Digital+Habitats

__ Digital Habitats __

Book Talk Comments from October 12, 2011 with Lily, Lucy, Harmoni, Andrea, Annie, Matt L., Matt. W., Debbie, and Trey
//**Here's a quick overview about our Book Talk. See the chapter summaries for specific information.**// We found that this book is similar to a text book. You don't need to read it all, but it does have great information. USE THE INFORMATION THAT IS RELEVANT TO YOU!


 * THEME:** Community cultivation affording participation

OVERARCHING IDEA: MATCH THE TOOL TO THE PEOPLE AND PURPOSE!! It’s about purpose first, //then// technology!

Community of Practice (CoP): place where people learn together. There are a variety of CoP’s: virtual or face-to-face or a combination of both.

Practice dictates how the community happens (and how you choose technology).

Page 60 (the donut) Classifies tools into categories Chapter 6 (continues to chapter 7) Can help with ACTION RESEARCH: Learning more about your community and their needs

Asynchronous: on your own Examples: Blogs, Sakai forum Synchronous: together Examples: online chats, instant messaging

Chapter 6: A lot of references Skim the categories of orientation then search for what is relevant to you: charts are informative

Chapters 7/8: Great chapter for helping with DESIGN PROJECTS—picking platforms and acquiring technologies

Chapters 9/10 Technology has changed how groups get together. Keep it SIMPLE

Chapter 11: Mutual influence between tech and communications Groups evolve quickly and can provide challenges within CoP Stretching your relationship limits

Chapter 12: Lots of questions… helps you to rethink all that you think you know about technology stewardship and CoP.


 * CHAPTER SUMMARIES**

//*Chapter 1- Communities of Practice: a glimpse of theory//


 * Digital Habitats are a community of practice in which learning occurs together and where community and technology intersect.
 * Allows groups of people to share information
 * Allows groups to become public
 * These Digital Habits and Communities of Practice allow the learning community to be central.
 * Learning in an integral part of our life
 * EX: Blogging is a public journal that others read. When one reads a blog, they could discover what they have in common with the blogger and/or their new learning could lead one to from a new community.
 * “Learning Friendship” in a CoP, trust is HUGE
 * 3 domains and fundamental dimensions:
 * Domain
 * Practice
 * Community
 * Domain:
 * For a practice to be formed, it must be on a topic that is of interest (more than passing).
 * Practice… Practitioners:
 * Learning is a practice. When one joins a CoP, they become practitioners in their own learning. They practice how to live what they have learned.
 * Any communication technology can enable this (being practitioners) to occur
 * We learn from:
 * Outside sources
 * Each other (from and with)
 * Informal and Formal events
 * Community:
 * Based on commitment and trust
 * When you read as a practitioner, it allows one to interact with certain expectations that what they will learn will go along with their experiences.
 * A digital Habitat needs…
 * “Lurkers” – legitimate peripheral participation
 * Leadership

//*Chapter 2- Technology and Community: a glimpse of history//


 * 1973, David Woolley - PLATO, a computer- based learning platform
 * Many people have expanded this idea and practice of a working community, which is now the WWW.
 * Technology and community have a long history together beginning with the postal main and the telephone
 * ARPANET- connected academic and scientific communities.
 * 1972 email software was introduces
 * 1977 EIES (Electronic Information Exchange System) became one of the first computer conferencing systems for online group work.
 * 1977-1978 Ward Christianson invented the first electronic bulletin board, which offered a way to collaborate amongst a new group of people
 * Mass Email, Listserv
 * Usenet or “user’s network”
 * First widespread peer-to-peer network
 * TCP/IP protocol
 * The overwhelming success and volume using this network then lead to subdivisions.
 * 1985 The Well started as an online community, then grew outside of being online.. getting together in person, etc.
 * 1990s, pay-based dial up bulletin board services
 * AOL
 * Prodigy
 * Compuserve
 * WWW – Web 1.0
 * Sharing documents and interactions
 * Easy access
 * Freeing network communication
 * WWW- Web 2.0
 * 2005, Tim O’Reilly
 * Communities have played a substantial role in the invention of new technologies. Many technologies and practices are a result of thinking that occurred within specific CoPs.
 * The Internauts, people who were apart of the Internet recount
 * Barry Leiner
 * Vint Cerf
 * Physicists at CERN
 * Hypertext-based access system to enable a community to communicate and share documents
 * Lead to Mosiac, 1993
 * Wiki

