EMDC has always had Affinity Groups at our physical gatherings. This is a place where those who are practitioners in a given area can meet each other (across organizations).
We are encouraging these groups to either continue as occasional Affinity Groups or start regular Communities of Practice. Each CoP will be a series (see below). Again: an Affinity Group would be an occasional meeting (semester, quarterly) and can be simply a "meet and greet," and a more-often CoP (every month, every two months) would include hosting guests.
People ask EMDC if they can present sessions (on their area of expertise). It might be better to allow these presenters to present in a closely associated CoP. In that case we will contact you to see if you would like to host this person in your CoP. For instance, someone recently ask if they could present a topic X. I knew that this would fit well with a CoP and contacted the leader to see if she need another future guest. Perfect!
EMDC expects that the CoP leadership team will:
- Host the meetings
- Understand the "tech host" aspect (how to present screen; mute people, etc), after one or two sessions, of help
- Works with the TSCO team to learn how to schedule the next sessions (including describe guests, presentations, etc)
- Create a landing page. Very soon we will have a template for you, but many have already created a google doc as can be seen here. This allows you to post upcoming sessions and post recordings of previous sessions.
EMDC will:
- Give access to your CoP to the thousands enrolled in EMDC Online
- Prepare a Zoom room and provide hosting/ tech hosting help at the start
- Make available a landing page with link to that from the EMDC home page
- Create a "series" for your CoP so the registrants are automatically registered for the next class
All questions and any requests for help can be sent to chris_guthrie@tsco.org