A few weeks ago I was at a bizarre (yet fun) birthday party for Anna at Margaret's house. Anna, Margaret, and others wanted to leave to go ballroom dancing but other people had not yet arrived. Good for me and Patrick because heck if we were going to go dancing when the ACC and Big East tourney's were on TV! So we stayed behind to wait for others (including our friend Brian) to arrive. Over the coarse of the next 90 minutes an assortment of people showed up. I say "assortment" because various people arrived who knew one or two other people. The problem was the people they knew either hadn't yet arrived or were off dancing. So we had a disparate bunch of people thinking... "now who the hell are you?" Feeling a tad awkward, I drew a "relationship diagram" to sort things out:
As it turns out I stumbled across what is called a "Social Network"...
At the Webmail.us 3.1 launch party yesterday Stuart Mease introduced me to Ryan Lanham who is doing work for Virginia Tech's Center for Regional Studies. He explained to me that what I had created was a social network. Ryan is studying how these networks impact economic development (or lack of development - my comment not his) in our region. He went on to tell me about something called Pajek - software that creates a visual representation of a social network:
I did not use Pajek for the diagram above. It was simply a quick drawing (as was the version at the party). Another thing that was interesting to me was that even several weeks after the event I could recall nearly all of the names (I missed the name of the guy who took a shower). I doubt that I will see any of the people that do not have at least dotted lines connected to me again, but I do remember their names (including spelling).
Comments
Page 151 in “Women Don’t Ask” by Babcock and Laschever discusses business social networks and how it is difficult for women to participate. This because networks are often gender-specific. The book mentions two different types of networks “instrumental” and “friendship”. Friendship networks are self-explanatory. Instrumental networks are those which people use to open doors and get advice in their professional life.
Posted by: David | March 27, 2005 03:14 PM