//Chapter 3- Technology stewardship: an emerging (and evolving) practice//


 * A job that anyone can do.
 * It is someone (usually involved within a specific CoP) that sees the need for advancements in the technology to assist their community. They make these advancements occur.
 * Is part of community leadership.
 * Technology Stewards connect the community and technology. (They are //not traditional IT support.//

Streams of Activity: These activities usually run parallel and constantly inform each other. (The importance of these streams changes over time.) The technology steward places the COMMUNITY NEEDS at the core of challenges as he or she scans, chooses, and uses new technology. (see page 27 for image)
 * Community Understanding
 * Technology Awareness
 * Selection and Installation
 * Adoption and Transition
 * Everyday Use

Stewarding can pose difference challenges and advantages depending on the type of community the steward is involved with.

Part II Literacy Chapter 4: Constructing Digital Habitats A digital habitat is an experience of place enabled by technology.

Four ways a digital habitat can be experienced.
 * 1) Tools – technology that supports an activity (such as blogs, wikis, forums etc) or bridges different types of technologies. Think of the tools we use for class – website, forums, Skype, etc Think about what activities need to be well supported by tools, and think about what kind of activities a specific tool could be used for.
 * 2) Platform - a tech package that has integrated a number of tools such as Google, Microsoft Office etc. Some are synchronous (such as Skype or Google +) and some are asynchronous (such as blog sites, or Sakai) and some are both such as Etherpad. Platforms are the building blocks of a digital habitat. This is important to the ease of use of a digital habitat.
 * 3) Features – how useable is the tool or platform for a specific purpose. Feature focus requires an understanding of how communities conduct activities. Features can be simplify a tool or make it more complex. Just because a feature has appeal does not mean that it will be useful to the community.
 * 4) Configuration – the full set of technologies that make up a habitat. For class, ours includes Facebook, Google, Sakai, Etherpad, Kindles, IPads, Voicethread etc. The configuration focus moves away from the tools and platforms and looks at how the habitat serves the users in a broader sense.

Integration of the habitat: 4 perspectives of how the pieces work together
 * 1) Thru Platforms – tools fit seamlessly together such as Adobe products or MSOffice products. Sometimes trying to use a platform for something it wasn’t designed for can cause integration problems because it doesn’t behave like users would expect. Platform integration makes the habitat easier to use.
 * 2) Thru Interoperability - How easily do the technologies talk to each other. (bridges across tools and platforms) but there may not be uniformity between the technologies.
 * 3) Thru Tools – Because of the broad range, this integration requires a higher degree of technology knowledge to be able to work and move between the various tools.
 * 4) Thru Practice – Sometimes integration just happens thru the way users operate in their activities. The practice dictates the integration of various tools and how they are used together.

CHAPTER 5: Making sense of the technology landscape Three Polarities: Tool Snapshot: Core tools for groups – schedules, directories, networking tools/sites, security, subgroups, immersive environments Individual Asynchronous Participation – email, forums, commenting, Individual Asynchronous Reification – tagging, profile page, newsletter, bookmarking, content repository Individual Synchronous Participation – telephone, chat, IM, skype, app sharingIndividual Synchronous Reification – podcast, calendars, whiteboard, search, scratch pad.
 * 1) Rhythms (together and separation) - New technologies make it possible for groups to come together yet live in separate physical communities. Synchronous tools allow users to come together and asynchronous tools allow users to interact separately.
 * 2) Interactions (participation and reification) – Users come together and participate thru discussion etc but they also produce and share resources and artifacts.
 * 3) Identities (individuals and groups) – Although a community is a group, it is experienced by individual members.

