Visualizing Organizations: A Video Demonstration

Accenture has an interesting video / slide show that demonstrates how SNA could be used to help organizations.  Visualizing Organizations: A Video Demonstration:

Imagine that you could represent an organization as a dynamic organism, with individuals being nodes in a network, with the links between individuals representing the interactions, the transactions, the exchanges through which work actually gets done.

Researchers at The Accenture Institute for High Performance Business are developing just such a tool. The technology makes it possible to see informal organizational networks and observe the channels through which work actually gets done ... in real time.

How can leaders benefit from the ability to monitor change? This comprehensive seven-minute presentation provides a demonstration, overview and example of The Accenture Visualizing Organizations Initiative.

[found via Bruce Hoppe at Connectedness.]

Mapping influence of news on blogs

Matthew Hurst writes: Mapping The Influence of News on The Blogosphere:

Inspired by a number of comments from The Hyperlinked Society Conference, I'm posting some preliminary results of including mainstream media nodes in a map of the blogosphere. The full image can be found here. These results are very preliminary and are aimed at simply getting a feel for what is going on.

I've seen similar analyses before, but I can't find them quickly.

Disaster Forensics

Smart Mobs links to "Disaster Forensics", future role of sensor networks:

A paper on crisis information systems and the potential to collect large amounts of data during disasters by Anthony Townsend of the Institute for the Future and Mitchell Moss of the Graduate School of Public Service at NYU.

Pew: The Strength of Internet Ties

Riffing on the idea of "the strength of weak ties," the latest Pew Internet & American Life Project report is The Strength of Internet Ties by Jeffrey Boase, John B. Horrigan, Barry Wellman and Lee Rainie.

Abstract: The internet and email aid users in
maintaining their social networks and
provide pathways to help when people face
big decisions

Add social networks to CRM

An interesting find from Tom Baldwin at Knowledgeline: A nice compliment to CRM - Social Networking

CRM still is needed to manage mailing lists, track opportunities, etc. But, if you're firm is serious about leveraging its relationship capital, these tools shouldn't be overlooked.

CRM is Customer Relationship Management, for those that don't know.

Air Skyping by MeshForum 2005 speakers

Two speakers from MeshForum 2005 made it into the Money Section of USA Today.

To quote from the piece:

Edward Vielmetti does exactly that on his blog. Vielmetti runs The Vacuum Group, a networking service in Ann Arbor, Mich. "I spoke with Valdis Krebs this afternoon, who was high over the Atlantic flying SAS on his way home from Eastern Europe," Vielmetti writes.

Krebs is the developer of InFlow, which he bills as "software for social network analysis," whatever that means.

"He was talking to me using Skype, and not paying anything extra for the call," Vielmetti writes. "Skype sound quality was as good as ever — he didn't have a separate mic and was just using the built-in on his Mac PowerBook."

So, clearly at least one columnist from Money doesn't yet know what social networks and mapping them means... but still, good to see two speakers from MeshForum quoted talking to each other.

CNET's The Big Picture

George Siemens at elearnspace noticed elearnspace: The Big Picture

I just noticed this at CNET news - they are connecting their stories using a network-like map to show how they relate to each other. Great idea.

If you click on any main story, you will see the story on the left and, just below the advertising, The Big Picture associated with the story in question that shows other stories, companies and topics that interrelate. You can go to a full screen version to navigate through their stories, topics and people. And at least in Firefox there was no plugin to add. Once you get used to the navigation (just click on a box to center and see what's related to that box), it's an interesting way to review the news CNET covers.

Networks maps for storytelling

Bruce Hoppe gives a nice example of Networks maps and storytelling Network maps of government scandal

Check out this graphic from Sunday's NY Times, about seamy goings-on in Washington (snipped). Wow! There is a lot of information on the page (maybe too much).


The widely recognized master of these kinds of network-storytelling pictures was Mark Lombardi (1951-2000), who elevated these diagrams to an art form.

Updated for correct title and URL from Bruce.

Barbara van Schewick on Network Neutrality

Larry Lessig posted a new paper by Barbara van Schewick on Network Neutrality.

This is a fascinating paper on the economic issues around network neutrality, the full paper (Sept 20th 2005 version) is available as a PDF from lessig.org. (unfortunately it is copy protected, were it not I would offer more detailed discussion of the points she raises).

