What is a Community of Practise?

A community of practice (CoP) is an most often and informal, gathering where the participants come together to learn and support each other. Professional institutes may contain CoPs - mostly in the form special interest groups (SIGs). There can also be software user groups.

Community of practise model
Purpose: Engage actors in communities that learn

Community of practice are a network of people who share a common interest in a specific area of knowledge. Communities can vary widely in their characteristics. Some exist for years and others disappear once the purpose has been achieved.

Following are some of the benefits of a community of practice

•Provides a vehicle for developing, sharing and managing knowledge.
•Generate new knowledge in response to problems and opportunities.
•Having access to expert help to expand horizons, gain knowledge and seek help in addressing work challenges.
•It’s a non-threatening way to explore or test ideas.

CoPs often setup different types of learning environments:

Websites, mailing lists, newsgroups, face to face meetings etc. that serve as
places to find informations, news etc. and places to exchange, to reflect, to be, ...

PHP CoPs

The PHP Mailing list/Newsgroup

When I first learned PHP, I joined the PHP mailing list. It's not only a good place to ask questions but to find answers without sending a single email. The mailing list archive is a great resource. Many times someone else has already asked your question and the answer is in the archive http://marc.info/?l=php-general.

Forums are a great place to ask questions and get specific responses. The problem with a mailing list, is getting emails about everyone's topic. A forum thread allows you to subscribe to only what you are interested in learning.

Forums I use or have used include:

Sitepoint Forums http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/
Devshed Forums http://forums.devshed.com/

User Groups

The PHP website http://php.net/ has a useful calendar of user group events on the frontpage. Look for 'User Group Events.' This information is also repeated on the conferences page http://www.php.net/conferences/ which also lists conferences and training opportunities. There is a PHP user group registry at http://www.phpusergroups.org/

The 'Getting Help' page on PHP.net http://www.php.net/support.php is also a good source of other places to find help.