy, and energy.

Especially: Jillian Reilly, Klara Loots, Taruna Goël, Anne Marie Rattray, Ariele Good, Meredith Lewis, Delphine Hervot, Giliane Tardy, Sophie Villeneuve, Stéphanie Borniche, Anne Kazuro, Céline Schillinger, Helen Blunden, Jane McGonigal, Lieselotte König, Jane Hart, Marcia Conner, Rachel Happe, Sahana Chattopadhyay, Trish Wilson, Josie Gibson, Anne Ditmeyer, Cat Barnard, Jenny Gordon, Karilen Mays, Mara Tolja, Jennifer Sertl, Kare Anderson, Selma Crauser, Maëlys Longeac, Shirley Rivera, Jeanne Guilbert, Sibel Kilic, Ombeline Lenoble, Kéren Massamba, Emeline Toupry, Loélia Martins Babayou, Léa Jovic, Julie Kouassi, Louna Bourras, Charline Fournet, Sophie Dayon, Jade-Mengue Ateba, Tiffany Taleb, Catherine Lebon, Rita Meghdessian, Anaëlle Jorré, Christine Vaillant, Lallie Charrier, Célia Molieres, Zelal Kahraman, Manel Chaouali, Charlene Akichy, Maryse Sangarin, Léa Manyoo, Laurianne Despierre, Clara Machaj, Marion Guillerm, Sylvie Brion, Angélique Bour, Estelle Morin, Frédérique Dussaillant, Kate Ensor, Sarah Labyed, Nour Fanich, Bérénice Imbs, Nayah Yamarké.

As I put in this post last year:

The 8th March was also International Women’s Day. I am so grateful to women in my network and inspiring, who keep exploring and learning, supportive, impactful, thoughtful, helpful and respectful, along with my learning and work shifts.

I also watched the documentary from Yann Artus-Bertrand called ‘Woman ‘, which is beautiful and powerful, methinks.

March. The month when Spring will come. I can see how nature evolves and bloom when I go for a walk or a bike ride. The month of the release of The Batman movie, which goes back to the noir roots.

March, the month of the last brand new music opus of Stromae – Multitude, the Oscars ceremony, NCAA March Madness 2022, the Paralympics Winter Games, the SXSW festival and conference, the release of the Resilience Tech Report.

March. Is it the month when I am in motion, exploring, activating, rewinding my journey, updating my toolkit, staying curious, colliding, asking myself why, innovating, developing new capabilities and mindset, and embracing the unknown.

“I love March as it gives me hope that new beginnings are always beautiful” ― Anamika Mishra

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Before the pandemic, when we took a flight or onboarded a boat to travel from point A to B, we could feel the experience from the crew ship. On the same wavelength does this experience feel like going to the hospital when we join, are onboarded, welcomed, introduce ourselves, and are supported in a community of practice?

A community journey and experience kick start before the community is launched through an invite, resources sent in advance before the experience of an online platform and an engagement program or a learning program. For example, the invite to join a safe and trusted place to gather and do with fellow professionals focused on a location, field, profession, industry, or around shared values can be the starting point activated by the community host.

Before the invite, we may have met the host in person or online to get to know the person and the willingness to start a community for a specific purpose. Is it to learn together? To make sense together of a field, a theme, the world. To co-create? To support each other’s back?

Once we have joined the community, we may be welcomed, introduce ourselves, get an onboarding kit, and start connecting with fellow members on the platform with profiles, asynchronous chats, and many events – from workshops, live chats, meetups, hackathons, Q&A, coaching sessions, labs.

Another step is the community program. To keep levelling up our professional and personal practices and even change them. To know better ourselves and collectively, to find questions and answers on what we have deep inside us, inside out. To meet members on the same or divergent paths in their journeys, projects, and problems to make sense, activate or let go of.

A community program is shaped before, during and after it is run and hosted by the community program manager or many if there is a team behind-the-scenes and in the trenches. So, what does shape a community program? One that is appealing, engaging, and tailored to the member’s needs and contributions? Made by the community program management team and the community members for the members. I noticed from my experience in producing or participating in a few community programs – whether it is a coaching program, an ambassador program, a learning program – that they often have the following elements:

A website, a brochure with the goal, the program, the conditions, the modalities, the price, the host, and the type of participants expected.

An introductory blog post to clarify the why, what, when, where, how, who and what’s in it for me.

A promotional LinkedIn post or tweet to share the tagline and gain traction.

A short video to present the program by the community director.

Those assets can trigger in cascade:

Curiosity was aroused by the program’s benefits, skills, conditions, schedule, and pedagogy.

