03 November, 2022

WeRin is going from strength to strength! On 3rd November 2022, 11 members of the WeRin consortium from Turkey, Croatia, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Norway engaged in a design workshop to begin scoping a WeRin Community of Practice (CoP).

The Hincks Centre and the Rubicon Centre were well represented with Sarah Davis, Ana CruzGarcia and George Bulman in attendance. MTU PhD Candidate, Michelle O'Keeffe, a User Experience Researcher and Designer, led an activity-based workshop where WeRin partners interacted and explored aspects of a card-based toolkit.

 

 

This framework and toolkit were designed as part of a PhD study to “Establish a Framework and card-based Toolkit for the creation and sustainment of Communities of Practice”. The framework includes the seven stages involved in the creation and sustainment of a successful Community of Practice and the toolkit may be used by in-person, online or hybrid communities of practice.

 

 

Michelle introduced the framework and an interactive workshop. The WeRin partners engaged with the toolkit cards with a focus on the early stages of identification and defining the community of practice. Miro boards and sticky notes were used to track the development of the consortium’s ideas. The toolkit cards include nudging prompt questions to explore the understanding and inspire the partners to consider how, and for whom, the community of practice will be of benefit.

 

 

We first considered the domain, the community, and the practice, and explored who will be the target members for this CoP and who comprises the core, active or peripheral members.

 

 

There was a lot to learn and to absorb in this engaging and interactive session! Michelle indicated that a Community may need to develop subgroups - particularly for large communities. Typically, a pilot phase would test the community of practice goals and relevance. This test would then inform the wider development and launch of the community based on the findings and results from the pilot testing.

 

 

Expectations and relevance for the members will be an important element, and a key challenge for any community of practice is to remain relevant and to make individual members feel ‘heard and helped’.

The goal for the WeRin community is to develop gender inclusive ecosystems that support more women entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs and students to confidently choose entrepreneurship and to feel they belong in their ecosystems.

 

 

Based on this and future discussions, the WeRin partners will look at applying the different stages to the WeRin project. Follow our progress at https://werinproject.eu/ as we strive to increase the number of graduate female entrepreneurs in Europe.

 

To find out more about our inclusive WeRin project, click here to visit the project page on our website.

 

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.