This week, we discussed about communities of practice. In brief, communities of practice are “groups of people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise—engineers engaged in deep-water drilling, for example, consultants who specialize in strategic marketing, or frontline managers in charge of check processing at a large commercial bank” (Wenger, Snyder, 2000). People in communities of practice exchange their experiences and expertise in a free-flowing, creative style that encourages fresh approaches to challenges.
Figure 1, Illustration of people with a common interest (Lacey, 2019)
According to Wenger (1998), communities of practice provide five critical functions. Those are:
The key to communities of practice is to gather people with a common interest. The community could be consist of individuals or organisations. In the field of technology, for example, there are the British Computer Society, the Association of Computer Machinery, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Examples of movements that are broader in focus include the Agile movement, the Maker movement, and the Hacking movement.
The community that I chose for this week’s challenge activity is Careerclass.id. This is a community for people who want to improve their professionalism in the world of work in Indonesia. Their main platform is Instagram, but they also create contents on Tumblr, Youtube, and WhatsApp. Basically, this community contains activities for self-development as well as useful articles related to the world of work and professionalism. The tone and language used in this community are formal but still provide openness to anyone. The people in this community are aged between 20-35 years old. To be a part of Careerclass.id, as in the member who is involved in creating activities and creating content in it, there is a special selection that is carried out every year. However, the activities themselves, such as webinars, public speaking training, CV making training, and so on can be attended by anyone. The articles they make can also be accessed by anyone. In addition, occasionally they also hold meetups both online and offline with the aim of increasing networking between individuals. People from various professions can gather and share with each other about their professional experiences. This sharing session is very helpful, especially for fresh graduates who are still determining their life path and also those who are experienced but want to do career shifting. In each of their activities, they always take every event seriously and want to maintain the professionalism of both members and participants. So that when there is an activity, participants are expected to still dress formally and speak politely. If the activity is carried out online, participants are also required to turn on the camera to appreciate the committee and other participants. In my experience participated in several events organized by Careerclass.id, I feel motivated to improve myself. I used to take my public speaking skills lightly and thought that as long as I speak in formal language, it will be enough. However, it turns out that there are several other things that need to be considered, such as the tone while speaking, the choice of opening words, and an engaging way of speaking. From here I see the importance of placing myself in a community that can develop my potential.
Engaging in a community of practice can unlock potential and increase networking in this field. Placing oneself in a community of practice is very important to increase knowledge, establish a support system among fellow practitioners, and make ourselves recognisable among people in the field (networking). This will be useful in the future, especially in career development. As an individual who often has impostor syndrome, I realised that I was too drowned in fear to immerse myself in a community. This week's material really motivates me to be involved in the community of practice in the fields that I am interested in and want to be involved in in the future.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511803932
Wenger, E. Snyder, W. (2000). Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier*.*** Harvard Business Review [online]. Available at: https://hbr.org/2000/01/communities-of-practice-the-organizational-frontier. (Accessed 17/12/2021)
Lacey, Kim. (2019). Illustration of people with a common interest [image]. Available at: http://worksmartertogether.ucd.ie/what-is-a-community-of-practice/ (Accessed: 17/12/2021)
17 / 12 / 21
Sarah Shafira Novianti
GDO710 Development Practice
MA User Experience Design, Falmouth University