Neighbor Networking

A friend named Susan just introduced me to a friend of hers named Nathaniel James.  Nathan is based in the Seattle area, and does consulting on Social Network Analysis, and its application to progressive political causes.  Needless to say, I’m eager to get to know him!

You might be interested in checking out his blog — http://phasetransitions.blogspot.com/

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A Simple Technique for Mapping a Social Network on Paper

At our meeting last Thursday of the Seattle Network Weavers, we tried a simple technique for mapping part of our social networks on paper.  The technique worked great, and we intend to use it in many of our meetings in the future.

We used a regular 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper, but it would have been easier if we had a larger sheet of paper (such as butcher paper).

We started by drawing one relatively small circle and put one of the person’s names in it.  Then, around that circle, we put other circles, squares, diamonds, triangles, and “clouds” to indicate who and what that person was related to.  Circles stood for other people, squares for organizations, diamonds for social networks, triangles for interests/topics/areas of focus, and clouds for the neighborhoods people lived in.  (Obviously, you can choose whatever symbols are easiest for you to draw!)  We also drew arrows between the circles to indicate the relationships.  We didn’t label each one of the arrows to indicate the type of relationship, but we could have done so.

We then went around our group and added each person in turn, and our relationships.  As we went along, one person’s additions would trigger other relationships from other people (hey – I know that person, or hey – I’m interested in that too!).  In about ½ hour, we ended up with a nice diagram that included some of our primary social networks.

In this case, our interest was simply to start getting to know one another.  But, starting next week, we intend to use the same technique, and other techniques of social network analysis and network weaving, to address specific issues.  We will be “Weaving Washington.” 

The first project of “Weaving Washington” will be helping to identify possible connections for the Dearborne Street Coalition for a Livable Neighborhood.  For an overview of this coalition, see http://www.cityofseattle.net/BAN/development.htm

After drawing the diagram on paper, I put it into a format needed for the Visual Network Analyzer (a software program developed by Valdis Krebs and June Holley).  Attached is the resulting Social Network Diagram.  In Social Network Analysis terminology, individual people, organizations, topics etc. are referred to as “nodes” or “vertices” and the relationships between them referred to as either “links” or “edges.”

We can see some things by just visually inspecting the diagram.  For example, the topic of Meditation is fairly central to our social network.  This was not something that we knew before doing the exercise together!   We can see that several of us have a tight knit network, with lots of mutual connections.  Some people like VS are clearly a part of that tight knit network – even though they were not at this meeting.  Others of us are not a part of that particular tight knit network, but are central to other strong networks.  Different diagrams would tend to highlight each one of our networks and our areas of focus.

To really understand what is going on in a social network like this, it is useful to use some of the metrics provided in a tool such as the Visual Network Analyzer.  For example, there is a metric called “Awareness” that tends to show how “aware” people are of what is going on in the overall network.  The figures for this particular network follow. 

HR  37
DM  28
SG  28
RA  24
SP  22
JL  18
VS  18
EWR  17
PH  15
JR  14
JH  14
TA  14
CH  3

It is not surprising that I (HR) am listed at the “top,” since I was the person who called together this particular gathering.  If any of the other 3 participants (DM, SG, and RA) had called the gathering, they would almost surely have been at the “top.”  But, there are some other interesting things that can be seen.  For example, SP has almost as high a degree of “awareness” of this overall network as the top 4 of us – and she wasn’t at this meeting!  On the other hand, CH, who I happen to know has a HUGE network of her own, is not very plugged into this particular social network.

By the way, the numbers are not absolute – I’m not sure exactly how they are calculated.

Another metric is called “Influence.”  It indicates the extent to which people, organizations, and topics are “looked to.”  In our network, the following topics and organizations have the most “influence.”

Neighborhood  16
Meditation  14
LinkedIn  12
Local Area Networkers 11
Reclaim the Media … 10
Dearborne Street C… 9

Another metric is called “Integration.”  For an individual “node,” this measures how much it is “in the thick of things.”  In this case, the highest score for Integration was 305.  However, it is also possible to find out the average for most metrics across the entire network.  For the metric of Integration the mean average was 31.81, and the mode and median (two other kinds of averages) were both 13.

This means that this network, overall, has very little integration.  Each one of the 4 people that came to our meeting has our own huge network.  But, there is relatively little overlap between those networks.  That is not necessarily a bad thing!  Having that kind of diversity can, under some circumstances, indicate a strong network.