Chapter 6 Communities learn together in different ways. The chapter organizes this diversity into 9 "orientations," and identifies sets of tools that support the community's pattern of activity.
 * Community orientations: activities and tools**



//"Orientations reflect the importance that communities place on various ways of being together."// (70)
 * //Orientation//** = //"a typical pattern of activity and connections through which members experience being a community."// (69)
 * not mutually exclusive, though one/some dominate
 * not fixed, evolve with the community
 * provide a way of looking at the technology through the unique lens of that community: how can technology can support and compliment a community's activities and style?
 * 1. Meetings** - //"emphasis on regular meetings where members engage in shared activities for a specific time."// (72-75)
 * 2. Open-ended conversations** - //"maintain ongoing conversations as their primary vehicles for learning"// (75-78)
 * 3. Projects** - //"focus on particular topics, go deep, and collaborate on projects to solve problems or produce useful artifacts." (79-81)//
 * 4. Content** - //"primarily interested in creating, sharing and providing access to documents, tools and other content."// (81-84)
 * 5.** **Access to expertise** - //"create value by providing focused and timely access to expertise in the community's domain, whether internally or externally."// (84-86)
 * 6. Relationships** - //"focus on relationship building among members as the basis for both ongoing learning and being availale to each other."// (86-89)
 * 7. Individual participation** - //"Learning together happens in the context of a group, but it is realized in the experience of individuals....[who] bring different backgrounds, communication styles, and aspirations to their participation."// (89-93)
 * 8. Community cultivation** - //"a need to reflect on the effectiveness and health of the community to make things better, joined with a willingness to work on it."// (93-96)
 * 9. Serving a context** - //"defined by their orientation to serving a context beyond the learning of members...This outward-facing focus can become a key driver of the community's evolution, a selection criterion for members and the inspiration for participation."// (96-99)

Each section in the chapter outlines the "signs of life," "key success factors," "questions to consider," and "technology implications" for every orientation. Additionally, each section includes a table that provides some examples of activities common to each orientation and related tools to support those activities.

//**As far as putting this chapter to practical use, I recommend the following: use the definitions above as a reference for assessing the orientation(s) of a community, for example, your workplace for Action Research, or target audience/user for Design Projects. The diagram above is from the Chapter 10 "Action Notebook" and is used for identifying orientations within your community, by assigning them scores between 1-5, 5 being the most important. Once you have identified the important and dominant orientations within the community, you can then refer to the tables within those particular sections as a guide.**//

Chapter 7
 * Assessing your community context**

The assumption that a community needs to change or use more or different tools. Several factors can affect just how much change in technology is needed and whether change will be tolerated. o New-likely to be uncertain or not yet clear on their orientations o Changing-may be restless and ready for change or settled and resistant to change. o Settled-may have more of a sense of who they are and what they want.
 * Community’s state of readiness**
 * __Stage of community development__-technology needs to vary over its lifecycle. Is community new, changing or settled?


 * __Community diversity and complexity__-needs vary in complexity, which affects technology choices. How diverse is membership? Too many tools or features may dampen, rather than enable, activities
 * __Community experience with the use of technology__-technology use depends on combination of access, skills, and preferences. How experiences and skillful are members with technology.
 * __Community attitudes about technology__-What level of innovation energizes, rather than discourages, your community? Without a compelling reason to justify the investment of time, new tools and the technology skills they require are likely to be a distraction.

