Just realized that I had not posted that the program for the Networks in Political Science (NIPS) conference at Harvard is up. This has turned out to be a rather larger affair than we originally envisioned: between the presentations and posters, there will be over 100 papers, plus two days of methods workshops before. Online registration, etc, information is available through the website.
As I have argued previously on this blog, social science is undergoing a paradigm shift, based on the availability (and purposeful creation) of large scale, high granularity, data sets on human behavior. Let me point now to the videos now available from the Conference on Computational Social Science that was hosted by IQSS that Sandy Pentland and I co-chaired last December. To recapitulate, this conference brought together a wide array of folks from the academy to talk about emerging areas of research at the intersection of computer and social sciences. This was a terrific event, and one I hope that I hope in coming years will be pointed to as having helped crystallize discussion about this area. Lots of great moments here, from Roy’s examination of the video records of the first two years of his son’s life, to Christakis’ presentation on the spread of obesity, to Contractor’s examination of virtual worlds. We also had a panel on the tough privacy and human subjects issues that this research poses (perhaps the key hurdle this area wrestle with at this stage), with presentations by the heads of the IRBs at Harvard and MIT, and discussions by Van Alstyne on handling e-mail data, and by Gutmann on handling geocoded data.
For anyone who attended the talk today on Intellipedia by Sean Dennehy and Don Burke, you can post reactions on the blog....
"From the Bottom-up: Building the 21st Century CIA"
Sean Dennehy
Chief of the CIA Intellipedia Development Cell
Don Burke
Intellipedia Doyen
Abstract: In this seminar, Sean Dennehy and Don Burke will brief the technical and cultural changes underway at the CIA involving the adoption of wikis, blogs, and social bookmarking tools. These tools are being used to improve information sharing across the US Intelligence Community by moving information out of traditional channels. Sean and Don will also host a question and answer session. In 2005, Dr. Calvin Andrus published “The Wiki and The Blog: Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community.” Three years later, a vibrant and rapidly growing community has transformed how the CIA aggregates, communicates, and organizes intelligence information.
Sean Dennehy has more than 15 years of experience in various elements of the US Intelligence Community, including the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, DIA’s Joint Staff Intelligence, and supporting US Air Force operations. As the pilot customer for Intellipedia, he has become a leading change agent for incorporating Enterprise 2.0 solutions into the Intelligence Community's business practices. He has developed an innovative “sabbatical” program that introduces Intelligence Community officers to the numerous web 2.0 applications that are being deployed on multiple intelligence networks. The focus of his efforts is encouraging a viral adoption where officers replace existing processes to take advantage of network effects encountered when individuals move projects out of “channels” and onto “platforms”. His actions are based on the National Intelligence Strategy’s six main characteristics: results-focused, collaborative, bold, future-oriented, self-evaluating, and innovative. Together with a small cadre of early adopters, Mr. Dennehy is helping to break down stovepipes to allow intelligence professionals to truly act as a "community”.
Don Burke is a leading proponent of the Enterprise 2.0 ethos within the Intelligence Community and is currently the "Intellipedia Doyen", which is a role he has held since the spring of 2006. In this role he is partnered with other early adopters in an effort to demonstrate the value of social software tools, educate the Community on how to use these tools, and advocate for improvements to the environment with the goal of improving our ability to capture our knowledge and expertise. Mr. Burke is currently employed by the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology and has a diverse 19+ year background in the Federal Government working a wide range of technical and analytical issues including collection, technical analysis, congressionally directed actions, direct support to operations, project management, advanced visualization technologies, software development, budgeting, and management. Mr. Burke was quoted extensively in the October 2007 SIGNAL magazine article "Intellipedia Seeks Ultimate Information Sharing."
Relevant Readings:
1. NY Times Article (good for general introduction to IC cultural and technological issues)
URL:
2. 2004 - Seminal Paper about why the IC needs to adopt social software technologies
Title: The Wiki and the Blog: Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community
3. Wikipedia article on "Intellipedia"
_____________________
Of potential interest to readers of this blog:
The Virginia Tech Symposium on Enhancing Resilience To Catastrophic Events Through Communicative Planning
Introduction
The Institute for Policy and Governance and the School of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech invite scholars to consider how collaborative planning can enhance resilience to events that threaten to overcome the social and ecological integrity of communities, states, and societies. Presentations and discussion will be held in Blacksburg, VA on November 16-18, 2008, and symposium papers will be edited and revised for journal and/or book publication in early 2009.
