Communities of practice abound in our society. They have always been around, but with the increase of Internet usage and tools, they have taken on a whole new meaning and significance in our world. The Air Force has their own COP and on their site they define a COP as “A Community of Practice is a group of people connected to each other by a need to solve common problems, develop skills, and share common practices. A Community of Practice typically shares a common responsibility or function. Community members collaborate to more effectively accomplish their mission.” Basically, a COP is a group of people with a common interest that get together to share ideas, collaborate, and assist each other. In our new flat world, online tools such as forums, online document sharing, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, etc. all allow COP’s to come together in new innovative ways. I could easily create a website for IT instructors and implement forums for the teachers to come together and ask questions of each other and provide support. The wonderful thing about using tools like this is that we are no longer confined to our geographical areas. I could receive feedback from an instructor in California, or even overseas. The following table, taken from Etienne Wagner’s site, shows examples of some of the roles that COP’s can play:

Problem solving	"Can we work on this design and brainstorm some ideas; I’m stuck."
Requests for information	"Where can I find the code to connect to the server?"
Seeking experience	"Has anyone dealt with a customer in this situation?"
Reusing assets	"I have a proposal for a local area network I wrote for a client last year. I can send it to you and you can easily tweak it for this new client."
Coordination and synergy	"Can we combine our purchases of solvent to achieve bulk discounts?"
Discussing developments	"What do you think of the new CAD system? Does it really help?"
Documentation projects	"We have faced this problem five times now. Let us write it down once and for all."
Visits	"Can we come and see your after-school program? We need to establish one in our city."
Mapping knowledge and identifying gaps	"Who knows what, and what are we missing? What other groups should we connect with?"

As you can see, COP’s can be an extremely beneficial tool and resource for anyone to use. Most fields of employment have organizations that can be joined for some benefits. A COP differs from these organizations in that they are usually informal and focus on a specific discipline whereas most professional organizations may cover a wide range of disciplines within an industry. As the ability to collaborate with others across the world continues to grow, the roles of COP’s will continue to grow and will become increasingly important to members of any industry.