Expert knowledge that spreads. Expert time that’s protected.

A community of practice is a group of people who share a field or a recurring problem and get better at it by learning from each other regularly. The term comes from learning researchers Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991). A managed community of practice adds named responsibility: DBX Expert Lab provides a senior community lead, recorded expert explanations and a review routine, so what experts know is shared, tried in real work and kept current, while your owners decide what changes.

Organizational launches are fixed 90-day fees: Foundation $15,000 (one practice, up to 30 initial members), Growth $25,000 (two related practices, up to 75 initial members) and Enterprise launch $35,000 (up to 3 practices, up to 150 initial members). Each includes one Knowledge Station at one client site. Every package includes a named DBX community lead working inside your organization, in your channels and with your experts; instructional design support for every explanation and exercise; and a learning and community experience designed with you, not from a template. Ongoing management, hosting and licenses are quoted separately. For independent experts, course design starts at a $750 course base plus $225-$1,125 per lesson.

Training teaches a set curriculum, usually once. An online community hosts conversation, but often without anyone responsible for what it produces. A community of practice is organized around a shared, recurring problem: members try methods in their own work, compare what happened and keep what holds up. An Expert Lab combines recorded expert explanations, practitioner discussion, authorized trials with peer review, and practices that have named owners and review dates.

An Expert Lab launch takes 90 days, in three phases. Days 1-30: Set up the Station, onboard experts and operators, welcome the first members. Days 31-60: Record explanations, run discussion and support authorized trials. Days 61-90: Review reuse, quality and effort, then decide what comes next. After 90 days you can extend, take a handover to run it yourselves, or stop. Ongoing management is quoted separately.

You already own capable collaboration tools. DBX's fee pays for named responsibility: senior community leadership, expert participation, learning design, facilitation, maintained resources and follow-through. If your existing tools fit, we work there. A separate platform such as Discourse is recommended only when durable discussion, client-controlled deployment, portability or ownership justify it.

AI is optional, permissioned and reviewed, and the community is designed to be valuable with it switched off. The community can run in your existing tools, on managed Discourse hosting, or on your own infrastructure, on premises or in a private cloud, within an agreed scope. A dedicated Discourse community includes Discourse AI: semantic search, related topics, summaries, assistants that answer from your reviewed content, spam and toxicity detection, and usage reports, with AI data stored alongside your community content. Discourse's included hosted model comes only with its hosting plans; self-hosted communities connect approved cloud AI, where selected content is processed by that provider, or separately scoped and validated local AI. Identity, access, retention and the processing boundaries for AI, email, analytics and backups are agreed with your IT team.

Keep what is working. We target agreed gaps, such as expert workload, learning design, cross-team reuse or maintained practice, rather than replacing a healthy community.

We record a baseline at the start, then look for reuse beyond the originating team, quality of methods, changes in expert effort and value to members. No posting quotas, and no outcome is guaranteed.

The package's selected eGlass lightboard with built-in camera and lighting, agreed mounting, setup and operator onboarding at one client site. You provide a compatible, IT-approved computer and suitable space; if you already have recording equipment, we reuse what is suitable. Foundation includes one complete explanation, Growth two and Enterprise launch three, with lengths and revisions agreed in the proposal. Delivery charges, tax, audio, cabling and any on-site work are confirmed there too. Unspecified travel and room works are not included.