Description and Call For Papers
In an essay entitled "The Resilient Community", Virginia Tech Planning Professor Paul Knox (2007) suggested that the widely-admired response of the university to the April 16th 2007 campus shootings was grounded in affective bonds and close-knit social networks that instill community spirit. The bedrock of Virginia Tech’s common identity and shared purpose, Knox suggested, was collaborative interaction that challenges assumptions, stretches the imagination, and develops self-awareness, as students and faculty interact in ways that remake their inner selves, social selves, and professional selves.
Over the past year, planning scholars at Virginia Tech have been considering how collaboration might enhance resilience not only in intentional communities like universities but also within neighborhoods, states, and societies. We wish to extend this arena of scholarly interest and compelling social need by inviting speakers to Blacksburg to consider how collaboration can enhance resilience to disruptions that can occur across a spectrum of time, space, and organizational complexity, from unforeseen violence to disasters like hurricane Katrina to the biospheric catastrophe of rapid anthropogenic climate change.
Resilience is a potent interdisciplinary systems metaphor whose origins lie in the Latin word "resilíre", meaning "to leap back." Hazard planners, security analysts, and others have deployed the term to describe efforts to restore and maintain an optimal stable condition. A more promising approach for our purposes defines resilience as an interactive product of an unsettling event and a social and biophysical system that can exist in multiple stable states, at scales that may encompass communities, states, or societies. These systems may stabilize, change, or collapse when their integrity is compromised by an event that could be rapid and discrete and irreversible like a terrorist attack, gradual and insidious like climate change, or incremental and spatially heterogeneous like a drought. Resilience is the capacity to withstand loss and recover, to weather disturbance without dramatic loss of identity or structural or functional complexity.
We seek to understand how communicative planning can enhance resilience and how resilience thinking can expand the domain of communicative action. Communicative planners have shown how careful listening and interpretation can accommodate differences in styles of speech, forms of knowledge, and styles of reasoning to promote social learning and yield agreements that are both creative and equitable. Communicative planning scholarship has lately joined in defining emergent forms of collaborative governance, and enlarging its scope from stakeholder-based processes to a diversity of collaborative approaches that can bring to life new discursive frameworks and worldviews that over time can shape institutions, such as regional civic roundtables (Innes and Rongerude 2006) and community reconciliation processes (Sandercock 2003).
We invite interested individuals to submit abstracts that respond to three areas of inquiry:
1. What can collaborative processes contribute toward resilience?
Do collaborative processes create or enhance awareness of resilience dynamics, such as the presence of regime change thresholds, or the possibility of transformative alternatives? Papers might explore how collaborative processes promote learning and knowing and the rapid diffusion of ideas and innovations, nurture and reproduce expertise and ways of knowing. Papers may also address other capacities beyond knowledge formation, such as how collaborative processes may contribute to passing a threshold into an alternative regime, or help manage a system to withstand shocks and avoid a threshold. Another approach would be to examine how leaders can enhance collaborative capacity to identify mutual interest, forge common identity, or foster shared sense of purpose and will to act.
2. How can we design and conduct collaborative processes to enhance resilience?
The principal application of stakeholder-based collaborative planning processes has been to resolve otherwise-intractable disputes. Are similar design and process guidelines appropriate to enhance resilience, or does the new objective call for a different design and approach? In addition, papers might examine how, and under what conditions, collaborative processes might be associated with other forms of networked governance in order to maintain system continuity and integrity, or reorganize in response to changing conditions when existing ways of governing become untenable.
3. When and under what circumstances can collaborative processes contribute to resilience?
While it may take years to foster collective identity and action through collaboration, events that threaten to overcome system integrity often cannot be anticipated and opportunities to influence system reorganization may be fleeting. Papers might examine how collaborative processes can be situated to address threats that are be rapid and discrete, as well as those that are gradual, insidious, incremental, potentially irreversible, intergenerational, or spatially heterogeneous. In addition, papers might consider the circumstances in which collaboration can enhance generalized resilience capacity, which is associated with diverse organizational forms and ways of knowing, loose connections between self-organizing units, and unimpeded circulation of feedback throughout a system (Walker and Salt 2006).
Key Dates
Abstract deadline 30 April 2008
Notification of acceptance 15 May 2008
Deadline for full papers 1 October 2008
Symposium 16-18 November 2008
Papers Revised for Publication May 2009 (tentatively)
Abstract Submission
Proposals for papers or posters are to be sent by e-mail to resilience@vt.edu.
The body of the e-mail (no attachments please) should contain:
* Title of the proposed paper
* Abstract of less than 300 words, and
* Complete address and professional affiliation of all (co)-author(s).
The deadline for proposals is 30 April 2008.
Financial Support
Travel cost reimbursement will be provided for symposium participants, as well as local transportation, food, and lodging.
