Updates and sneak peaks

This is an update and a sneak peak at some of the exciting announcements about MeshForum 2005 that we will be expanding on in upcoming days.

We are very pleased to announce that Valdis Krebs will be joining our already full Monday May 2nd lineup of speakers and panelists. Valdis will present a case study with a past client of Social Network Analysis in action.

Later in the day, Monday afternoon we will have a panel discussion on Networks and Sales. Speakers on the panel will include a noted PR expert from Edelman Worldwide, Buzz Bruggeman of ActiveWords, and at least one of notable expert on marketing and networks...

Also we can confirm that among other artworks and films which will be shown at MeshForum a short documentary about the Yellow Arrow project will be among those screened at MeshForum.

On Tuesday morning we expect to have two speakers from the Office of Force Transformation, Department of Defense.

In the afternoon, Howard Greenstein of NYU will moderate a fantastic panel on Broken Networks. Expected on the panel is the CIO of a very large firm who will share their experiences with 9/11 (where they, though they did have major offices at the World Trade Center, they did not lose a single employee or client's transaction) and a leader from a very large international aid agency who has significant recent experience with what happens when social networks collapse, having been in Indonesia just 24hrs after the earthquake. And we may have a few additional panelists as well!

And keep watching this space for more announcements, in the next week we expect to have a few more major announcements about speakers for MeshForum 2005, as well as some other surprises.

As a reminder. Monday Morning our keynote speaker will be Dr. Anna Nagurney. Ross Dawson will moderate our Living Networks Forum over lunch, and Jamais Cascio of Worldchanging will be our afternoon keynote speaker on the Participatory Panopticon.

And our MeshAction workshop on Wednesday will, of course, be opened by Michael Herman.

Don't forget to register early to get our best pricing .

We recommend that you bring a team with you, yourself, co-workers, partners, and clients. MeshForum will be an opportunity for you to learn and see new perspectives on Networks, and then on Wednesday May 4th spend the full day in our MeshAction workshop in open space, synthesizing what you have experienced and applying it directly to your goals.

See you in Chicago in May!

Systems Biology

The current issue of Wired (13.04) has a brief article that is at the heart of what MeshForum is all about. Cells Are Circuits, Too

[Uri] Alon wrote software that hunts for patterns in the gene-regulation of the E. coli bacterium. What he found was astonishing: Networks with mechanisms straight out of engineering, including amplifiers and pulse generators that would be at home on a circuit board. Alon suspected that these recurring patterns, which he dubbed network motifs, may represent fundamental building blocks of all networks. "Evolution converges on this handful of circuit elements that it uses again and again," he says. He believes that scientists may eventually be able to construct complex networks - genetic or otherwise - out of these basic elements.

As with all discoveries of this type, it is controversial and not completely set in stone.  But the idea that electrical circuits can be mapped into the "circuits" of a cell has some traction.  What about looking at social networks in a similar way?  Are there people who act as amplifiers (mavens)?  I will let people with more expertise play with the analogy.

Uri Alon is at the Weizmann Institute of Science in two departments: Molecular Cell Biology and Physics of Complex Systems.

SNA in Marketing

A great resource for SNA articles related to Marketing was sent to the SOCNET mailing list.

In preparation for MeshForum 2005's panel on Networks and Sales, this list offers a fantastic collection of articles and resources on the subject of applying Social Network Analysis to marketing challenges.

iSociety report on Social Capital and Software

The Work Foundation - iSociety has issued a report written by William Davies and co-sponsored by Microsoft and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The report, available online as a PDF is a 68 page summary of social capital, social software, and the importance of understanding and using social networks.

Great reading for attendees of MeshForum.

Also of interest are the presentations also available on the website from the launch event for the report.

Visualization of Flicker Social Networks

GustavoG has recently posted a detailed analysis of the social network on FlickR.

To create this analysis he had to deal with a highly dense network, over 90,000 people from an initial seed of 1000 random FlickR users.

He describes his algorithm as:

what exactly is this "friend of a friend" approach?