A community’s accountability has direct technology implications, as does its desire to be open to the world or to be private. Here are some factors to consider about a community’s environment.
 * Your community’s relationship with its environment**
 * __Organizational relationships__ – Is it completely “contained” within an organization? How much of your community needs to be interconnected to the day-to-day activities of other organizations?
 * __Relationship to an IT department__ – Theses relationships often define a set of resources and constraints to a community’s technology decisions.
 * __Need for connection to the outside__ – Some need to be private and secure; for others, openness is a key to the life of the community.
 * __Multimembership__ – How can your configuration make it easier for members to deal with this challenge? Do you offer tools and features such as RSS feeds that allow members to harvest materials from your community.
 * __Security__ – securing member and community information, and protecting the community from spamming or other external incursions.

Choosing a technology creates a moment in time when a community moves forward most visibly. It is important to consider how to plan and coordinate technology changes.
 * Time and sequence issues**
 * __Community schedules__ – useful to create a schedule for technology change, spelling out the details about when and how selection and implementation will occur
 * __External schedules__

A lack of money or time can slow the process but it can also stimulate the company to find free resources.
 * Your community’s budget and resource considerations**
 * __Scope and budget__ – How big or small do you want to start? Is money available for purchasing tools, custom development, and technology stewarding, or to pay for hosted applications?
 * __Contributors, decision makers and stakeholders__ – may need to gather data to justify your expenditures.
 * __Technical resources and expertise__ – how much technical know how do you your-self have?
 * __Tech steward’s time__ – How much time do you have to shop for and implement technology?


 * Technology infrastructure considerations**
 * __Online access and individual technical setting__ – How do the members access band width-from the office, from home, or from a mobile device? Are members using PCs or Macs or both? Does software run on just one or on both platforms?
 * __Hosing and vendor relationships__– software and how it is hosted
 * Application service providers – ASP’s offer customers both the software and the server hosting
 * Hosting your own – your own server
 * Working with software vendors – vendors can be useful partners (find out how long they have been in business & how long the product has been available
 * Programming – will platform require ongoing programming and if so, what type – actual code or HTML template for appearance.

Technology choices probably will need to be assessed and accepted by your IT department. Focus on making sure that your community gets the most out of the technologies your IT dept. accepts.
 * Internal IT resources and system requirements**
 * __Client programs__ – installation on user’s machine
 * __Single sign on__ – consider the implications of members having to sign on

See page 110 Table 7.1 for: Pricing basics, advantages, disadvantages, and examples.
 * A note on platform pricing**

The bottom line is that you should try to stay aware of the context of your community as it evolves and understand how that context affects your technology stewarding.

Chapter 8 Which technology acquisition strategy is appropriate depends on the circumstances of an individual community. This chapter explores strategies that change a community’s digital habitat; and also explores budget, comfort with technology, and availability of other resources. There are seven acquisition strategies summarized below:
 * Technology acquisitions strategies**

Your organization may already have access to all you need to get your community going and are familiar and adept with these existing tools. An opportunistic “borrow, adopt, adapt, and cobble together” strategy may require that you take a second look at what you have and use your tools in a new way.
 * Strategy 1. Use what you have**
 * Pros: requires no budget, avoids learning curve
 * Cons: firewalls can be problematic, downloading external software may be forbidden
 * Tips: find out what is currently working and think about why it is working, explore new or more effective ways to use it

Growing selection of free community tools and technology is available with limited financial and available quickly.
 * Strategy 2. Go for the free stuff**
 * Pros: very easy set up and use, low risk experimentation, tools and features often rival those found on pricey platforms
 * Cons: free systems are often supported by advertising, cobbling together several free systems may create integration problems, security may be a factor, less savvy technology members may not have the skills or inclination to test and jump between tools
 * Tips: back up copies of your data, archives and controls,

Communities may have access to enterprise-level portals, tools designed for virtual teams and collaboration platforms. This strategy may require a close relationship with the sponsoring IT department.
 * Strategy 3. Build on an enterprise platform**
 * Pros: use of existing platforms may be encouraged by IT dept., for content-oriented communities, this system has a good document management facilities
 * Cons: collaboration facilities may not be adequate support,
 * Tips: invite IT dept. early on, use tools and features that people are most familiar with, understand any back-end compatibility questions, consider mixing and matching enterprise tools,