Hosts
* Institute for Policy and Governance, Virginia Tech
* School of Public and International Affairs, Virginia Tech
Conference Chair
* Bruce Evan Goldstein, Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech
Advisory Committee
* Max Stephenson, Director, Institute for Policy and Governance, Virginia Tech
* John Randolph, Director, School Policy and International Affairs, Virginia Tech
* R. Bruce Hull, Professor of Forestry, Virginia Tech
* Paul Knox, University Distinguished Professor and Senior Fellow for International Advancement, Virginia Tech
Contact
Bruce Evan Goldstein
Urban Affairs and Planning
103 Architecture Annex
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA 24061
Conference E-mail: resilience@vt.edu
Conference Website: : http://www.ipg.vt.edu/resilience.html
References
Innes, Judith and Jane Rongerude. 2006. "Collaborative Regional Initiatives: Civic Entrepreneurs Work to Fill the Governance Gap ." Working Paper 2006-04. Berkeley, CA: Institute of Urban and Regional Development, University of California at Berkeley.
Knox, Paul. 2007. "The Resilient Community." Planning, June issue.
Sandercock, Leonie. 2003. "Out of the Closet: The Importance of Stories and Storytelling in Planning Practice." Planning Theory and Practice 4(1):11-28.
Walker, Brian and David Salt. 2006. Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.
Second Call for Papers / Funding for doctoral student training:
Conference at Harvard on Networks in Political Science (deadline MARCH 1ST)
The study of networks has exploded over the last decade, both in the
social and hard sciences. From sociology to biology, there has been a
paradigm shift from a focus on the units of the system to the
relationships among those units. Despite a tradition incorporating
network ideas dating back at least 70 years, political science has been
largely left out of this recent creative surge. This has begun to change,
as witnessed, for example, by an exponential increase in network-related
research presented at the major disciplinary conferences.
We therefore announce an open call for paper proposals for presentation
at a conference on "Networks in Political Science" (NIPS). We are
soliciting papers that apply network ideas in the fields of
American Politics, International Relations, Comparative Politics,
Political Theory, Public Administration, and Political Methodology.
The conference will take place June 13-14. Preceding the conference on
June 11-12 we will also provide a series of workshops introducing existing
substantive areas of research, statistical methods (and software packages)
for dealing with the distinctive dependencies of network data, and network
visualization. There will be workshops covering UCINET, Netdraw,
exponential random graph models, SIENA, P*, and potentially other
topics as well.
There will be a $50 conference fee, as well as a $20 fee per workshop.
FUNDING IS AVAILABLE TO DEFRAY THE COSTS OF ATTENDANCE FOR DOCTORAL
STUDENTS AND RECENT (post 2005) PhD.'s. Funding may also be available for
graduate students not presenting papers, but preference will be given to
students using network analysis in their dissertations. Women and
minorities are especially encouraged to apply.
The deadline for submitting a paper proposal is March 1, 2008. Proposals
should include a title and a one-paragraph abstract. Graduate students
and recent Ph.D.'s applying for funding should also include their CV, a
letter of support from their advisor, and a brief statement about their
intended use of network analysis. Send them to
networked_governance@ksg.harvard.edu.
NIPS is supported by the National Science Foundation, and sponsored by the
Program on Networked Governance at Harvard University. The final program
will be available at www.ksg.harvard.edu/netgov.
Program Committee: Christopher Ansell (UCBerkeley), James Fowler (UCSD),
Michael Heaney (Florida), David Lazer (Harvard), Scott McClurg (Southern
Illinois), John Padgett (Chicago), John Scholz (Florida State), Sarah
Reckhow (UCBerkeley), Paul Thurner (Mannheim), and Michael Ward
(University of Washington).
Really interesting and beautiful visuals of New York City communication with the rest of the world, courtesy of the the Senseable City Laboratory at MIT (based on aggregated telecomm data), will be on display at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC February 24 to May 12. Or you could go this website....
I am pleased to announce the Spring, 2008 speakers for the Cambridge Colloquium on Complexity and Social Networks:
Martin Nowak (Harvard) on February 11: Evolutionary dynamics of cooperation.
Asim Khwaja (Harvard) February 25: The value of business networks: evidence from an emerging economy
Robert Goldstone (Indiana) March 3: The hive mind: experiments and models of human collective behavior
Patrick Wolfe and Benjamin Olding (Harvard) April 21: Sampling random networks to discover structure: models and methods
All colloquia will be at noon in the Fainsod room (third floor Littauer building at the Kennedy School). A light lunch will be served.
Thanks, David.
