It seems to me that there are not enough tips being shared about how to get a community of practice up and running and how to sustain entusiasm once it’s going. Over the next few weeks, and perhaps beyond, I’m going to post those things that have worked for me. Of course I would love to hear your experiences and suggestions as well.

New communities present a paradox: members want to join a community but without members there is nothing to join. I remember in the early days of ActKM, to create the impression a community really did exist, we manufactured the online conversation. Well, ‘manufacture’ might be too strong, but we did create a roster where we took turns to post a message on the online forum. This tactic continued for about 6 months. When we reached around 100 members the conversation self generated.

ActKM has never been a tightly knitted community and I would imagine that a group with stronger social ties would require less effort at the outset.