Choosing a commercial platform can go a long way toward meeting many of a community’s needs all at once. This strategy is useful when communities prefer a one-stop shop.
 * Strategy 4. Get a commercial platform**
 * Pros: bundling a set of commonly required tools, a platform can offer a quick start
 * Cons: systems can be expensive, several business models exist, IT may resist

Communities have the expertise and willingness to create their own tools and platforms from scratch.
 * Strategy 5. Build your own**


 * Strategy 6. Use open-source software**


 * Strategy 7. Patch elements together**

Each strategy discussed takes a slightly different approach to acquiring software for your community. Each one can build upon community circumstances and needs and has implications for your budget, resource availability, and your comfort with technology.

Identify tools already in use, or available. Determine whether you need to buy anything. Justify the decision to buy technology with real community experience.
 * Start with the simplest, least expensive solution that you think will work**

Once you’ve picked a strategy, find others who have used that strategy and talk with them.
 * Learn from other communities and their tech stewards**

Depending on your strategy, find a way to include your community in testing the technology. Ask a vendor for a test space. Use free tools for small, experimental activities with the community.
 * Develop a testing plan**

This is a cyclical process and your strategy may change in the next cycle. Evaluate what you see based on what you learn about your community’s needs and the experience of other communities. Debbie
 * Once you recover from the first round, keep an eye out for what is next**

Overview: //The implementation process and the ongoing role of the tech steward.//
The daily life of an everyday tech steward and how the steward can make the community a productive environment is mainly what chapter 9 is all about. Chapter 9 establishes the duties, both foreground and background, and provides key pointers to aid in the implementation processes. Seeing as technology has changed what it means to be together, this section is attempting to merge practical with theory.


 * The stewards five principles**
 * 1) Participate and keep the vision; technology is not a system of equipment of hardware software networks, it is an integral part of the evolution of our community.
 * 2) Have a simplistic structure while meeting the needs of the digital habitat
 * 3) Evolution – technology in use, don’t be unaware of the overall configuration
 * 4) Know the resources around you, outreach to other tech stewards
 * 5) Data storage and retrieval – make a store key files appropriately

__Planning__: Have a change management system and pick the right size, Planning by creating a road map, lay out clear goals and expectations Technology : Know the key players, ensure system integrity if legacy environment, think carefully about the URL naming conventions. __Practice :__ Create a testing prototype for model. Create an environment this is functional and help the members interface with the new systems.
 * About The Foreground Steward**
 * The work can happen in the foreground during New or Migration deployment (major transitions)
 * o Must always consider the //before and after effects//
 * o Consider technical and social changes
 * o Look at the process of migration
 * o In the foreground, is the time you have to invest your energy
 * § highly visible time
 * § when significant changes are taking place or technology related practices
 * When the steward is configuring implementations
 * When the steward is closing the distributed community’s end of life.
 * o Have a preservation plan for historical and archival purposes
 * o Carry key artifacts forward
 * o Secure any agreements and licensing
 * Pointers**


 * About The Background Steward**
 * Day to day stewards are focusing on the business, planning for change, technology involves management, know the technology life cycles. In the background the steward has many responsibility, this is a less noticeable time, use time wisely
 * The IT process flow, supporting new members, the practice, the steward watches for things that goes unnoticed
 * Identify and spread good technology practices
 * o Using FAQ’s
 * o Word of mouth
 * o Get training formal or informal
 * o Find out how the tools are being used
 * o Determine what are the important lessons
 * Know the manpower allocations, budging restrains, time line, project schedules
 * Make the changes in less disruption and know the boundaries created by technology
 * Have the recovery restore process plan keep the domain registration, user terms agreement, license update also accounts payable for vendors
 * Know what to expect __background__ –l focuses on what matters, look into resources, like donations. Have a technology vision of community success.
 * Affording participation – no //one size fits all// finding the balance for sharing information with individual for meaningful communities
 * Be mindful of the ongoing concerns

