Michael Ellis: »This work begins with an exploration of the semiotic aspects of the communicative processes involved in interactions within Communities of Practice (CoP) in the context of Computerised Information Systems. [...] Communities of Practice are explored using the CLIMATE framework: a holistic approach to requirements definition for telepresence environments. The fundamental components of CoPs are described: Community, Language, Identity and Medium. The purpose of the communications of a CoP are investigated with an exploration of the knowledge transfers taking place. The benefits of Knowledge Management Systems for a CoP are discussed.« [via randgaenge's del.icio.us bookmarks]

Telepolis: »Im Lauf des Booms, der seit einigen Jahren die Welt mit einer enormen Anzahl und Artenvielfalt von Kameras überschwemmt, hat man oft die Frage gehört, was denn eigentlich mit all den unzähligen Fotos geschehen soll, die mit diesen Kameras geschossen werden. Das erzeugte Material, so die implizite Unterstellung, sei bloße Redundanz, nicht einmal die Hobbyfotografen selbst würden sich das Zeug auch nur anschauen, was sie da mit ihrem High-Tech-Spielzeug zusammenknipsen. Weit gefehlt, wie der Erfolg von flickr.com und anderen Photo-Sharing-Diensten im Internet belegt.«

A few days ago I put up a dump of every post ever published on plasticbag.org for people to rip apart as they pleased. I thought some people might decide to visualisations or to analyse word frequency or link frequency or whatever. To be honest, I've not had the most overwhelming response ever (but then again it's not like I was giving away free chocolate bars or anything), but I've really enjoyed the stuff I have received.

»Despite the growing popularity of virtual communities, there is no consensus among researchers regarding the appropriate definition or types of virtual communities. In this paper, a virtual community is defined as an aggregation of individuals or business partners who interact around a shared interest, where the interaction is at least partially supported and/or mediated by technology and guided by some protocols or norms.« [via George Siemens (elearnspace)]

Plazes is the first global location-aware interaction and geo-information system, connecting you with the people and Plazes in your area and all over the world.

»John Udell on 'folksonomy' or user-driven taxonomy of Flickr and del.icio.us and the problems of adapting it to an enterprise environment.
"These systems offer lots of ways to visualize and refine the tag space. It’s easy to know whether a tag you’ve used is unique or, conversely, popular. It’s easy to rename a tag across a set of items. It’s easy to perform queries that combine tags. Armed with such powerful tools, people can collectively enrich shared data. But will they? The success of Flickr and del.icio.us won’t necessarily translate to the intranet. You can import the global-hive mind, but you can’t export the local-hive mind. That asymmetry defines the challenge we face as enterprise knowledge gardeners."« [via elearningpost]

Transcript of the live chat session that took place Thursday, August 28, 1997