New Community of Practice Forming

Since the lack of Wi-Fi access in the conference center here has put the kabosh on my plans to blog this event in real time, I'm going to experiment with another format. This entry reports on a session that's not on the program and will take place right on center stage before the afternoon keynote address about four hours from now.

"The fellow who invented local area networks once said that no matter how much you hyped the power of the Internet, it wasn't enough. That's the way I feel about the Future of Learning that IBM has been describing. But it's not just IBM. It's all of us. It's the convergence of learning and work."

Instructional design and business process design are becoming one and the same. Our role will be to facilitate the flow of work rather than dispensing contentl. It's an exciting new world.

Talking with some of you here reminds me of Napoleon saying to one of his field marshals, "We must plant trees along every major road in France to protect our soldiers from wind and cold when they march off to new conquests." "But, mon emporeur, it will take decades for them to grow." "Alors, better start right away."

So today we're forming a community of practice around workflow learning. You don't build a CoP step by step. It's more like lighting a match and fanning the flames.

I don't know what shape this will take. I'll volunteer the WorkflowInstitute site to host the discussion. VNU has established a conference within a conference on workflow learning at Training West to be held in SF this October. If you want to be in on something big, join the community. Help me fan the flames. Let's talk at the reception immediatey following the zebra guy.

Posted by Jay Cross at June 8, 2004 11:37 AM | TrackBack