__Practice__ Establishing Integration and orientation procedures for small or large environments, considerations of //open or closed// and boundaries must be established. A question to ponder: How easy do we make it for individuals to participate on their own terms?
 * Pointers**

Moving on to **Chapter Ten,** a summary/reference to previous chapters; presents the practitioner’s guidebook or the action notebook! It also presents the Preamble: Go to page 148, begin by a reflection of your role as the tech steward, reference Chapter 3 for specific details. This activity will be like a mirror, letting the steward layout and //see// the components by using a "spider gram to prioritize and to map motivation and participation.

//Step one is to have a solid understanding your community.//

As it relates to the **Orientation** profile for your community, what does this mean? See page 152. Refer to Chapter 6 for specific details involving the **Orientation**.


 * The Orientation**
 * An Aid, used in creating a spider gram of your community
 * Involves other community members for a different perspective
 * Is used as a tool to compare and discuss results with stakeholders

//Stewarding technology – Good Journey!//
CHAPTER 11: A MORE DISTRIBUTED FUTURE

Mutual influence between technology and communication is propelling inventiveness forward It is propelling so fast that traditional roles are blurring and more people are building and refining technology outside of traditional programmers This has led to higher engagement, shorter cycle times, and accelerated inventiveness Reconfiguring Cultural Trends
 * 1) Togetherness / Increased Connectivity
 * 2) Participation / New Modes of Interacting & Publishing
 * 3) Social Identities / Changing Geographies of Community
 * 4) Changes of Social Activity
 * 5) Challenges:
 * 6) Overwhelming Volume
 * 7) Falling into Group Think
 * 8) Vulnerable Systems
 * 9) Stretching Relationship Limits

CHAPTER 12 - A LEARNING AGENDA

Our learning agenda is an invitation to explore three areas where technology stewardship will matter: serving existing communities, making new communities possible, and stretching our very notion of community.

By learning agenda, we mean a collectivesense of what we need to learn in order to move our practice forward. Articulating alearning agenda is a useful community-building activity. In the case of technology stewardship, such an agenda can guide our learning as we make the future, both individuallyand collectively. It also provides a language for tech stewards to talk to each other and toconnect with other communities struggling with similar concerns.


 * A literacy of technology stewardship (pg 184)**
 * Community technologies require new practices for their successful adoption, productive use, and further development.
 * We are enthusiastic about the interplay between technology and community, yet we also harbor a good amountof skepticism about technology adopted for its own sake and we are aware of potential downsides.
 * in theend we are most interested in the invention of new practices, a process that we already st:ehappening in many communities.
 * **Technology configuration** is a simple concept whose purpose is to elevate the conversation about technology to include all of the tools that support the functioning of a community.
 * **Community polarities** provide a framework for assessing the effects and opportunitiesof technology and associated practices.
 * When does technology connect a community to the point of overwhelming some ofits members or marginalizing others?
 * How can it enable more productive J IJteractions around published resources?
 * When does the group identity becomeso strong that it prevents openness and learning?
 * **Community orientations** similarly provide a perspective on technology that is focusedon learning within a community.
 * The rapidly evolving context created by the interplay of communities and technologydescribed in Chapter 2 and the trends of Chapter 11 further frame this learning agenda inthree areas:
 * By offering new opportunities and challenges for existing communities
 * By enabling the formation of new communities we could never have imagined before.
 * By stretching our very notion of communities of practice and the learning potentialthat exists within and among communities