I very much looking forward to joining, and hope that I can contribute good and interesting stuff. Your intro was very flattering .... thank you. And I will even own up to having a connection to the institution that sponsors this blog, so I feel a bit like I belong.
My interests are networks in science and business, and I will try to post regularly!
It is my distinct pleasure to announce the addition of Stanley Wasserman to the netgov blog. Stanley is not only one of the leading statisticians in the area of social network analysis, but is also possessed of a notably pithy and direct style that is especially well suited for blogging (see his centralityjournal).
Some essential biographical information: Stanley Wasserman is Rudy Professor of Statistics, Psychology, and Sociology in the Departments of Statistics, Psychological and Brain Sciences, and Sociology at Indiana. He is also founding chair of the Department of Statistics. He is the author of numerous articles and books, most notably, coauthor (with Katherine Faust) of the now canonical
The study of networks has exploded over the last decade, both in the social and hard sciences. From sociology to biology, there has been a paradigm shift from a focus on the units of the system to the relationships among those units. Despite a tradition incorporating network ideas dating back at least 70 years, political science has been largely left out of this recent creative surge. This has begun to change, as witnessed, for example, by an exponential increase in network-related research presented at the major disciplinary conferences.
We therefore announce an open call for paper proposals for presentation at a conference on "Networks in Political Science" (NIPS), aimed at _all_ of the subdisciplines of political science. NIPS is supported by the National Science Foundation, and sponsored by the Program on Networked Governance at Harvard University.
The conference will take place June 13-14. Preceding the conference will be a series of workshops introducing existing substantive areas of research, statistical methods (and software packages) for dealing with the distinctive dependencies of network data, and network visualization. There will be a $50 conference fee. Limited funding will be available to defray the costs of attendance for doctoral students and recent (post 2005) PhDs. Funding may be available for graduate students not presenting papers, but preference will be given to students using network analysis in their dissertations. Women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply.
The deadline for submitting a paper proposal is March 1, 2008. Proposals should include a title and a one-paragraph abstract. Graduate students and recent Ph.D.’s applying for funding should also include their CV, a letter of support from their advisor, and a brief statement about their intended use of network analysis. Send them to networked_governance@ksg.harvard.edu. The final program will be available at www.ksg.harvard.edu/netgov.
Program Committee: Christopher Ansell (UCBerkeley), James Fowler (UCSD), Michael Heaney (Florida), David Lazer (Harvard), Scott McClurg (Southern Illinois), John Padgett (Chicago), John Scholz (Florida State), Sarah Reckhow (UCBerkeley), Paul Thurner (Mannheim), and Michael Ward (University of Washington).
I have been too busy catching up on things to blog about the conference last week on computational social science (scroll down to see the program). David Allen prodded me with a thoughtful e-mail about the event, which I reproduce below. We had a substantial attendance-- filling a large auditorium-- so I invite attendees, if so inclined, to add their comments (small or large).
One presenter at the conference on Computational Social Science (Fri Dec 7) pointed back to a ‘Top 40 list,’ a progressive account of ever-mounting achievements, tallied earlier in the day. The entire thing, this half-day event, was a Super Bowl, a gathering that may not happen again so soon – we were fortunate. Here is just one proposition stimulated by the discussion:
The lesson from Tycho Brahe emphasizes the importance of data, to advance knowledge. Naturally, that highlights a computational science. However, as important as was data to the Copernican revolution, its sea change in worldview turned at least as much on overturning an entrenched ideology. If I remember my history (and I may not …), even the Inquisition threw around its perfidious muscle, trying to prevent humankind falling from the center of cosmology.
Interestingly, ‘stickiness’ in the conduct of human affairs – we might identify defenders of an ideological faith as ‘sticking’ to their guns – was prominently on display in results reported at the conference. First Laszlo Barabasi and then Sandy Pentland took time to detail how their results quickly portrayed habitual behavior (and so, perhaps surprisingly, predictability of their subjects).
It is not a far step from well-worn paths, in those two presentations, to well-worn mental paths. (Of course Thomas Kuhn was the modern expositor on this subject. Earlier, Max Planck made it succinct with, "Science advances one funeral at a time.")
Was there evidence, at the conference?
Across the course of the day, there was evidence of change in some prior views. Particularly, Mark Granovetter’s notion of ‘the strength of weak ties’ came in for inspection. Again it was Laszlo Barabasi who presented results that support strong medium ties, instead. The point may also have been touched in another presentation, but I have lost reference to it if so.
But, we also heard, in comment from the floor, the difficulties finding publications that accept these papers. That belies wider resistance to a ‘new approach.’
Almost ironically, in the concluding session on IRB, what I take to be the underlying tension proved to be crisply on display.