It's an algorithm I made up today and I don't have a better name for it.
The network is too dense, too interconnected. I need to "trim it down" to be able to show something meaningful. So far, I had used a "mutual contacts" approach, i.e. if "A contacted B" and "B contacted A", the A-B relationship is mutual. If A has at least 50 such relations, it's included the mc-50 graph. This works fine, but I thought it might be obscuring some of the higher-order network structure.

In the "friend of a friend" approach, I first test every single contact relationship in the network, and decide whether to keep it or not. Let's say I'm testing the "A contacted B" link. To do this, I identify additional contacts in the form "A contacted C, and C contacted B". If I find at least 40 such "friend of a friend" links, I keep the "A contacted B" for the sc-40 graph. (The "sc" stands for "supported contact".) If not, the contact link is removed. After removing all such "unsupported" links, nodes not connected to anything else are removed from the graph.

Densely connected areas like the UAE cluster tend to remain largely unmodified. Rare links between such clusters tend to be dropped. This unravels the network into its better-connected components.

Living Networks Forum - Monday Lunch

The networks are coming to life. The Living Networks Forum will provide an organic illustration of this, by allowing you to experience “enhanced serendipity,” in which the most valuable latent connections between people and ideas are more likely to happen. Clustering around specifics interests and themes, and interactively creating connections across domains, participants will participate in the birth and evolution of a living network. Run by Ross Dawson, author of Living Networks, this session over lunch will help to reconnect your synapses.

Monday Lunch - Living Networks Forum, Ross Dawson

Ross Dawson is a noted author, speaker, and consultant, and strong advocate of network thinking in business. His acclaimed book Living Networks, published worldwide by Financial Times/ Prentice Hall, drove the rise of the “living networks” concept, while his global bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships will be released in a revised, updated, and expanded second edition in June 2005. He works worldwide as a keynote speaker and seminar leader, with recent speaking engagements in five continents, and global media appearances including CNN, Bloomberg TV, SkyNews, European Business Network, and Channel News Asia.

Ross is CEO of Advanced Human Technologies, a boutique international consulting firm that works with major financial services, professional services, and technology firms to enhance their network positioning and strategic and relationship capabilities. Clients for Ross’s speaking, and consulting include American Express, AXA, BNP Paribas, KPMG, Lend Lease, Morgan Stanley, and many other leading organizations. He has run executive programs and lectured at numerous academic institutions around the world, and is on the advisory board of the Business Development Institute.

Prior to establishing Advanced Human Technologies in 1996 Ross worked in a variety of senior executive positions, most recently in London as Global Director - Capital Markets at Thomson Financial. He has extensive international business experience, and speaks five languages.

Moderator - Howard Greenstein, What Happens When Networks Break?

Howard Greenstein is currently the Senior Director of the Management Programs and the Non-Credit Virtual College at the School of Continuing and Professional Studies at NYU. He is responsible for creating the Non-Credit Certificate Programs in Business Continuity and Homeland Security. He is part of the team contributing resources to the Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response and the International Center for Enterprise Preparedness at NYU. He recently presented these Certificate Programs in front of the New York Congressional Delegation staff in Washington D.C. and in front of the Center's Board, which includes the commissioners of NYPD, FDNY and the city and state Offices of Emergency Management.

Previously, Howard was the Director of Operations for Mayor Giuliani's Twin Towers Fund In this role he was responsible for the day-to-day workings of this not-for-profit that served the families of uniformed services heroes who perished at the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. He managed donation reciepts, accounting, email, web and the distribution of over $168 million dollars to the families.

Howard has been a digital media consultant and expert in cutting edge technology applications and solutions for over fourteen years. As a Technical Evangelist for Microsoft's Developer Relations team he helped gain acceptance and adoption of Internet Explorer 4, SiteServer, and Windows Media among top partners. Howard came to Microsoft from streaming media startup company Netcast in 1997, where he was Director of Operations and Customer Service.

Howard is a member of the Board of Directors of the New York Software Industry Association. He has also served on the board of the New York New Media Association and is a co-founder of the World Wide Web Artist's Consortium. He is also on the advisory board of America's Camp, which hosts children who lost parents on 9-11.