 * 1. Serving existing communities**
 * The first challenge is to learn how to serve existing communities better as they navigate through the maze of potentially useful technology. Looking forward, we see more choices and configurations of technologies tat are more complex because they combine tools from multiple platforms.
 * Sincecommunities can be overwhelmed by too many choices, how do we enable them to takeadvantage of what makes sense without distracting them from their purpose?
 * Learning in communities requires to muchcohesion to split over uneven adoption, access, or personal preferences with regard totechnology.
 * Technology stewardship requires a balancing act between conservative stability, wherecommunities stick to ",hat they are comfortable with (even if they have outgrown it), andrunaway adoption, where members become enamored of technology for its own sake.
 * When should we advocate for or resist change and whenjust witness from the sidelines?
 * **Connectivity and proximity.** Increased connectivity produces a kind of virtualproximity. "Always on" translates into "always there." Once the natural limitations ofthe physical world are removed, the potential for being together appears boundless.
 * How much contact is enough and when is it too much?
 * If some members use technology to reach high levelsof connectivity, can tech stewards avoid inadvertently creating second-class citizenship forthose who are not so well-connected?
 * **Shifting boundaries and peripherality.** Increased connectivity also opens newperipheries by allowing many people to observe without committing.
 * As technology affords the power to control detailed access to specific content and interactions by both members and non-members. the management of boundaries becomes a necessary part of the learning agenda for tech stewards.
 * **New modes of engagement.** The evolution of publishing and interaction tools enablesboth stronger individual voices, through self-expression tools like blogs, as well as strongergroup manifestations, through collaboration tools like wikis. But again the successful useof these capabilities for communities depends on the practices members develop aroundthem.
 * What are the practices that need to be learned aboutmodifying each other's writing on a wiki?
 * When does a community need to acknowledgethe contribution of individuals to a communal product?
 * **Creative reappropriation and community voice.** We have noted that the hypertextnature of the web makes it possible for communities to create entire resource collectionsthrough links and tags.
 * Being a productive node in this hypertext world requires new practk:.es of participation and in some cases, a new sense of community voice.
 * **Transparency in a Socially active medium.** The digital medium can produce enormous amounts of data about participation, contribution, the use of resources, and aboutmembers themselves.
 * Techniques for mapping networks enable new ways of visualizingthe structure of communities.
 * Digital footprints can provide much information aboutindividual behavior.
 * Polling can reveal the "mind" of the community.
 * When does a reputation systempit members against each other to the point of damaging a community's sense of collegiality and therefore its learning potential?
 * **Dealing with multiplicity.** Our communities will have to deal with thecompetition generated by the multiplicity of places where individuals can congregate todiscuss any given topic.
 * Will members still want to contribute to the community in the same way once they focus on their own blogs?
 * As multimembership enables people to connect with each other in mr and more places on the web, will they still feel an allegiance to one community in in particular?

"
 * 2. Making new communities possible**
 * Many of those groups will becomenew communities, which would not have formed without technology. Thesetechnology-enabled communities present particular challenges that require the development of new practices.
 * **People finding each other on a wider scale: size and meaningful****engagement** . A socially active medium provides new avenues for people to find each other across allkinds of boundaries.
 * People can come together who would not meet otherwise-or even know of each other's existence
 * Size is certainly a challenge for communities. Finding the limits to meaningful engagement ina chat room, a phone bridge, an email list, or an RSS feed is not a technical problem; it is a matter of meaningful social interactions.
 * **Digital habitats as community catalysts.** To the extent that technology creates new spaces for togetherness, it can itself become acatalyst for community formation, whether or not this was the intention.
 * People postingon a discussion forum, contributors to a wiki, or commentators on a blog are not necessarily a community, but the potential is there.
 * Even if a community does develop, it runs the risk of continuing to be defined largely byits original technological space: a listserv, a blog, a conferencing system. When membership is defined by participation in a technology space, it may take new skills to give it anidetiry that is not defined by technology.
 * **Access to living practice through virtual presence**. As communities become global, supporting meaningful engagement at a distance isbecoming an imperative.
 * Interaction tools offer the potential to learn together as practitioners even when distance prevents participants from actually practicing together.
 * Participants in a web-based forum often do not engage in practice together in the forum, buttheir shared background in practice makes their exchanges very meaningful