Marshall Van Alstyne offered an elegant construction, a solution that takes advantage of the prevailing notions from the currently accepted worldview, at least in neoclassical economic thinking. In response, Allan Friedman raised questions about their realistic applicability.
Those two will speak for their views. Here, I will suggest where lie the deeper tensions, between the currently predominant paradigm and the social network view busily being developed.
Social network analysis would vary from the neoclassical view particularly in two fateful ways, I suggest: Rather than begin from static equilibria (borrowed of course from physics, earlier), dynamics are ‘natural’ to social network analysis. More, neoclassicism takes off from the individual, or individual firm; there is no place, really, for connections among the atoms. Social network analysis comes at phenomena, of course, from exactly the opposite direction.
The implications boil up all the ideological struggles – quite beyond intellectual quarrels – that roil standard politics, in the US and elsewhere. No wonder there is resistance.
At least there was, in this event, serious effort on display, to move from data to conception and theory. New intellectual lands are colonized only with such landscaping.
David_Allen_AB63@post.harvard.edu
http://davidallen.org/pages/paprindx.html#FutVoicComment
Announcement of the Eric Mindich Conference on Computational Social Science, December 7, 12:00-5:45
The development of enormous computational power and the capacity to collect enormous amounts of data has proven transformational in a number of scientific fields. The emergence of a computational socialscience has been slower than in the sciences. However, the combination of the still exponentially increasing power of computers with a massive increase in the capturing of data about human behavior makes the emergence of a field of computational social science desirable, but not inevitable. The creation of a field of computational social science poses enormous challenges, but offers enormous promise to achieve the public good. The hope is that we can produce an understanding of the global network on which many global problems exist: SARS and infectious disease, global warming, strife due to cultural collisions, and the livability of our cities. That is, can sensing our society lead to a sensible society? This conference brings together the wide array of individuals who are working in this emerging research area to discuss how we might address these global challenges, and to evaluate the potential emergence of a field of "computational social science."
This conference is co-chaired by David Lazer and Sandy Pentland, and co-sponsored at Harvard by the Institute for Quantitative Social Science and the Program on Networked Governance, and at MIT by the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship and the MIT Living The Future project.
See: http://www.iq.harvard.edu/NewsEvents/Conferences/ESS/ for the up to the minute confererence agenda. Please also note that video of these presentations will be deposited at this website.
CONFERENCE AGENDA
(All events will take place in room S010, 1730 Cambridge Street)
Friday (December 7):
Lunch (12 to 1:20)
Opening remarks: Gary King (Harvard), David Lazer (Harvard), Sandy Pentland (MIT)
Panel 1: Where is social science hitting its limits on BIG problems?
Gary King (Harvard), Nicholas Christakis (Harvard)
Short break (1:20 to 1:30)
Panel 2: Where is computer science creating possibilities? (1:30 to 2:30)
Laszlo Barabasi (Northeastern), Tony Jebara (Columbia), Deb Roy (MIT), Sandy Pentland (MIT)
Coffee break (2:30 to 3:00)
Panel 3: Some initial forays in the social sciences (3:00 to 4:30)
Noshir Contractor (Northwestern), Sinan Aral (NYU), Lada Adamic (Michigan), Alessandro Vespignani (Indiana), David Lazer (Harvard),
Panel 4: Managing human subjects issues (4:30 to 5:45)
William Bainbridge (NSF), Dean Gallant (Harvard), Leigh Firn (MIT), Marshall Van Alstyne (BU), Myron Gutman (Michigan)
Please RSVP to: register@iq.harvard.edu
The Program on Networked Governance is cosponsoring a public symposium on Information Technology and Governance-- please see details below.
Information Technology and Governance:
From Electronic Government to Information Government
Wednesday - November 14, 2007
Bell Hall (5th floor Belfer)
The John F. Kennedy School of Government / Harvard University
09:00 Welcome
David Lazer & Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Symposium Chairs
Stephen Goldsmith, Ash Institute
09:30 From Electronic Government to Information Government
David Lazer
10:00 Morning Panel: Technological Change and Information Flows in Government
Chair: David Lazer
Global Perspectives on E-Government
Darrell West, Brown University
Challenges to Organizational Change: Multi-Level Integrated Information Structures
Jane Fountain, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
It Takes a Network to Build a Network
Maria Binz-Scharf, City College of New York, CUNY
Weak Democracy, Strong Information: The Role of Information Technologies in the Rulemaking Process
Cary Coglianese, University of Pennsylvania Law School
12:15 Lunch
Speaker: Pippa Norris, introduced by Jerry Mechling
1:30 Afternoon Panel: Information Government, Democracy and Intermediation
Chair: Viktor Mayer-Schönberger
Socio-Technologies of Assembly: Sense Making and Demonstration in Rebuilding Lower Manhattan
Monique Girard & David Stark, Columbia University
“Open-Source Politics” Reconsidered: Emerging Patterns in Online Political Participation
Matt Hindman, Arizona State University
3:00 Information Government – the Normative View & Closing
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger
3:30 Symposium Adjourn
NO RSVP NECESSARY
The MIT Media Laboratory is looking for faculty in areas of data mining and visualization, collective intelligence, and behavior modeling (among others). The text of the announcement is below:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The MIT Media Laboratory is searching to hire several new tenure-track faculty. We seek candidates with a passion for building new technologies that will bring dramatic improvements in the ways people live, learn, work, and play. In short, we are looking for candidates who are committed to Inventing a Better Future.