Howard has been featured in the New York Post, Daily News, New York Times, Fast Company, and the Silicon Alley Reporter. Howard was awarded his degree at the Masters of Interactive
Telecommunication Program (ITP) at New York University in 1996 and
graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Science in Industrial and Labor Relations. He
recently finished the coursework for the Certificate in Personal and Life
Coaching at NYU.

Special offer for Government attendees

We are pleased to extend our Academic pricing (discount of $250) to all Government employees as well. A reminder, Academics and Government employees can register today for a price of just $499.50. All others are just $749.50.

Book chapter: Software for Social Network Analysis

Impressive review of Social Network Analysis software. Software for Social Network Analysis by Mark Huisman and Marijtje A.J. van Duijn.

Abstract: This chapter gives a state-of-the art overview of available (free and commercial) software for social network analysis as of fall 2003. It reviews and compares six programs, illustrating their functionality with example data. Data manipulation options and available support are also discussed. Furthermore, seventeen other, of which nine special-purpose, software packages and five software routine packages for general statistical software are reviewed briefly. The chapter concludes with some recommendations.

MeshAction - Michael Herman

Michael Herman is an internationally recognized practitioner and teacher of Open Space Technology, a simple, powerful approach for bringing people together and getting important work done faster than you'd expect.

Michael is the founding webmaster for OpenSpaceWorld.ORG, which now offers an introduction to Open Space in 18 languages, in addition to offering his own resources archive at GlobalChicago.NET/ost. He has taught Open Space on four continents and is known for his practical views on the process of invitation, the movement of self-organizing markets, and the personal passion bounded by responsibility. He leads meetings and conference events and helps organizations integrate the simple power of OST into everyday business activity.

He will be Opening a Space at MeshForum, MeshAction, on May 4th as a grand and active finale to the MeshForum conference. In the course of the conference, participants from all over will meet a wide diversity of people and explore all dimensions of network life. In the Space that Michael Opens on the 4th, participants will take stock of all the learning and connecting that's gone on, identify key people to work with, begin or continue important projects, and
anything else that is needed to fully integrate conference learning into post-conference activity. The day will include a mini-workshop time for learning about how to facilitate Open Space.

Early Registration Extended!

Due to a glitch in our registration form, some people have had problems registering for MeshForum. Because of this, we have decided to extend the early registration rate of $750 a person (and $500 a person for academics) until the end of the month (March 31st).

You can register at http://www.meshforum.org/registration.htm

If you are registering more than one person, you can purchase multiple tickets from our venue and ticket agent, HotHouse. Please have each person you are registering fill out our form as those details will be used to generate badges and the program book.

See you in Chicago in May! And remember there is a maximum capacity of 300 people so register early to ensure yourself a seat!

Self-Organized Networks - Notre Dame

Albert-Lazlo Barabasi's research group at Notre Dame has a very useful website on Self Organized Networks

Highly recommended for the rich collection of resources on Biological networks, network art, books, and upcoming events, as well as updates on research interests at Notre Dame.

WOMMA Summit 2005

The Word of Mount Marketing Association is having their WOMMA Summit 2005 on March 29-30 in Chicago, IL.  They bill it as "The first-ever conference on the art and science of word of mouth marketing."

On Connecting Networks

Thank you, Jack, Shannon, and the Meshforum team for sharing this guest blogger space with me. Meshforum in Chicago in May is about networks of networks so I'm fascinated. Not yet sure I can make it to Chicago but I know a bit about networks. I feel lucky (though sometimes a bit tired!) that my networks stretch from Aztlán to Greeneville and Asheville, Washington, DC, Rome/Roma, Port-au-Prince, Skopje, Mogadishu, Nairobi, Paris, London, Zagreb and points in-between. I'm also examining our human group boundaries; our intersections and divisions. The links & gaps between human technological and other 'capabilities' versus our 'willingness' or 'unwillingness' to network and communicate with each other. A related online project of mine is an information and research-sharing site called COMING OUT COLORED: Negotiating the Digital divide in social Computing. When I think back on big innovations in human communication technologies - like the radio and the telephone - but especially those in human mass comm (versus the more intimate interpersonal comm) - it's hard for me to find anything else quite like the Web. There's also our work as humans on refining & tweaking our still-developing Social Networking capabilities - the tools: software and technology - along with managing, "massaging", cultivating/growing our level(s) of willingness to network and to communicate. One of the "biggie" issues across the globe remains realities of needing to better bridge and link our diverse yet inter-related language/linguistic communities. Our work - and a bit of FUN (and travel) along the way - is cut out for us... Peace, & Ciao a tutte/tutti!

