Anyway, I totally agree with you. You say “Communities of Practice are bound by a shared practice and shared artefacts of that practice”, and I think I can add to that that communities are also bound by its actors, by the people who (are willing to ) make it work. You rarely stay long in a community for the same reason you joined it in the first place . You stay because you have created bonds with the people, many times friends, because you have found your comfort zone, because it has become a familiar place, because you know that there you have people you learned you can trust,etc. That cannot be achieved with the software per se, but the software can be used to mediate those messages… to set up and run humarware inside the community.

There are no recipes to how to get a group of people involved online and help them mature into a community, although you can argue there are some guideline. The truth s It takes time, it takes patience and it especially takes self-initiative and motivation. Without those there is nothing you can do.

Now picking up on the Donkey metaphor – I remember this episode very lively – I was on the country side and this donkey which was on a hill was refusing to come down, regardless of its master’s efforts to make the poor animal walk. Do you how they succeeded to make it walk? They covered its eyes with a cloth and the donkey trusted someone would guide it while not realizing he was walking “on the edge”. I wish software was much easier to use than it is, and that there were no pre-concepts about social networking. I wish we all became software-blind!
We would then not say we were going to twitter or blog, and immediately picture the tool we were going to use. We would instead picture the content of our messages and the purpose of such actions: wider communication, sharing and reflection = learning.

It will become easier, just like it happened with the telephone. More than half a century ago many people would get nervous just to hear the ring of the telephone or make a phone call. It was not a something natural to them and making a telephone call in those days was hard work. Today you push a button and you are on the other side of the continent. You don’t even have to speak louder (as my grandpa thought) because the distance doesn’t really matter anymore.

There is only psychological distance. The challenge is to overcome it. I think the way is to mentor people. To inspire them to try new ways of learning, to make them feel we know what is like to be in their shoes because we have been there ourselves…and because we are also learning. It is important to provide constant support as it is to address people in a way they feel they can trust us, and that we are available to help them answer their questions and walk their learning path. But all of that if they wish to.
In short, it all has to do with self motivation and how the moderators and the “technology Stewards” address people and use the right tone to do so! …not always easy…you need to understand the individuals, to be available to listen and to let them know they are being listened to! ….

The software is only about pushing buttons; the humanware is about appealing to people’s hearts in order to make them push what they thought to be their limits!,