CoPBoard: A Catalyst for Distributed Communities of Practice

Abstract

Symbiotic computing leads to a proliferation of computing devices that allow linking people, favoring the development of distributed Communities of Practice (CoPs). Their members, being dispersed geographically, have to rely strongly on technological means to interact. In this context, coordinating distributed CoPs is more challenging than coordinating their collocated counterparts. Hence, the increasing role of the coordination should be supported by an adequate set of coordination tools. In this paper, we present an approach based on multi-agent systems for coordinating distributed CoPs. It includes analyzing the exchanges among members and translating this information into a graphical format to help the coordinators to follow the evolution of the participation and the domain of the community.