Marian Douglas, guest blogger

Welcome our first guest blogger, Marian Douglas.  She is a 30-year veteran in mass communication and communication as a social science with her original Bachelor of Arts from Pennsylvania State in Communication Studies.  She has worked as a journalist in both public & commercial broadcasting, including KUOM Radio at the U of Minnesota and a TV reporter & anchor on the U.S.-Mexico border in Laredo, Texas.  She's a former press secretary for U.S. Rep. Major Owens of Brooklyn, New York.  She's also a polyglot with most of the Romance languages as well as several Slavic tongues.

Keynote Speaker - Anna Nagurney

Dr. Anna Nagurney will speak at MeshForum. Her speech will be on "Networks - The Science Spanning Disciplines".

Anna Nagurney is the John F. Smith Memorial Professor in the Department of Finance and Operations Management in the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She is also the Founding Director of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks and the Supernetworks Laboratory for Computation and Visualization at UMass Amherst. She received her AB, ScB, ScM, and PhD degrees from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She devotes her career to education and research that combines management, economics, and engineering. Her focus is the applied and theoretical aspects of network systems, particularly in the areas of transportation and logistics and economics and finance. She is the editor of the new book, Innovations in Financial and Economic Networks (November 2003), and has authored or co-authored 8 other books including Supernetworks: Decision-Making for the Information Age, Financial Networks, Sustainable Transportation Networks, and Network Economics, and more than 100 refereed journal articles. For a full list of her publications see her Curriculum Vita.

Among the honors she has received are: a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Fellowship, a Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, two AT&T Foundation Industrial Ecology Fellowships, the Chancellor's Medal from the University of Massachusetts, an Eisenhower Faculty Fellowship, a National Science Foundation Faculty Award for Women, a Faculty Fellowship from the University of Massachusetts, and the Kempe Prize from the University of Umea, Sweden. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Brown University.

She is the editor of the book series, New Dimensions in Networks (Edward Elgar Publishing), and the co-editor of the book series, Advances in Computational Economics (Kluwer Academic Publishing).

She is the co-editor of the journal, Netnomics: Economic Research and Electronic Networking, and is on the editorial boards of the journals: Networks, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Computational Economics, Computational Management Science, Annals of Regional Science, and the International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications.

Professor Nagurney is a participant in the INFORMS Speakers Bureau. Click here for more info.

Professor Nagurney is the Faculty Advisor to the UMass - Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter and its associated Lecture Series.

For more information see Professor Nagurney's home page

Network Theory of the Law

Newtork Theory of the Law from excited utterances:

Thomas A.C. Smith, law professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, has written a very interesting article entitled The Web of Law.

Here is a portion of the abstract:

Scientists and mathematicians in recent years have become intensely interested in the structure of networks. Networks turn out to be crucial to understanding everything from physics and biology, to economics and sociology.

This article proposes that the science of networks has important contributions to make to the study of law as well. Legal scholars have yet to study, or even recognize as such, one of the largest, most accessible, and best documented human-created networks in existence. This is the centuries-old network of case law and other legal authorities into which lawyers, judges, and legal scholars routinely delve in order to discover what the law is on any given topic. The network of American case law closely resembles the Web in structure. It has the peculiar mathematical and statistical properties that networks have. It can be studied using techniques that are now being used to describe many other networks, some found in nature, and others created by human action.

Studying the legal network can shed light on how the legal system evolves, and many other questions. To initiate what I hope will become a fruitful new type of legal scholarship, I present in this article the preliminary results of a significant citation study of nearly four million American legal precedents, which was undertaken at my request by the LexisNexis corporation using their well-known Shepard's citation service. This study demonstrates that the American case law network has the overall structure that network theory predicts it would.