Candidates should have experience in the design and development of new technologies, a focus on how technologies interact with people and society, a commitment to collaboration and interdisciplinary research, and a willingness to take risks and think big.
Areas of interest include (but are not limited to): health technologies, data mining and visualization, collective intelligence, behavior modeling, multiplayer gaming, ubiquitous communications, community development, and educational technologies.
To apply, please visit http://facultysearch.media.mit.edu/
Application deadline: January 10, 2008
Appointments will be within the Media Arts and Sciences academic program, and will be principally at the Assistant Professor level. Responsibilities include: initiating a research program, supervising a team of graduate students and undergraduate researchers, and teaching (graduate and undergraduate). Candidates should have a doctorate (or equivalent), a strong record of research, and teaching experience at the university level.
The Media Laboratory is dedicated to the goal of building a diverse community, and strongly encourages applications from qualified women and members of under-represented groups.
Send any questions to faculty-search@media.mit.edu
Full-day workshop “Analyzing longitudinal social network data using SIENA”
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
November 6, 2007
Tom A.B. Snijders, University of Oxford
This one-day course is designed primarily for researchers who are currently doing longitudinal social network research or who expect to do so in the future. More specifically, the course is about how to analyse panel data on complete social networks; ``complete’’ meaning that the collection of all network ties within one or several groups is being studied, ``panel” that it is observed at two or more discrete moments in time. The course will treat statistical modelling of network dynamics according to the stochastic actor-oriented approach (Snijders 2001, 2005) as well as the recent extension to the co-evolution of networks and behavior. The computer program SIENA will be used.
There will be the opportunity to discuss questions about the analysis of participants’ data sets, although the one-day restriction will not permit to do practical analyses of those data. The use of the program will be demonstrated, and participants are strongly encouraged to bring a laptop with SIENA installed in advance so as to be able to duplicate the analyses during the session. The program can be downloaded freely .
It is expected that participants have a basic knowledge of social network analysis and of statistical modeling. No prior knowledge of statistical models for networks, or of the SIENA program, is assumed. Further information and publications about this method and software can be found here.
For this event registration is required (space is limited). To register, please send an email to Ines Mergel: netgov@ksg.harvard.edu. We will inform participants about their status within the next two weeks. There is a $50 course fee, which will include lunch.
As I noted earlier, we will be having a series of entries about a volume that Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and I edited, Governance and Information Technology: From Electronic Government to Information Government. The key theme of the book is to examine the implications of (and obstacles to) rewiring the flow of information within government, between government and society, and within society. Our assertion is that, at this time, the paradigmatic focus needs to be on the bits and the institutions that support (or block!) them, rather than on the hardware through which the bits flow. The subtitle captures this conceptual shift.
Having attended “back to school” nights the last two weeks, let me offer an example grounded in that experience. In the 11 years I have had children in public schools, there has been a major shift (accelerating the last 2 years) in the informational architecture surrounding their education. In particular, the boundaries between the schools and families have become more malleable. This is particularly notable for high school, where students have many teachers, who, in years past, parents en masse would meet just at back to school night. For most parents, that would be the extent of the communication with teachers for the year. Now, however, it is possible to e-mail teachers. It is also possible to sign on to “teachernet” to find out what assignments students have, and, sometimes, grades in real time. The net result is (for many parents) are order of magnitudes increases in communication with teachers. These changes, I would note, are not inevitable, but reflect a set of policy choices by the schools, where the menu of choices is expanded due to the Internet. And these policies might change depending on the experiences of schools. The question one might/should ask is whether these are desirable changes for the education of children. My strong intuition is (generally) yes—that parents have information and power that can increase the effectiveness of schools (although I would have a caveat about the potential amplification of inequalities in society). I should also note that my children are not so thrilled about the elimination of this particular structural hole (kids these days get “disintermediation” as part of their first grade vocabulary).