This is the type of conversation which we hope to continue at MeshForum 2006.

CACM: Criminal Network Analysis and Visualization

There is an article in the June 2005 Communications of the ACM on Criminal Network Analysis and Visualization by Jennifer Xu and Hsinchun Chen of the AI lab at the Eller College of Management at The University of Arizona.  Their AI lab website includes demos of their COPLINK that is their analysis tool.  The paper makes reference to Valdis Krebs' analysis of the hijackers' network.

Addictive network game

Addictive network game thanks (I think) to Bruce Hoppe

For those of you hesitant to try crack or crystal meth, I just discovered an equally addictive pastime you might consider. The "Planarity Flash Game" presents a network on-screen and invites you to reposition the nodes so that there are no crossing edges.

Networks and the Law

MeshForum is about the importance of Networks across disciplines. At MeshForum 2005 we will hear from speakers as diverse as economists, phyiscists, entrepreneurs, military experts, consultants, and activists.

In a paper still in draft format, Thomas A Smith of the University of San Diego School of Law analyzes the case history of the US courts from a network perspective. His research was conducted in partnership with Lexis/Nexis who wrote custom software for him to calculate the citation linkages across US case history as well as the subset of just US Supreme Court cases.

While his paper is still in a draft form and thus unfinished in many places, his initial research findings support many conclusions about the network structure of US case law, showing that the structure of which cases get cited is complex but appears to be partially at least a good example of specific types of networks.

Even more relevant to MeshForum is that one of his primary points is that the body of US case law, as well as perhaps other relevant documents such as laws and legal journal articles, represents one of the largest, oldest, and most heavily documented examples of network data, and it also happens to be easily studied and analyzed. For one, case law unlike many other datasets is public records. For another, for centuries, long before electronic records, cases were uniquely identified and linked to each other via specificly formatted citations.

By studying this record it is possible to learn a great deal about how the network embodied within the legal profession builds upon the past, perhaps discovering specifically the importance of age vs. specifics of the case in determining future citations (i.e. a portion of citations may be a result of age not fitness, but a portion may be related to other factors than purely age). And further that this may change over time, i.e. there appears to be a pattern whereby over a certain age cases become less frequently cited.

I personally wonder if it would be possible to detect the impact of new technology on the citation records - i.e. the rise of Lexis/Nexis and other electronic search likely changed how past cases were researched and found - perhaps allowing new cases to be discovered and cited more quickly (i.e. without having to wait for a printed book to be published) and probably allowing some "fit" cases to be discovered independent of their level of citation - i.e. changing perhaps the network structure by allowing more links independent of age/link number effects to be formed.

In any case, it points out again why people from many industries are and should be interested in Networks. And shows to the value for network researchers of engaging with collogues from many fields.

Small world network primer

Small World Network Primer from Judy Breck, author of Connectivity, the answer to ending ignorance and separation. It's an "unscientific attempt to introduce some ideas about small world networks, which defy visual illustration because they are virtual, complex and multidimensional." She uses both visuals and words to good effect.

Networking for academics (and others)

Networking on the Network: A guide to professional skills for PhD students by Phil Agre.

I have read probably dozens of articles and books on Networking, some very good, some only so-so. Thanks to the power of Del.icio.us I found this article by Phil Agre earlier this evening.

To quote an extended passage, relevant not just to a PhD student embarking on an academic career, but to anyone (especially anyone attending MeshForum):

(2) Networked individualism

Let us take the concept of an invisible college a step further. Imagine a vast diagram of all the professional networks in the world of research. In this diagram, everyone will be connected to everyone they know. Abstract as it sounds, such a diagram can actually be drawn with reasonably accuracy by following the citations in their published work. The analysis of these citation links is called "bibliometrics", and is a scholarly industry in itself. Throughout this article, I have been painting a picture of the structure of these relationships. When two researchers have become members of one another's professional networks, they maintain a sort of surveillance of one another. They read one another's published work, monitor one another's career progress, hear reports on one another through common acquaintances, update one another in periodic conversations at conferences, and so on. Their relationship has an architecture -- a structure and logic that are dictated largely by the workings of research as an institution.