Willingness to join the cohort and meet the host, the white wolf in the discipline.

Desire to join the program and platform + to get the handbook if one is provided.

Engagement to do the community activities and contribute through curation and production of resources, giving and receiving feedback, questions, and thoughts from members by sharing, commenting, and connecting inside and outside the community platform.

Next level contribution to the community through co-creation of products and services with the community team.

Recognition of peers because you earned the sesame after completing the program. The certification or document to complete the program is optional. As well as badges.

Behind the community scene, the light guide, the energy of the host, time to program and publish the activities, the strategy thought through before the program’s launch, the test and learned of the program, the coherence and weaving of the activities, resources, nudges, questions. This is an important work that a community host did and thought deeply about. But, without clarity and concretisation of all those elements, it can be a kind of artisanal and freestyle way to host a community program one cohort at a time.

The design of a community program doesn’t have to follow the steps of a learning program design: analysing, designing, deploying, evaluating. Why? Because qualitative, tailored, and human engagement needs to be kept in mind when creating a community or engagement program, even if it is blurred with a learning program to develop skills, capabilities, and mindsets. What are the steps to design an engaging and tailored community program?

Spotting the needs and emotions of the members. What are the signals, social cues, and patterns?

Curating and weaving existing resources, activities, and questions and producing new ones if relevant and needed. What is your community’s state of content curation, production, and management?

Designing and testing the conditions and online space to make things happen for the host and the members. How can we evaluate and pick the right community platform for the environment and conditions so that the hosting team and members can thrive, feel safe, heard and seen?

Unleashing one week and a day at a time a learning /community activity with a few resources and one question to nudge members to reflect on the activity they did, on themselves or to share their practices and thoughts with the members. What does the content, event, and engagement programming look like?

Reviewing on our own, collectively, and in the future, the takeaways, lessons learned, and progress documented through tools, templates, and participation in the program.

What could be out of control? And it is ok—90% of lurkers, 10% of active members.

The pace and frequency of posts from the members on the online platform. They may do it when they want, when they can, how they want, anywhere there want.

How do members use the tools you suggest them to use. Some may prefer to go offline and in-person to meet and interact with other members through the event. Others may add video or audio calls and usages of the enterprise social network to keep on with the asynchronous chat and live to share. Some may use none of them.

The energy, tone and weather in your community are unpredictable. At the same time, it may depend on your content, event, and engagement programming. The more members felt seen and heard, the more they may love your community and community team to promote your community and be highly engaged in contributing to it.

Did you enjoy the post? Then, check out the Community Series.

Community Management helps propel your internal community and scale engagement to keep learning and innovating with your organisation’s ecosystem.

LEARN MORE

Time to continue a community series after I published last month a post on community reflection.

So here is a new curated write-up on starting and nurturing communities.

eiffel tower view garden

A view from the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. I shot this photo.


Starting a community. From scratch, really?

“It’s not easy for a group of individuals, who do not know each other, to work collaboratively from the onset. It is even more difficult to ask that this collaboration occur online when the participants are not in the habit of working on the Internet. The practice of sharing needs to be joined with the tools that work for the culture. Finally, strategy includes the leadership, direction and project management of getting things going to work collaboratively online.

It’s important to get participants/members first used to processing their information flow online. A framework such as Personal Knowledge Mastery can be used, but each person must be given time to practice, connect and get feedback. The community also needs to be nurtured, one relationship at a time, as the creators of Flickr realized:”

“(…) Because culture is slow to change I would recommend starting with the simplest tool-set possible. Turn off most functions and only enable new ones when people start asking for more. As with tools, the same minimization principle goes for content. It is more important to build relationships and to draft the right people than it is to build the best content. Community trumps content online. Therefore, the focus should be on building connections.” —Harold Jarche

I can relate to what Harold wrote in his post when I recall my commitment to a startup when I worked and supported a network of offline facilitators of learning programs or circles. There was an academy to develop and hone the pedagogical approach to deploy and facilitate learning programs for organisations. A Slack was also used internally to connect the startup team and the facilitators to learn from each other’s facilitation experience in the trenches with the customers.

Still, the focus was on content and not so much on community, though. So how do we weave and wire members to learn faster and better together?

Building, & they will come. Not really.

Which approach do you use to start a community? Do you start with a community strategy and roadmap? Do you go straight to selecting an online platform and get the ball rolling? I hear what some experienced community professionals say when starting a community.

“The traditional way to start a community was to find a forum-based platform and invite your members to join. You initiate discussions and hope things take off.

