Keith Lay, Composer - Online Communities of Practice

Dan Goleman describes the "Social Brain" in Appendix B of his well known book, Social Intelligence: The Revolutionary New Science of Human Relationships (Goleman, D., 2006, p.332) this way "All primates live among others who can help meet the demands of life, thus multiplying the resources available to any single member of the group - and putting a premium on smooth social interactions. The social brain seems to be among Nature's adaptive mechanisms for meeting the challenge of survival as part of a group." In the same way that societies develop in a unique way to meet their unique environments, so Goleman reveals that our interactions with others actually have the power to shape our brains.

Professional and amateur music primates now have this wonderful tool called e-session:

It provides an online community of production practice. Members (starts at $20 per month) post their needs, basic music tracks needing help and their budget to the site. A member can answer the need and either offer to do the work as budgeted, or negotiate for more. If an agreement is made, then e-session collects the entire budget + a percentage for a finders fee and pays half when a contract is made, and the other half upon approval of the finished product through PayPal. If a member has 15 professionally credited label projects, he or she gets special status. This site is officially supported by ASCAP and has technical support from the AVID, who produces the audio production powerhouse product ProTools.

This system, or ones like it will likely become the way that good musicians all around the world will begin to support themselves. Without these kinds of tools, a good musician was forced to live in major music production cities LA, New York or Nashville, and work a day job until they made a name for themselves. But now, musicians in any part of the world can work for producers from any part of the world. The results will be quite interesting! Certainly, the music world will change with this kind of technology.

Etienne Wenger (Wenger,E. 1998) defines 'communities of practice' as groups meeting the following descriptions:

Joint enterprise as understood and continually renegotiated by its members
Mutual engagement that bind members together into a social entity
The shared repertoire of communal resources that members have developed over time

esession meets these characteristics.

Sources:

e-session http://www.esession.com

Goleman, D., (2006). Social Intelligence: The Revolutionary New Science of Human Relationships. Bantam. New York

Wenger, E., (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning As a Social System. Retrieved September 21, 2009 http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/lss.shtml