Keynote Speaker - Jamais Cascio, WorldChanging.com

Jamais Cascio is the co-founder of and Senior Contributing Editor for WorldChanging.com, a website dedicated to finding and calling attention to models, tools and ideas for building a "bright green" future.

Describing himself as a "freelance world-builder," Cascio specializes in the design and creation of plausible scenarios of the future, combining developments in science, technology, social trends, and political systems. He has done such work for a wide variety of clients, including major computer firms, non-profit organizations, government agencies, toy and game companies, and television producers. His scenarios focus on the relationships between disparate forces and systems, and the importance of long-term, systemic thinking, particularly regarding the environment and economic development.

Cascio has spoken in fora as diverse as an Italian technology conference ("FuturShow 3000"), public radio (debating with Bill Joy about the future path of technology), and a retreat for energy industry strategic planners. His essays about the collision of technology and society have appeared in a variety of mainstream publications, including Wired, Salon and Time. Cascio designed several well-received science fiction game settings, and has worked on a number of television and film projects.

A Participatory Panopticon? (April 8, 2004)
The Participatory Panopticon vs. the Pentagon (May 10, 2004) 
Personal Panopticons, Only $400 (June 11, 2004) [a short piece on how these technologies are here in their early stages] 
Participatory Telemedicine (February 22, 2005) 
The Bright Green Panopticon (February 25, 2005)

Update: cleaned up formatting, and minor corrections

MeshForum's mission and vision, 2005

Conferences are an opportunity to step outside of our regular work environment, to meet new people, to hear ideas presented from alternative perspectives, to stretch ourselves.

MeshForum will bring together academics and business professionals across many fields and industries, bound together by a shared interest in Networks - in understanding, navigating, securing and working within and with them.

Speakers, panelists, and exhibited artists have been selected to provide a range of perspectives and experiences. Every attendee will, we hope, be challenged and inspired.

The format is designed to allow for highly interactive discussions and Q&A. Lunches and dinners will offer a chance to meet, break bread, and talk informally with attendees and speakers.

On Wednesday, May 4th, we will open up the conference and have a day of engaged conversation in Open Space. Lead by Michael Herman, one of the foremost practitioners, attendees will explore what they have learned from the Monday and Tuesday speakers and panels, and will work together on where to go next.

MeshForum's mission is to bring together and connect networks - around the subject of networks. Our conferences will offer an interdisciplinary forum for the cross-fertilization of ideas, expertise, and experiences. On the web we are working on pulling together resources - lists of experts and researches, biobliographies, organizations working in and researching Networks, events and more. We are exploring other options to further foster and support research across boundries into Networks - these may include in the future a peer reviewed journal, invited guest bloggers, podcasts of MeshForum 2005, and other means to share and spread information.

We invite you to join us, here in Chicago May 1-4, and on the web via comments and soon helping edit our wiki pages.

MeshForum is seeking interns

MeshForum is seeking interns. Interns will work collaboratively with MeshForum's staff in the preparation and organization of MeshForum 2005 (May 1-4th). Interns may then continue with MeshForum on the organization of MeshForum 2006.

Interns will work on one or more of the following projects:

* Currating the "Interstitials" art presentations for MeshForum 2005

* Conference coordination and planning

* Marketing and media outreach/support

* MeshForum program book design, layout, and production

* MeshForum Wiki support and editing

As well as many other tasks and projects.

If you are interested in interning with MeshForum, or if your institution has a formal internship program MeshForum should register with, please contact Shannon Clark at shannon at meshforum.org.

Reverse Biomimicry

Jamais Cascio, one of MeshForum's keynote speakers shared the following with us. WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: More Reverse Biomimicry

This is the MeshForum Thesis in a single paragraph - understanding Networks in one context can and will lead to advances and new insights in others. In this example, a model developed to explain the propagation of computer viruses across the Internet helped other researchers studying ecology model the spread of an invasive flea.

Exactly the type of interdisciplinary approach we are seeking with MeshForum, and why we are about "Connecting Networks".