On one level, the architecture of relationships in the research world has not changed much since the Renaissance. Scholars have always read each other's work, corresponded, traveled to visit one another, cooperated and competed, and so on. So what changes in the world of the Internet, not to mention cellular telephones, cheap air travel, and other technological advances? Those new technologies do not change anything on their own, but they do provide tools that people use to do more of the things that they already want to do. The institutions of research create tremendous incentives to keep in touch with the other members of your professional network, and that's what's happened: people are in much denser and more continuous contact with their professional contacts than ever before. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that we're heading toward a world in which everyone is a constant presence for everyone else. Technologies that are currently under development will propel this trend even further. Digital libraries, for example, will allow everyone to monitor everyone else's publications in real time, and cheap, high-quality video links will make it possible to organize seminars at a distance. While they will not eliminate face-to-face interaction altogether, these technologies will allow researchers to maintain even more continual contact than they do today.

This development is striking, and it counts as a new chapter in the history of the human person. Barry Wellman calls it "networked individualism". Networked individuals (such as yourself) are like air traffic controllers who, by using a video display and audio communications, constantly maintain a mental map of all the planes in their airspace. This effect can be quite tangible when you are reading your daily e-mail, and it can be especially tangible when you are working on a large-scale professional project, like organizing a conference, that requires you to keep track of the status of dozens or hundreds of individuals, or to reach out selectively into the space of individuals in your field to identify the best speakers, authors, referees, or meeting participants for a given purpose. As the world becomes networked, you will have to decide consciously how to manage the blizzard of communications that your network will entail.

Go read the rest to see both Phil's explanation of the "Invisible College" and where he goes next, the "Expanding Universe".

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.

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.

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".

networked_performance

networked_performance is an artistic endeavor that combines new technology with performance to develop possibly new art forms. Wouldn't it be great to see some of this at MeshForum?

What is NETWORKED PERFORMANCE ?
locative media, augmented reality, distributed performance, environmental theatre, pervasive play, immersive gaming, telepresence?...???

Recent technological and telecommunication developments--the internet's two-way communication model, relatively inexpensive access to computers and networks--have given rise to a powerful and diverse range of creative production, particularly among those not self-defined as artists, resulting in a bleedover between and across disciplines as people explore unconventional uses of tools and technologies. Current activity indicates that trends emergent from computer network based practice are changing the nature of performance.

Networks in cities and fungi

This is such a great example that I need to quote the entire thing. MeshForum wants contributions from people who have looked into this kind of thing. Monkeymagic: Traffic, Congestion and Information Flows

This is exciting from the New Scientist: apparently New roads can cause congestion. [via 3quarks daily]

Traffic should flow best in cities when only a limited number of roads lead to the centre. This counter-intuitive finding could allow planners to prevent gridlock by closing roads rather than building new ones.

It comes from a new way of thinking about complex networks developed by Neil Johnson, Douglas Ashton and Timothy Jarrett at the University of Oxford, UK.

Fascinatingly, the article goes on to say:

The same process of analysing the costs associated with moving across a network could help solve a long-standing problem in biology: why some natural networks are centralised like cities, whereas others are decentralised like the internet.

"Organisms such as fungi have managed to evolve a complex network in which there are centralised and decentralised pathways to move nutrients around," Johnson says. "Now we can look at biological systems in terms of the 'costs' and 'benefits' of the connections rather than in terms of the physical structures themselves," he says.

They Rule - network map tool

theyrule

A Flash application that visually depicts the map of board of directors of the largest 500 companies in the US, along with select other institutions and organizations which connect these directors.

As an example of network maps it is a fascinating study, they include links to search engines for further research, but are hampered by the restrictions they place - many of the people on these boards are also bound to each other via other institutions or groups, as well as by serving on the boards of smaller companies or non-profits.

FeedMesh

FeedMesh is a group working to establish a "peering network" for decentralized web(site|log) update notifications and content distribution.
[via Sam Ruby]

Jigsaw - collaborative contact exchange

Jigsaw - Putting the Pieces Together

Jigsaw's mission is to map every business organization on the planet, contact by contact, and keep them current through a collaborative effort. The resulting database will help business people perform their jobs more strategically and efficiently.
[via The Social Software Weblog]

Visualizing Collaboration

Ross Mayfield of SocialText has posted a summary and link to a case study where use of SNA helped diagnose some collaboration problems at Ziff Davis. Visualizing Socialtext Collaboration:

The social network graph below is an illustration of the collaboration patterns of a division of Ziff Davis. For information about the team and how they have used Socialtext to cut project cycles by 1/3 and reduce group email from 100 to zero, see the case study.

