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Personal network archeology
Bruce Hoppe writes The "Steinway" of networking strategies
I consolidated my rolodex last weekend in anticipation of sending holiday cards. As I was double-checking contact information, I reflected on how I originally met each person in my life. Did I meet them randomly, as part of a group, or perhaps through a specific introduction?
Check out the network drawing he made.
I heard a very similar comment at a conference recently. The person had dug through their client list attempting to figure out how the contact with the client was established. He figured he had five or six sources.
Posted by jackvinson at November 29, 2005 12:45 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)http://www.meshforum.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tbz.cgi/290
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Thanks for the link, Jack.
Most rolodex-type programs can be coerced into storing an "introduced by" field. If you are lucky or brave you can then dump this out into a program like Valdis Krebs's Inflow or AT&T's GraphViz and see what the paths and patterns look like.
Often, though the introducer of someone is not the person who re-introduces you later when you've lost touch and gotten back together. If you can think of ties between people as stronger or weaker over time, the person who helped get you a stronger tie in 1998 might not be the same as the person who restored a weak tie in 2005 after some absence.
It makes for a good party game - introduce people by where you met them first.
Posted by: Edward Vielmetti at November 29, 2005 08:40 PM