And this is still the main approach for most brands today. The traditional approach gets the most attention not because it’s the best, but because it is the most visible when it works.

Yet your approach might be completely different – and that’s probably good. If you can’t reach a few thousand people, trying to launch a new community from scratch through a public forum probably isn’t the right approach. Increasingly, you get better results from targeting fewer people. And that’s probably going to mean using a non-traditional approach too.” — Richard Millington

Build, and they will come.

I have experienced and observed as an internal community manager or just an active member of some online communities – learning communities or communities of practice -different scenarios regarding using an online platform for the community. The community platform is the technology that hosts your community network.

Scenario 1: The platform as an enabler to power the community

The community platform is already existing before I join the community. So, I got an invitation via email to join after I met the community leader in person through a video call or in person. The onboarding is seamless.

I felt welcome, heard and saw one conversation – live and asynchronously – at a time. The host of the community is available and inclusive. We learn within the community continuously and grow organically. It lasts over months, quarters and years.

The community becomes one of the important ways to develop ourselves, make sense of the world and our experience, reflect and decide better.

Scenario 2: The platform is here. What’s next?

There is no community platform yet. So, the community leader has set up a new one to test the water and invite new members to join the club. Sometimes the architecture of a sandbox is done and is even tested with beta testers. Sometimes nothing is done at all. All the default features of the community platform are activated.

So, the members could be lost as there is no virtual peer assistance to onboard or support the members to navigate the platform, find the correct information to join the conversation on video calls or chats, and post something and connect with the members.

The community becomes a ghost town or desert because the community manager hasn’t worked on the content, event, and engagement programming and built a relationship with one member at a time.

Scenario 3: Ain’t no platform, so what?

No community platform is used. Instead, there is a combination of email to announce events, share news and knowledge through a newsletter, video calls for meetups, webinars, conferences and sometimes workshops. I see different intents here:

Gaining attention and traction from the participants who can be customers, partners, or thinkers in a host’s network.

Carrying on the business and personal relationship of the network through paid events or products to connect to specialists and generalists, access resources (ebooks, curated knowledge, workshop), recording conversations, text chats, transcripts, additional resources (blog posts, newsletters, Q&A).

So can we have a great community experience without spending a lot of bucks for a community platform by combining Slack or a WhatsApp group, a blog for announcements, and Zoom for meetings? Is it possible to build an audience via those tools if we start from scratch a community? Do we need to consider upgrading with a professional community platform to have better search traffic, follow discussions, and share information seamlessly?

How about letting know people about the new community experience you have? How is that the knowledge is lost or not findable in one day? Yet, people keep asking questions and find it hard to follow the conversation when they use Slack or IM messaging tools?

Which scenario(s) have you encountered with your internal community for your organisation or as an individual?

By the way, what the heck is a community? The Community Roundtable defines community as:

A community is a group of people with shared values, behaviours, and artefacts.”

rotana ty workplace learning performance collective intelligence

It is a shot taken during an exhibition on migration in the Mac Val Museum, France.


Starting small & with the needs

What are the conditions to make communities work from the early days of their birth and launch?

Are there any cells or gems of a community before a host or community manager comes and gathers the group to learn, grow, and become independent together?

Then, who can be in touch with you to know that you are instigating a new community?

If you’re starting a new community, you need to invert this thought process. Spend the first two hours of your day reaching out to and engaging with prospective members of the community. Simply tell them you’re launching a community soon and are keen to learn from their expertise. Then squeeze in all the other activities around this” — Richard Millington

Before getting in touch, it starts with knowing the folks, their identity, intent, superpowers, needs and possible contributions?

Rachel Happe, founder of Engaged Organizations and The Community Roundtable, wrote in the Community Manager Handbook:

“Starting small also made it easier to build online and offline trust, which was critical to the research value of the community. Adding members to a trusting community proved much easier than establishing trust in a large community would have been.

Do the right thing for your members and your community, and build the business to support that,” says Rachel.

Then have confidence and patience to let it succeed.

Patience and confidence. Things don’t happen overnight. It takes efforts, time and serendipity to see the low hanging fruits of trusted relationships, possible collaboration and cooperation, and support between members.

What I have experienced through some global communities since the pandemic hit.

And it starts with the needs first, rather than focusing on features of a technology.

Starting with your needs, rather than features, is the smart approach.

“Different types of community structures will have very different platform requirements. Size, purpose, technical skills, support and security needs and other factors will all play roles in your choice.

