I wanted to contribute some reflections on what we did this week. There are a couple of reasons - firstly because I thought it might help if I tried to demonstrate something about how I use the reflective process and also to help me to "catch up" with where I think we are as we reach the midway point.

Something which struck me last week and this week was the way in which we were able to bash around some ideas without people becoming entrenched; we've been able to look at different perspectives as a group without falling into the trap of thinking there are "right" or "wrong" answers. One of my objectives is to try to show the difficulties we face when engaging with something as big and complex as online communities and it's good to see that most people are open to new ideas and prepared to take issues away and explore them. I also think that part of what I’m working with the group for is to try to initiate ideas – it’s to try to get us looking at things from different perspectives. I think that's a key "graduatable skill", something that we should all try to do as part of our repotoire of thinking tools.

I’ve spent some time thinking about the discussion about communities and I’m still not sure I’ve nailed it. I’m not sure what the differences might be between a “group” and a “community”. Intuitively I feel that I’m a member of any number of groups but that not all of those groups are also communities. This leads me to think about how I might characterise the differences between groups and communities. If I think about a group of people who teach at LCC I’m a member but I only know three other members of that group and much as I get on well with them we’re not a community. Does community involve investment? I might categorise another group as those with an OU degree but I don’t know many of them, I do know some and we form a community because we share ideas and support – we give and receive something within our .............. community? Might our gifts, comments and sharing views, form currency in a gift economy? Is community membership based on what we give to and take from the community? Does membership of any community depend on active participation? I’ve been thinking about “informal” communities rather than those with elected leaders – if we think about people who write blogs as a community are those who are thought of as “leaders” the ones who contribute most?  The way I’m visualising this community is as a set of circles.

The circle in the middle represents the main group of the community, the leaders for want of a better term. The outer rings show different levels of membership – possibly determined by skill or activity or level of contribution. Members might move between different levels based on whatever the “currency” of the community might be – if this community is about working on a piece of open source software those at the very centre might be the people able to determine the direction of the development while those further out are working on a specific piece of the whole and the quality of their work might move them closer to the centre (or further away!). Those on the outer level might not participate much, might simply be observers, might be new and just joining, etc. Does that make sense? If you consider a community you feel part of does this idea work?

Back to Monday’s session - I think the extended middle section, the "break" offered time for groups to coalesce and discuss the project within a slightly more “formal” setting, i.e. as part of the session. I certainly think we should use this space again.

I’m getting a great deal out of the Monday sessions and learning all the time. Thanks guys!