CoP (Community of Practice) are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a team of students working on a class project, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a group of first-time managers helping each other learn how to deal management issues. Communities of practice are everywhere. We all belong to a number of them–at work, at school, at home, in our hobbies. Some have a name, some don’t. We are core members of some and we belong to others more peripherally. You may be a member of a band, or you may just come to rehearsals to hang around with the group.
This is something that has been going on (again) since the beginning of time. People will come together to learn and grow. They can be pulled together for various reasons, management creates a team of SMEs (subject matter experts), or students come together to get through a class assignment.
I have my own little CoPs for different things. I have some people that I go to for assistance with networking, or different things. I’m also part of ones where I am teaching about computers and how to work in MS Office. We have multiple CoP’s within our 4-H group, one for cattle, hogs, rabbits, shooting sports, archery, etc.
A great example that goes beyond in explaining is below:
Communities develop their practice through a variety of activities. The following table provides a few typical examples:
| Problem solving | “Can we work on this design and brainstorm some ideas; I’m stuck.” |
| Requests for information | “Where can I find the code to connect to the server?” |
| Seeking experience | “Has anyone dealt with a customer in this situation?” |
| Reusing assets | “I have a proposal for a local area network I wrote for a client last year. I can send it to you and you can easily tweak it for this new client.” |
| Coordination and synergy | “Can we combine our purchases of solvent to achieve bulk discounts?” |
| Discussing developments | “What do you think of the new CAD system? Does it really help?” |
| Documentation projects | “We have faced this problem five times now. Let us write it down once and for all.” |
| Visits | “Can we come and see your after-school program? We need to establish one in our city.” |
| Mapping knowledge and identifying gaps | “Who knows what, and what are we missing? What other groups should we connect with?” |
http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm
These are somme great examples of the different things that we can use CoP for. It can truly be anything, a networking meeting, a class of people wanting to learn IMD 