Bilderberg

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Bilderberg: The ultimate conspiracy theory

Later this month elites and power brokers from around the globe will meet, somewhere in northern Italy, for the 50th annual meeting of the Bilderberg group.

As the article from the BBC indicates, the Bilderberg group is a very secretive meeting of the world's elites, this year including John Edwards and Mrs. Bill Gates.

So, how does this article interest MeshForum? Well at least two ways. One, as a meeting and group that has lasted 50 years we may have lessons to be learned from what they do and how they do it. Two, as an example of networks it is an interesting one.

Especially as a secret or fairly secret network, it raises the question of how to accommodate pockets of secret information when trying to map out a network, especially a social network.

In fact in many types of networks what may be known is not that there is a direct specific link between two nodes, but rather that by going through some "black box" two nodes can be linked - in the case of social networks this might explain a linkage between Mrs. Bill Gates and John Edwards (or a Financial Times reporter who apparently also has attended meetings), in the case of a technical network the black box might be the internal network of a corporation vs. the "public" network.

It also raises the question for MeshForum about how open/closed a session to hold. On the one hand open sessions with access via people off site over the web and access by journalists and other media allows for the messages of attendees (and sponsors) to be spread far and wide and encourages the goal of MeshForum which is to connect networks and people around the topic of Networks.

On the other hand conferences where there is a line of privacy, even secrecy seem to be popular with the world's "elites" the security of privacy seems to be attractive to them, there may also be a multitude of political and legal reasons whey off the record meetings are more attractive.

Certainly, for example, were we to get someone from the Fed to attend MeshForum, that person's comments and remarks may be limited if those remarks are "on the record". If we have CEO's or other senior executives from publically traded firms, quiet periods and the like may limit what they can say about their ongoing business for fear of violating some insider trading/SEC regulation. Etc.

That said, it is my personal view that the best networks are open and exclusive. Open in that anyone who qualifies and participates is welcome, but exclusive in that networks often function best when they appear to be a group of peers - whether in an industry or in terms of intelectual interests or specific abilities (for example, I would be unlikely to be much a part of the "network" of triatheletes.

Emergent Democracy

Two very interesting chapters of the upcoming O'Reilly book on Emergant Democracy have been published as wiki's.

The first, the introduction by Ross Mayfield is also very much a summary of trends and current research into Social Networks, and to an extent Networks more broadly.

The second, by Joichi Ito is on the history of emergant democracy. It is a great overview.

Both are also intriguing exercises in group editing and creation, raising issues of ownership (though they are bound by various Creative Commons licenses).

Scientific social networks

Roland Piquepaille at Mindjack has found a couple articles on social networks of scientific topics: Mapping Scientific Topics With Social Networking Tools

In "Mapping the landscape of science," the National Science Foundation discusses the contents of a collection of articles published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), "Mapping Knowledge Domains." Basically, all these scientists are using software social networking tools to build graphical representations of scientific knowledge or science communities. [Please note that the full version of all articles is available.]

This overview contains selected excerpts and illustrations extracted from some of these articles, like the top 50 highly frequent used in the top 10% most highly cited PNAS publications during the 1982-2001 period.

Guide to online social networks, software and communities

Guide to Online Social Networks, Social Software, and Online Business Communities from Online Business Networks

LOAF (Social email filtering) from Many-to-Many

Many-to-Many: LOAF: Social email filtering

Interesting discussion and link to LOAF which is a proposal for a social spam filtering solution, which involves including in your email a hashed form of your addressbook and then using your book plus those of your friends to test incoming messages for whether (or not) they might be spam.

Interesting idea and neat technology (Bloom Filters) but has some flaws as well.

NEURO - networking europe

NEURO - networking europe another conference and network of artists and activists. "From February 26th to 29th young artists, filmmakers, musicians, theorists and activists from all over Europe and many other parts of the world will meet at the Muffathalle in Munich for a number of events, speeches, discussions, presentations, performances, concerts and actions reflecting the pulse of the age."

makeworlds

makeworlds a social activism network and conference