In any case, this books attempts to explore these themes, looking at the information flows (1) between government and citizens, (2) within government, and (3) among citizens (focusing, of course, on the public/political sphere).
You can download a copy of the first chapter. As noted earlier, I have negotiated with MIT a 20% discount for readers of this blog.
I would also note that we have a wide disciplinary array of contributors, and with each conceptual chapter we have a brief case illustration. Below is the table of contents for the book.
Governance and Information Technology:
From Electronic Government to Information Government
Acknowledgments xi
About the Contributors xiii
1 From Electronic Government to Information Government
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and David Lazer 1
I Technological Change and Information Flows in Government 15
2 Global Perspectives on E-Government
Darrell M. West 17
Case Illustration
FirstGov: The Road to Success of the U.S. Government's Web Portal
Maria Christina Binz-Scharf 33
3 Electronic Government and the Drive for Growth and Equity
Edwin Lau 39
Case Illustration
"E-Government Is an Outcome": Michael Armstrong and the Transformation of Des Moines
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and David Lazer 59
4 Challenges to Organizational Change
Multi-Level Integrated Information Structures (MIIS)
Jane E. Fountain 63
Case Illustration
From Computerization to Convergence: The Case of E-Government in Singpore
Ines Mergel 94
Case Illustration
Dubai's Electronic Government
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and David Lazer 97
II The Blurring of the Informational Boundary between State and Society 99
5 Weak Democracy, Strong Information
The Role of Information Technology in the Rulemaking Process
Cary Coglianese 101
Case Illustration
The EPA EDOCKET System
Gopal Raman 123
6 Freedom of Information and Electronic Government
Herbert Burkert 125
Case Illustration
Protecting Privacy by Requesting Access: Marc Rotenberg and EPIC
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and David Lazer 142
7 Socio-Technologies of Assembly
Sense Making and Demonstration in Rebuilding Lower Manhattan
Monique Girard and David Stark 145
Case Illustration
The Rise and Fall (?) of Participatory Electronic Information Infrastructures
Åke Grönlund 177
8 "Open-Source Politics" Reconsidered
Emerging Patterns in Online Political Participation
Matthew Hindman 183
8 Case Illustration
Cyberprotesting Globalization: A Case of Online Activism
Sandor Vegh 183
III Evaluating the Impact of Reengineering Information Flows 213
9 The Challenge of Evaluating M-Government, E-Government, and P-Government
What Should Be Compared with What?
Robert D. Behn 215
Case Illustration
The Swiss E-Government Barometer: Kuno Schedler Feels the Temperature of E-Government Services
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and David Lazer 239
10 Information Quality in Electronic Government
Toward the Systematic Management of High-Quality Information in Electronic Government-to-Citizen Relationships
Martin J. Eppler 241
Case Illustration
Information Quality in Electronic Government Websites: An Example from Italy's Ministry for Public Administration
Lorenzo Cantoni 257
11 It Takes a Network to Build a Network
David Lazer and Maria Christina Binz-Scharf 261
Case Illustration
TeleCities: Sharing Knowledge among European Cities
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and David Lazer 279
12 The Governing of Government Information
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and David Lazer 281
Index 293
Tomorrow (Monday Oct 1) Marshall Van Alstyne will be lead off the latest year of The Cambridge Colloquium on Complexity and Social Networks of the Program on Networked Governance. Full announcement below.
"Diffusion, Network Structure & Information Advantage"
Marshall Van Alstyne
Boston University
School of Management
Monday, October 1, 2007
12:00 – 1:30 p.m.
Fainsod Room, 3rd Floor Littauer Building
Marshall Van Alstyne, Professor Van Alstyne works in the area of Information Economics. His research interests include the economics of networks, valuing information, equity and growth effects of information sharing, and integration effects of access to technology. The underlying theme is information: how to value it; how does it affect productivity, product design and competitive advantage; how does it alter property rights; what happens when it is shared, and why access alone may not lead to everyone having it independent of preferences. (for more information click here).
Abstract: The talk will be a summary of 2 papers (one on drivers of information diffusion, the other on how social networks affect access to novel information and the effect on productivity). Both papers are currently available below. In these papers we examine relationships between social network structure, information diversity, and individual performance. Specifically, we investigate which network structures influence access to novel information, and whether these relationships explain performance in information intensive work. We trace the word level diffusion using a ten month panel of email communication. Then we build and validate an analytical model of information diversity, develop hypotheses linking size and diversity to the distribution of novel information among information workers. We test our theory using statistical evidence linking message content to project revenue among employees at a medium sized executive recruiting firm.
