Building Community of Practice: What do you want the humanitarian community to be like?

Networks and communities of practice can provide support, inspiration, partnerships and invaluable lessons to help us improve ideas and avoid “reinventing the wheel”.

Communities, in other words, are critical in nurturing innovations and helping innovations grow. As an innovator in the field, at management and policy-level, behind your research desk, or elsewhere, how can a community help nurture and grow your ideas?

What do you think should the humanitarian community be and look like to achieve its best as a whole and support individuals? Think big or small, abstract or specific. Answers can help each and everyone of us better understand where we need to look, what we need to add and how we need to act.

To give you a few ideas, here are some soundbites crowd-sourced by participants at the Humanitarian Innovation Conference yesterday:

I would like a humanitarian community that…

… wants to work together.
… inspires people inside and outside.
… challenges our basic assumptions.

… keeps me coming back.
… collaborates openly and equally.
… is self-aware, inclusive and inspiring.

… is actually committed to action.
… does the hard stuff.
… does the hard stuff ethically.

… accepts the risk of innovation.
… is a good and save environment to talk about failure.
… includes the people we are here to help.

… makes a significant difference.

Now over to you. What do you want the humanitarian community to look like?