A project I am currently working on is to watch for indicators of value-creation in the SCoPE community. This idea is inspired by the work of Etienne Wenger-Trayner, Bev Wenger-Trayner, and Maarten de Laat: Promoting and assessing value creation in communities and netowrks: a conceptual framework (PDF). When I first read this paper I was really drawn to the idea of stories to capture the experiences of participants as they engage in community activities, and also what impact this has had on professional life. Jenny Mackness has written about the Value Creation framework on her blog over the past year. I highly recommend reading Jenny's posts for a concise description of what is involved.
I realize that capturing these stories is not a light task, but also believe that committing to this as an ongoing practice would inform our work as a community of practice. So far I've just been skimming past SCoPE discussions to look for statements that indicate personal benefit and appreciation, as well as evidence that participation in the community has spanned across boundaries into activities elsewhere. To do this properly I would need to conduct interviews (and I would love to do that!) but I see this first phase as combing the forum discussions to see what value-creation indicators have emerged through participation. However, if anyone feels compelled to invest a few minutes in documenting their experiences, it would be so helpful!
There are 2 templates:
- Personal value narrative
- Specific value-creation stories
The personal value narrative is a matrix (see p. 44 of the paper) so is a little hard to duplicate here.
The specific value-creation stories are guided by 5 questions, but not all questions need to be answered to generate a useful story.
The questions below represent an abbreviated view of the toolkit offered in the Value Creation paper. See page 47 for the full questions.
- What meaningful activities did you participate in?
- What specific skills or insights did you gain? What access to useful information or material?
- How did this influence your practice? What difference did it make / what did it enable that would not have happened otherwise?
- What was the outcome? How did it contribute to your own success and/or the success of your workplace?
- Did the experience change your sense of what success is?
Do you find these questions helpful for documenting your experiences? Anyone game to try it? Remember, not all questions need answers for your piece become a valuable story.
This is a really condensed description of the value creation framework so I won't be surprised by requests to elaborate! :-)