This paper explores what people need to know and be able to do to enable global knowledge economies to function, and how they learn to do it in the context of globally distributed corporations. We start from the position that global knowledge economies rely on people's capacity to learn to use and integrate successive generations of Information and Communications Technologies to create the global communications networks that generate new knowledge. We view knowledge production as a fundamentally social practice (Blacker 1995; Deetz 1995; Gee, Hull et al. 1996; Davenport and Prusak 1998; Smith 1999; Swan, Scarbrough et al. 2002; Farrell forthcoming) which depends on people being able to develop new ways to communicate effectively across social, cultural, geographic, temporal and disciplinary boundaries (Brown and Duguid 2002). While technological learning is important, far more critical are the social capacities to integrate ICTs into the new social practices of global communication and knowledge building (Farrell and Holkner 2004). This kind of learning requires people to see themselves as 'expert novices' (Gee, Hull et al. 1996), people who can evaluate established practices and established knowledge for relevance to new contexts, use what is useful and keep learning what they need 'just in time'. We explore these issues by focussing on a case study of a small group of people employed in a global company with a Head Office in the US, and major branch offices in Europe and the Asia Pacific region. PaceSetters is a global company concerned with the design, development and support of health technology products. It operates with a network of distribution and marketing facilities spanning all continents. We consider how learning and teaching are conceptualised in a remote local site of this corporation. Our study focuses on 3 people who constitute a work group in the Asia Pacific region, one located in one major city office and two located at another major city office in the Asia Pacific region. The group constructs its role as the mediation of highly technical knowledge across and between local and global networks of communication within and external to the organisation (including routine contact with the European branch offices as well as Head Office in the US). In this paper, we focus on the metaphors people use to construct themselves as learners, teachers and knowledge producers, individually and in these intersecting global and local communities of practice. We attend to specific social issues in the integration of ICTs into these new learning spaces, to the ways in which established power relations (between people, departments and globally distributed regional offices) are disrupted or reinforced, and the ways conflicts are played out. We conclude by identifying the challenges they pose to formal and informal learning in and out of school. Blacker, F. (1995). "Knowledge, knowledge work and organizations: an overview and interpretation." Organization Studies 16(6): 1021-1046. Brown, J. S. and P. Duguid (2002). The Social Life of Information. Cambridge, MA, Havard Business School Press. Davenport, T. H. and L. Prusak (1998). Working Knowledge. How organizations manage what they know. Boston, Harvard Business School Press. Deetz (1995). Transforming Communication Transforming Business: building responsive and responsible work places. Cresskill, NJ, Hampton Press. Farrell, L. (forthcoming). Making Knowledge Common: the discursive production of knowledge at work. New York, NY, Peter Lang &Co. Farrell, L. and B. Holkner (2004). "Points of vulnerability and presence: knowing and learning in globally networked communities." Discourse 25(2). Gee, J. P., G. Hull, et al. (1996). The new work order: behind the language of the new capitalism. St Leonards, NSW, Allen and Unwin. Smith, D. (1999). Writing the Social. Critique, theory and investigations. Toronot, University of Toronto Press. Swan, J., H. Scarbrough, et al. (2002). "The construction of 'communities of practice' in the management of innovation." Management Learning 33(4): 477-496.