But starting with your needs, rather than features, is the smart approach. After all, in the end it’s not about choosing the right platform. It’s about choosing the right platform for your community.” — The Community Manager Handbook


Enhancing your community’s potential

“Working across boundaries – any boundaries. Brings such rich potential – wide experience, differing thought & ideas, diverse perspectives, creativity … Relies on generosity of spirit, humility, curiosity, listening, open minds, kind hearts, meaning & purpose. Rests on trust.” — @brigidrussel51

If people want to create shared meaning, they need to talk about their experience in close proximity to its occurrence and have a common platform for conversation. They need to see their different views about the experience as richness and a prerequisite to learn what is going on.” — @EskoKilpi

“… the system and self are very much connected and we can not change the system without changing ourselves as well. That means learning to slow down, be present and show up with an open mind, open heart and courage to embrace uncertainty, unlearn old behaviors and learn new ones.” — @sonjak18

Did you enjoy the post? Then, check out the Community Series.

Community Management helps propel your internal community and scale engagement to keep learning and innovating with your organization’s ecosystem.

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Fall is here. Leaves, nuts, mushrooms, grey, raining, sunny and windy days are coming as we live the Indian summer’s last days. Every year I enjoy this season very much.

lake fall trees grand paris

A photo I shot in le Grand Paris during a Fall stroll.

This shift makes me revisit thoughts, experiences, and engagement within online communities and community projects and revisit the discipline of community management. In addition, I am observing community patterns and learning leading practices.

I have noticed the shift from public social networks to private online communities with the pandemic. To be felt, seen and heard. To be supported and uplifted by fellow explorers, seekers and instigators in a turbulent and ever-changing world.

I also became aware of how we engage in one conversation and community at a time, on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis. From meetups and coffee chats to webinars to live chats. From learning programs to virtual peer assistance. There is a framework to enable organisations and individuals, especially community professionals, to assess the efficacy and depth of their engagement maturity, strategy and actions. Each year we can discover the state of community management through a report and webinar from The Community Roundtable that brings clarity with research and trends on the work of mavens and game-changing networked organisations.

Engaging within Communities

I have gained perspectives on different roles: from being a member and a host to being an internal community strategist and manager.

As an active member of global communities – communities of practice, and learning communities focused on learning and work futures. I am immersed in getting to know and support members, sharing knowledge, experience, and reflecting. To make sense of our complex and changing world. To develop habits, practices and approaches from disciplines such as community management, futures thinking and personal knowledge mastery, and to decide better.

We may make and close triangles and other shapes from those gatherings – flat or in 3D. What works and what doesn’t work for networks weaving/convening?

“Making your network smarter is one aspect of leadership in our digitally connected world and so is convening the best parts of your network in order to address complex issues and make decisions. In crises, sometimes perfection is the enemy of the good, so having a diverse, knowledgeable, and experienced group of advisors becomes critical.” — @hjarche

I learn faster because I feel safe, seen, and heard within a private online space with practitioners worldwide. Because there is trustworthiness built and nurtured one conversation, week/month/quarter/year at a time. Through coffee chats, meetups, webinars and asynchronous chats on instant messaging or community platforms.

communautés réflexion community management reflection engagement learning practice leadership manager

View from the top of La Samaritaine, Paris, France.

Bundling Forces

Is there room for improvement for potential cooperation and collaboration between members to instigate anything? Whether it is a small artefact or project, a bigger one or a community/learning program to onboard, develop, and even offboard members.

How can we make gatherings work better to work smarter together through distributed work and networked learning?

How can we unleash the value of asynchronous chats and live Zoom chats, reduce the Zoom fatigue, and level up the low engagement of members that inevitably occurs after waves of high engagements?

Our professional development can be propelled through online communities and could be the gateway to explore possible collaborative projects if:

We would activate the strengths, knowledge flows, and intents if there are/, are the host(s) who foster, boost and nurture waves of events, contents, and engagements touchpoints.

The active members know the why they gather and engage – whether it is for their work lifestyle integration, enhancing their learning and community potential/performance, and bringing back their humanity in a world of constraints, uncertainty and hyper-connectedness.

“There is but one solution to the intricate riddle of life; to improve ourselves, and contribute to the happiness of others.” via @brainpicker


Being in Community Motion

As a host of gatherings, conversations and activities such as the community book club and the host of future skills workshops. I enjoy being the master of ceremony, host, animation,r and the captain of cohort/group/crew to observe how social dynamics evolve fast and slow over one hour or day, whether through online community book clubs or F2F workshops to develop social skills.

