Brent MacKinnon's List: socialartist

I like the term Knowledge Artisan to describe this growing field of economic activity. An artisan is a skilled worker in a particular craft, using specialized tools and machinery. Artisans were the dominant producers of goods before the Industrial era. Knowledge Artisans are retrieving the older artisan model and re-integrating previously separate skills.

Communities of practice and strategic capabilities

Etienne Wenger is a globally recognized thought leader in the field of social learning theory, communities of practice, and their application to organizations. He has authored and co-authored articles and books on the topic. Etienne’s work is influencing both theory and practice in a wide range of disciplines. Cultivating communities of practice is recognized as a key component of a learning strategy in a rapidly growing number of organizations across private and public sectors, including business, government, international development, healthcare, and education.

It appears that Barbara Ganly is interested in so many topics that I love to learn about. I'm glad she has joined our social artistry group and I'll have a chance to learn more from her.

"After all, a healthy community is a basic premise through which deep learning and meaningful work come to life.  And yet it has been the messiness, the shifting, emergent nature of geographic communities and online communities outside the structure of semesters, grades, classes, disciplines, departments and majors that has really brought home for me how and why we need story to make sense out of the maelstrom of sensation and information–to slow down the rush of impressions, to make us confront our biases and fears and habits, and how we need storytelling to connect us and to build trust and curiosity and to push us past the façade of what we think we know so we can immerse ourselves in meaningful, creative work to bring better worlds into being".

I proposed a lecture about my experiences using social media in teaching and learning, leading up to a proposed project: students would join me in two face-to-face seminars of about two hours; between face-to-face meetings we would meet online via forum, wiki, and one live session with the Blackboard Collaborate platform. We would be joined by others online who might not have attended the lecture and/or face to face seminars, with the objective of creating a living resource for self-organized groups of self learners -- a peeragogy handbook that would complement existing resources such as the book in progress by Joe Arided and Charles Danoff, including guidelines and annotated resource guides to methods, theories, tools, examples, and more.

“Every single human being is creative. The biggest challenge of the creative age is to lift the bottom up and encourage a prosperous, vibrant and sustainable community for all.” -Richard Florida.Richard Florida and the Creative Class Group have donated a variety of services to several charitable organizations including:

University 2.0 - Sebastian Thrun

I think working from a complexity framework is necessary in a world of rapid changes and uncertainties. Dave Snowden's Cynefin model can give us a useful lens for understanding and practicing  social artistry. 
"The major difference between systems thinking and complexity thinking is that the former focuses on defining an ideal future state and seeks to close the gap, whereas complexity seeks to manage the evolutionary potential of the present.  Systems approaches range from three year plans, through idealised process designs to agreeing common values.  These approaches have dominated management in industry and government for the last three decades and draw heavily on engineering metaphors of the organisation.  Complexity theory offers an evolutionary alternative".

“The most pre­cious gift we can offer oth­ers is our presence.”

- Thich Nhat Hanh

Excellent overview of workplace learning from Jane Hart