Summary of KM Chicago November Meeting

I attended, through the web, the November KM Chicago meeting today. The subject was Communities of Practice and the presenters were North Suburban Library System (NSLS) employees.

This was a very informative meeting. Christina Stoll and Debbie Baaske did a great job illustrating the KM initiatives at NSLS and their success with Communities of Practice (CoP). The KM group at NSLS really did a great job of researching how to incorporate KM into their organization and then share with it's member libraries.

With NSLS's great efforts, a neat (meaning uncluttered not cool) completely usable interface was developed and after adding enhancements such as options to attach documents to a message and the incorporation of smiley faces, their CoP are utilized quite frequently.

NSLS offered several tips on the creation and maintenance of CoP: develop guidelines on creation and dismantling of CoP, market internally and externally, have a team that can develop a mission, vision, recruitment, and organization.

I must admit that I have a better understanding of the value of CoP after attending the meeting.

NSLS has made great strides with their KM initiative. I suspect they will continue this growth.