I noticed through my experience that it is about the energy that comes from me. It can be supercharged when people come together with resources: curated and created content, learning circles, silence and chatty moments. We use collaborative tools and analogue, physical movement and peer observations/feedback.

It is also about the velocity and serendipity of conversations and the random collision of participants who may be reassured to know what the plan of an event is in the kick-off of a workshop or a book club. But then we do something completely different and unique with outputs they/I haven’t predicted. It is about embracing not knowing and exploring at large with our boundless curiosity. This is about innovating to test the water, making sense by looking back to look forward while activating our superpowers, actionable insights and small caring networks and communities.

And the journey doesn’t stop when the workshop or the book club stops. It can and must continue through follow up resources, future sessions or reviews of past ones to convene and keep developing members of doers.

white swan lake

The Lake of White Swans, Le Grand Paris, France.


Riding the Community Waves

As an internal community manager of learning and community program to develop future skills and scale engagement. This work can include:

Scoping a distributed work and networked learning program, activities and resources to develop future work capabilities, mindset and toolset.

Contributing to the learning design of the program: co-creation of innovative pedagogical events, content and engaging touchpoints to make the community members work, learn and reflect together.

Onboarding, accompanying and offboarding each member based on their context, needs and constraints in the context of the pandemic.

Coordinating and hosting gatherings as a generous and professional host/leader within the learning community/community of practice/centre of excellence that went remote and distributed.

Programming F2F and digital events, content and engagement times to generate and propel community members’ active engagement and professional development.

Providing pedagogical, mental and technological virtual peer assistance through social presence, many actions, resources, and a community team.

Working on community measurement and metrics to work on indicators and improvements that matter to the organisation.

Putting on the spotlight the crème de la crème of active members – profiles, productions, actionable insights from conversations, projects and results through a consistent and meaningful editorial calendar, distribution and amplification of social posts, scale of the minimum viable audience, and retrospective and synthesis for the collective intelligence.

This work can be exciting, energising and draining, especially when there is only one community manager who brings continuous real-time and asynchronous support to members who need assistance on pedagogical or technological issues regarding the learning program or the community platform we use. The fuel in the community movement takes patience and effort and is rewarding waves after waves of support, conversation and motion.

There will always be a cycle of engagement with highs and lows. Vibrant live and asynchronous conversations, events and movements and other times are when the community is like a ghost town or a desert.

Many executives conflate online social networks with online communities and because of this miss the opportunity, continuing to view engagement as potentially polarizing and risky. Yet well-managed communities offer safe learning environments that contribute positively to an organization’s brand and culture, with no associated risk. This then is the opportunity for all organizations who hope to thrive in the digital era – and current community leaders are showing us the way.” — Shannon Abram


Activating Communities & Engagement Leadership

What are the heck communities made for? In a 1-1 conversation with a global chief learning officer of a large organisation, we reflected on communities of practice and learning communities.

A community of practice enables behaviour change as activities are unleashed and done within them. We make sense and decide better. We share and hand over content, stories, and experiences within learning communities. We activate our superpowers and wings. We have each other’s back and peer support as we bounce back and go onward and upwards. A learning community becomes powerful when it becomes a community of practice as resources are activated, and the action continues.

Still, it would start with engagement leadership and digital communities, as shared by Céline Schillinger in her video. Some notes from what I heard:

The way we think, behave and do is part of engagement leadership. Work as interactions, as Esko Kilpi said. We are part of different networks. There is a shift from audience to co-creators. Passive to active.

A catalyst for new connections and coherence is leadership in communities. We are pulling people together instead of pushing. It is about targets, not brands, but hearts, souls, and participants of creators. We expand sensemaking from executives and experts to everyone. The pandemic challenges how we work together, bond and build trust together. Digital communities are hard to engage because we are all remote, stressed and overloaded.

What can we do? 1. Adapting our systemic leadership, i.e. to the principle of complex adaptive systems. 2. Bringing digital diversity: using asynchronous chats and wikis, not just Zoom, to reinvent conversations. 3. Paying attention to our online presence – how you show up matters a lot, and show how you contribute as a digital global citizen.

“How to maintain engagement with your community? How do you dance with complexity?”


Introducing the Community Series

Based on my experience, education, curation and thinking, I share a series of blog posts on the art and discipline of community management.

Do you reflect on the purpose of your community to enhance its potential?

What does inspire you in your community?

What insight do you learn from it?

What do you think of your work with your crew in your community?

What can you do together now and in the future?

Community Management helps propel your internal community and scale engagement to keep learning and innovating with your organisation’s ecosystem.

LEARN MORE