However, it is also possible to make networks healthier, stronger, and “smarter” by making selective and intentional connections in certain areas.  This process is called Network Weaving.

• Example 1: One of the primary focuses of our social network is Meditation.  A couple of the people in our network who are interested in Meditation do not know the other people in our network interested in the same topic.  So, we may choose to introduce them to make this part of the network even stronger.  
• Example 2: One of the people who attended our meeting does not yet belong to my networking group, Local Area Networkers.  The other 3 of us do.  So, it is a natural to invite her to join.  
• Example 3: Out of the people who came to our meeting, only I know June Holley.  Since she is one of the founders of the field of Network Weaving, it might be useful for one or two of the other people at our meeting to also know her.  Not everybody needs to know everybody else – some specialization is important for networks.  However, using some tools, we can analyze what might happen to the overall network if we were to make a connection between two nodes. 

An important aspect of Network Weaving is trying to understand changes to the network over time.  The idea is to do an analysis at one point in time, other analyses at certain points in the future, and to compare both the diagrams and the metrics to see how things are evolving.  Hopefully in the direction of a healthier, stronger, and smarter network!

This kind of Network Weaving will become even more valuable when we apply it to specific issues through Weaving Washington.

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On a national level, several people are collaborating to start a Network Weavers Network.  More info to come shortly.

On the local level, I’d like to invite you to join us for a Network Weavers coffee klatch, Thursdays at 10 am, starting March 29.  I and a friend from Yes! Magazine, had one such get together already.  It was so much fun, we decided to invite a few friends.

Cafe Vega
1918 E Yesler Way
Seattle WA 98122
http://www.cafevega.net/
Phone: 206-322-0807

There is tons of parking in the neighborhood, and the place offers free wireless.  So, bring your laptop if you’d like.  Direct bus service by line 27, and there are also a number of buses which go within a few blocks.

I’m thinking that this may be an opportunity for us to have a learning community for those of us interested in Social Network Analysis, Network Weaving and related topics.  However, what will happen will be up to all of us!  We may decide to become a (semi) formal “organization,” or stay an informal network (I vote for the informal!)   If there is interest, I hope we will start similar get-togethers in various parts of the Seattle area.  Over time, we may (or may not) decide to “affiliate” with the national Network Weavers Network.

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I have now incorporated all of the recommendations into a new diagram.  The “stars” in the diagram below are largely based on the fact that only 3 people so far have given quite a few recommendations.  Therefore, each one of those 3 people has a “star” around them indicating the people that they recommended.

Our old friend KG’s node is still in the upper right hand corner.  As you may see from the above diagram, and can see more clearly from the one below, KG does not have quite as big a “star” around him as he did before.  That’s because, out of the 12 people that KG recommended, 4 were also recommended by other people.

If I was to continue doing this project, over time, the diagram might tend to change into a more stable pattern.   One such pattern is illustrated by the diagram below, from http://www.networkweaving.com/blog

This is from the post of Saturday, June 10, 2006, titled Cleveland Entrepreneurs & Their Colleagues, about the organization Entrepreneurs for Sustainability[E4S]  As you may notice from this diagram, there are a number of tightly knit connections in the “center.”  This is called the “core.”  There are also a large number connections around the “outside.”  This is called the “periphery.”  This type of a diagram tends to indicate a strong network.

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I think it will be helpful to focus in on one “node,” KG, and see how his contributions expand the diagram.

To start with, here is a diagram of the people who attended the WISER Commons event on 12/01/06 and expressed interest in similar Areas of Focus to the AFSC.  This diagram is similar to ones that you have seen before, except, in this case, I have prevented the Areas of Focus from displaying on the diagram.   The diagram only shows the relationships among the people.  This will simplify things from now on.

In the upper right corner is KG’s node.  The next diagram focuses in on his part of the network.  As you can see, KG was connected to about 5 people who attended the WISER Commons event.

I asked KG for some recommendations of people to ask to participate in the AFSC Fundraiser.  And, he gave me a bunch of them.  The next diagram includes the people that he has added.

If this was as far as we went, there would be a “star” of people around KG, and KG would be the “hub” of that particular “subnet.”

Actually, however, I’ve asked a number of people for their input.  So, some of the nodes that are part of KG’s “star” will quickly be linked up to other nodes (people) in the network as well.  But, I thought it would be useful for you to see how a network like this “grows.”

