Communities of practice

members have some shared goal, interest, need, or activity that provides the
primary reason for belonging to the community
• members engage in repeated active participation and there are often intense
interactions, strong emotional ties and shared activities occurring between
participants
• members have access to shared resources and there are policies for determining
access to those resources
• reciprocity of information, support and services between members
• shared context (social conventions, language, protocols).


Users should be able to...
• Tell who is speaking
• Provide feedback to a speaker verbally or non verbally
• Follow a conversational thread when there are multiple speakers
• Backtrack on a conversation
• Know if conversation is being logged
• Signal which conversational thread they are attending to
• "Hear" everything that is said (locally) with enough time to process it
• Communicate with different "voices" (e.g. say, emote, think, change real voice)
• Indicate level of engagement (e.g. be able to indicate when otherwise engaged in
real world conversation).

Widening the Net: Workshop Report on the Theory and Practice of Physical and Network Communities. Steve Whittaker, Ellen Isaacs & Vicki O'Day