Inquiry and learning into social networks, organizational network analysis, and the relationships among people and systems in complex organizations and networks.
| Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness Inquiry and learning into social networks, organizational network analysis, and the relationships among people and systems in complex organizations and networks. |
|
|
Thursday, May 22, 2003 Small World Research -- How Many Degrees? The sociology department at Columbia University, home of Duncan Watts, social networks researcher and author of Six Degrees, has launched a project to update the findings of Stanley Milgram's initial project that resulted in the "six degrees of separation" path length. They are inviting anyone who would like to participate to sign up at the Smallword project web site. I've just signed up and received my assignment.
The assignment is to try to get an email to a person (totally unknown to me in another part of the world) through an email chain, by sending it to someone I know who I think might be able to find someone to get the email closer. (There are many descriptions of the project, but a nicely contexted one is in Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker article, Six Degrees of Lois Weinberg.)
I'll let you know how it goes. (0) comments CPweek -- Proxy Dialogues I am missing CPweek, but not missing out on some of the gems of discovery from this meeting of CPsquare members. My CPweek colleague, Erik van Bekkum, is blogging the key dialogue points, exhanges that are occurring, and also key quotes. He has posted this terrific insight from Etienne Wenger, community of practice guru and CPsquare co-founder:
(0) comments
The Gennova Group constitution was formally adopted on Friday, May 16, 2003. This network-based organization represents a breakthrough model for the development and delivery of professional services. Mark Bonchek, co-founder of Tapestry Networks, imagined that a network of independent consultants could design and operate in an innovative way that provided a trusted network of peers who could be drawn on to create multidisciplinary services to meet the increasing complex business problems of clients.
The "barn raising" on July 17th of 2002 launched a series of open-space meetings and swarms, experiments with services development, committee work on infrastructure, and joint learning. On March 23, the group decided that a formal governance and operational structure was needed and appointed a constitutional convention. I was privileged to be one of the four members of that convention (along with Mark, Jan Twombly (see post on 5/13), and Dennis Smith). We met and dialogued intensely and the emergent model represents, I believe, a breakthrough in thinking about leadership in networks.
The fundamental unit of operation is a value network, a network consisting of Gennova members, affiliates and other resources from industry, academia, or the public sector, who join to work on complex problems or to create thought leadership in emerging areas of knowledge. The leadership breakthrough is this: anyone who champions and leads a value network becomes a member of the Gennova Council, the governing body. This body is the set of people who approve value networks and provide peer support to one another, who propose and approve individual membership in Gennova, and who guide the development of Gennova (for example, by calling for amendments or changes to the constitution).
From a principle of simplicy guided by the laws of complex systems, we are seeing a new model emerge. Twenty-one people committed to the future of Gennova by signing the declaration of commitment; there were 23 people present, two of whom had never attended a prior Gennova meeting. Not quite as heady as "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor," but a deep, inspiring, resolve nonetheless. (0) comments
My working paper, "Social Network Analysis for Knowledge Management", has been published by Knowledge Management Maqazine. They have retitled it KM and the Social Network and posted it online. You do not need to be a subscriber to view it.
(0) comments
I had a conversation for relatedness with Jeff Shuman and Jan Twombley of Rhythm of Business yesterday. They are on the leading edge of defining the field of relationship technologies, and have developed a set of methods to help companies calculate the value of relationships. By adopting the language of business and finance, they speak to the issues of calculating the monetary value -- currencies -- in business relationships. They have been wondering how social network analysis might provide a diagnostic and maps of the existing relationships across companies. I was happy to talk about how the insight from a social network analysis can move people into action.
Their language is also rich in dance metaphors, including a recurrent and natural use of dance-step patterns to show how businesses and relationships grow through design and iteration, and also the key notion of a choreographer who manages the web of relationships created for innovation and growth. (0) comments
Just returned from KnowledgeNets 2003 (part of InfoToday 2003). I gave my talk on SNA to a small but interested audience. Made some good connections, learned some new things, walked around New York City a lot from my hotel room a block away from the 53rd Street branch of the NY Public Library, where I worked for six months during my college years.
Hubert St Onge talked about communities, and appears also to be concerned about the persistence of knowledge objects in certain software products. (0) comments
A Gennova network connection, Andy Snider, just plugged me into a new network that he created simply by inviting a carefully selected set of people to an "Advanced Thinkers Summit." He thought to use the event to craft a model of large systems organizational change based on the perspectives and models of the 20 or so attendees. We worked on the model, but we mostly worked on the notion of ourselves as a network, a learning network, and tried to focus on how to get to know each other, quickly, to swarm into topics and dialogues. "Aha"s all over the place.
A common reflection among the attendees: industry conferences are no longer a viable milieu to meet and network with peers and to expand one's personal network... During these same days this week, iCohere held its annual web conference Collaborative Communities Online 2003/. I was only able to catch a bit of it live, but made a good connection during a chat moderated by Jon Lebkowsky who created and demonstrated Wikis live late on Tuesday night. I look forward to catching up with Jon and learning more about him and his work.
I worry about persistence a lot. Persistent software to enable emergent networks to create sustainable shared (virtual) spaces. Persistent and committed leadership and coordination to ensure face-to-face connection and dialogue at adequate intervals. (0) comments
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