Thanks, KG.  You’re a star!

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The next step (which I’m hoping to do tomorrow morning) is to add the recommendations people have sent me into the Social Network Analysis.  I’m also going to add some people I’ve thought of on my own to the list as well.  I’ll try to share the resulting diagram with you tomorrow.

For extra credit, can anybody guess where I might look for some of my own contacts I can add to the list?

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To start with, I selected the following Areas of Focus, which I felt were  closest to AFSC’s mission.  (Most of these Areas of Focus are defined by WISER Earth, but I have added “Activism” since I noticed a cluster of tags on that topic.)

Activism
Ethics, Spirit & Sustainability
Human Rights & Social Justice
Peace, War & Security
Poverty Eradication

Then, I ran the Visual Network Analyzer on the data provided by attendees at the Build a WISER Commons event.  To start with, I looked at how people related to the Areas of Focus.

And, then I sat for a while and looked at the resulting diagram, trying to see notice some patterns visually.  See below for a version with the names removed.

The following pattern struck me immediately:

There is a heavy overlap between interests in Ethics, Spirit & Sustainability, Human Rights & Social Justice, and Peace, War & Security.  There is much less of a relationship between interests in Activism or Poverty Eradication.  This may help provide some focus to my search.

Next, I ran some metrics.  For example, the following people all showed up as having a lot of “Awareness” (interest) in these issues:

BT2
CE
DB2
JF2
PH2
SP2
SM3
TR
So, they will go onto my list of prospective invitees.

Also, in looking through these names, an additional name came to mind, since I know that they are an associate of SM3 (listed above).  So, I will add that person to the list as well.

Next, I added in the data about who knows who.  That data indicates both whether people are interested in various topics and the social networks related to those topics.

Here’s the diagram:

As you may have noticed, it is a wee bit hard to tell much by just looking at this diagram!  The metrics will be needed to understand what is going on.  But, one thing is apparent from the diagram itself.  There is a large group of people who know one another, and all have the same color.  I didn’t mention before, but the color stands for the city.  All of the people toward the lower right live in Seattle, and we work together closely on a number of projects.

Using the metrics, I was able to identify a number of people who are both interested in the Areas of Focus relevant to AFSC, as well as who know a lot of other people who share those interests.

My next step was to compile a list of all the people I wanted to focus on.  These were the people who scored “highest” on the various metrics of the analysis.  There were 21 people on this list.  Since I know most of them, I sent most of them a customized email (or called them on the phone) to ask for recommendations of other people to ask – as well as asking them directly if they would be interested in volunteering or being invited to the event.  I sent a “form letter” to everybody else on the list asking the same info.  It will be interesting to see what sort of response rate I get!

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I find that it is useful to begin at the beginning.  In other words, to start with an assessment of what the current situation is.

1. I have one week to help identify as many prospective volunteers and invitees as possible.
2. There will probably not be time to get people’s mailing addresses.  So, in most cases, we will need to be able to send those people an invitation either by email or through an online social networking system.
3. I have already done one Social Network Analysis that may be useful as a starting point – of attendees at the Build a WISER Commons event on Dec. 1, 2006.
4. I belong to a number of online social networking sites where I can quickly identify people based on interest.
5. Since time is short, I do not know how much time I will have to “work my own network.”  But, if possible, I’ll try to do things like asking friends who they suggest as good possible volunteers and invitees.
6. I’m going to need to keep in close contact with the folks at the AFSC to make sure we are not duplicating efforts, contacting the same people more than once etc.
7. AFSC has already started a spreadsheet of the people that they plan to contact.  I will be adding a few columns to it, and using it as my “Nodes” spreadsheet.  I will also create a “Links” spreadsheet to show relationships among individuals and organizations.

Let’s get started in the next post with the Social Network Analysis of the attendees of the Build a WISER Commons event.  The attendees were asked to list “tags” (to indicate what topics they were interested in), as well as list other attendees at the event that they knew.  I have already gone through the tags and “lumped” them into what the WISER resources call Areas of Focus.  (Don’t worry, I’ll share more about WISER later – the resources haven’t been launched yet, if you want to sign up for Beta, visit http://www.wiserearth.org/)

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The Seattle chapter of the American Friends Service Committee is having a fundraising dinner on Thursday, May 3rd.  I have been asked to help identify volunteers and invitees to this dinner.

I’m going to use this as a case study in how to use online social networking tools and social network analysis in a real-world situation.  There is also a real-world deadline – I only have 1 week to do this.  So, this is not going to be as thorough a job as I might like, and I will only be able to use some of the many possible techniques.

However, I think that it will be useful for all of us to have a case study to share and discuss.  And, while this particular case study does not relate directly to Neighbor Networking as such, many of the lessons will be applicable.

So…ready…set…go!

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In the previous post, I discussed a Networking List that I used when organizing the Seattle Practice Group for a WISER Commons.  For simplicity, I talked about the information that was requested on one side of the form.

However, when organizing the Practice Group I also asked the following:

On the other side of this form, list the names of some people and organizations you know that may be a resource in helping to “Build a WISER Commons.”

There are many ways to collect information about people’s relationships with one another.  I’m just learning how to ask questions that will help to gather this sort of information.  In this case, I have asked a very simple question – “list the names of people and organizations you know.”  But, as you will see shortly, answers to these sorts of question can lead to some very powerful social network analysis.

To do social network analysis, I use two spreadsheets.  The first spreadsheet has all of the information about the people and organizations.  In this case, that information might consist of Name, City, Zip, Phone, Email, Website, and Type.  I use the Type column to indicate whether the row is a Person or an Organization.  The first row are the titles.  I’m including underlines____ as spacers – I would not include those in the titles on the real spreadsheet.  NA stands for Not Available.

In the terminology of social network analysis, this is a list of Nodes.

An example of a spreadsheet of Nodes:

Name___________ City____________ Zip______ Type_________
Cynthia A_______ Seattle_________ NA_______ Person________
DenCity Research_ Seattle_________ NA_______ Organization____
Interra__________ Seattle_________ NA_______ Organization____
Jon R __________ Seattle_________ 98106____ Person________
Morgan M_______ Seattle_________ 98021____ Person_______
Steve R ________ Seattle_________ 98122____ Person_______

I then have a second spreadsheet that includes the relationships between the Nodes.  In the terminology of social network analysis, the following is a list of Links (sometimes called Edges).  In this case, I have not asked for the Strength, so I will assume that they all have the same arbitrary Strength of 3.

Note: On the front side of the form, I asked for a person to list their organizational affiliation.  So, I will use the term Affiliated to describe that type of Relationship.  On the back of the form, I asked for a person to make recommendations about individuals and organizations.  So, I will use the term Recommends to describe that type of Relationship.

A (made up) example of a spreadsheet of Links:

Name1_________ Name2_________ Relationship______ Strength___
Jon R_________ Interra__________ Affiliated___________ 3________
Jon R_________ Steve R_________ Recommends________ 3________
Jon R_________ Tova R__________ Recommends________ 3________
Morgan M______ DenCity Research__ Affiliated___________ 3________
Steve R_______ Cynthia A________ Recommends________ 3________
Steve R_______ Jon R___________ Recommends________ 3________
Steve R_______ Interra__________ Recommends________ 3________
Steve R_______ Morgan M________ Recommends________ 3________
Tova R________ Interra _________ Affiliated____________ 3________
Tova R________ Jon R___________ Recommends________ 3________

I then can diagram and analyze this data using tools such as the Visual Network Analyzer, developed by Valdis Krebs and June Holley — see http://www.networkingweaving.com/.  There are many other tools for doing social network analysis as well.  I will introduce some of them over time.

The diagram of this social network follows (in this case, I made up the links, so the real diagram might be slightly different)

In addition to doing diagrams like this, it is possible to do statistical analysis of the network according to certain metrics.  For example, the Visual Network Analyzer includes a metric called Connector, which indicates how much each Node is serving to Connect the entire network.  The following numbers for the metric of are not absolute (in fact, I’m not sure exactly how they’re calculated).  But, they’ll give you an idea of who is helping to connect this network.

Steve R  6
Jon R 4
Morgan M 3

Once you have an idea of the structure of a network, and who is doing what functions in that network, you can start to do “network weaving.”  For example, let’s imagine that this diagram correctly represents reality and that Jon R and Morgan M really don’t know one another.  Perhaps by introducing them we could strengthen the flow of information through the entire network.

In the next post, I will give a small but real-world example of a social network analysis of the very first “official” neighbornet I was involved with.

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