Our results indicate that: (1) The total amount of novel information flowing to actors increases in their network size and network diversity. (2) The marginal increase in information diversity decreases in actors' network size. (3) Network diversity contributes to performance even when controlling for the positive performance effects of access to novel information. This suggests additional benefits to network diversity beyond those conferred through information advantage. (4) Traditional demographic and human capital variables have surprising effects on access to diverse information, highlighting the importance of network structure for information advantage. The methods and tools developed are replicable and can be readily applied to other settings in which email is widely used and available, opening a new frontier for the analysis of social networks and information content.
Aral, Sinan, Brynjolfsson, Erik and Van Alstyne, Marshall W., "Productivity Effects of Information Diffusion in Networks"
Aral, Sinan and Van Alstyne, Marshall W., "Network Structure & Information Advantage"
FYI, we have spoken to the Sunbelt organizers, who have reserved two + panel slots for political science related presentations. So, if you do register to present at Sunbelt, and wish to be part of a political science oriented panel, when you select a panel, write in:
Networks in Political Science (NIPS I)
or, if you are interested in policy networks, in particular:
Networks in Political Science (NIPS II): Policy Networks
It is my pleasure to announce that Governance and Information Technology: From Electronic Government to Information Government, edited by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and myself, is now available. I am also happy to say that we were able to negotiate a 20% discount from MIT for readers of this blog-- from an already low $15 to $12. Just follow this link.
I have also asked our contributors to step in as guest bloggers, so the next three months we will have a weekly posting on "Information Government"-- starting next week with a posting by Viktor and myself.
A brief description of the volume:
Developments in information and communication technology and networked computing over the past two decades have given rise to the notion of electronic government, most commonly used to refer to the delivery of public services over the Internet. This volume argues for a shift from the narrow focus of "electronic government" on technology and transactions to the broader perspective of information government--the information flows within the public sector, between the public sector and citizens, and among citizens--as a way to understand the changing nature of governing and governance in an information society.
Contributors discuss the interplay between recent technological developments and evolving information flows, and the implications of different information flows for efficiency, political mobilization, and democratic accountability. The chapters are accompanied by short case studies from around the world, which cover such topics as electronic government efforts in Singapore and Switzerland, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to solicit input on planned regulations over the Internet, and online activism "cyberprotesting" globalization.
Contributors:
Robert D. Behn, Maria Christina Binz-Scharf, Herbert Burkert, Lorenzo Cantoni, Cary Coglianese, Martin J. Eppler, Jane E. Fountain, Monique Girard, Åke Grönlund, Matthew Hindman, Edwin Lau, David Lazer, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Ines Mergel, Gopal Raman, David Stark, Sandor Vegh, and Darrell M. West.
And some of the generous things that have been said about the book:
"So you thought information technology in the form of 'e-government' would save taxpayer dollars, improve government performance, increase transparency and accountability, and promote democratic participation--and all in a hurry too? Some first-rate scholars of the subject show how the several truths about these matters are much more complicated, and the reasons for them sometimes paradoxical."
--Eugene Bardach, Department of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley
"Through a rich set of essays by leading thinkers, this book advances the next generation of ideas about information technology and government, moving the literature beyond the original, transactional conception of 'electronic government.' The authors bring up to date a thesis extending back to Federalist thought in the U.S., which is that flows of information are central to the exercise of power and indeed form one of the foundations of government."
--Bruce Bimber, Department of Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara
"The editors of Governance and Information Technology have assembled a strong juxtaposition of general overviews and concrete case studies to critically examine ways in which information and communication technologies are reconfiguring access to information both within government and between governments and citizens. This book not only challenges the idea that new technologies are democratizing access, but also presents alternatives conceptions, such as the development of an 'information class,' that will shape debate and research on the political implications of e-government"
--William H. Dutton, Director Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford
"The e-governance revolution has transformed the way that government commonly delivers basic services. But has it transformed democracy? This is a first-class study of the complex processes of information flows between citizens and government. Drawing upon well-known experts and a diverse range of cases, the study provides provocative and important insights into processes of political communications, the uses and limits of information technologies, and the transformation of modern governments."
--Pippa Norris, Director, Democratic Governance Group, Bureau for Development Policy United Nations Development Programme
The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) is one of the seven scientific institutes of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC). IPTS is located in Seville, Spain.
This short entry is to inform you that IPTS published 2 Post-Doc positions in the context of the following projects:
- eInclusion Strategic Support 2020
- New innovation models in eApplications (web2.0 and innovation in public services)
The deadline is September 16th.
The 2008 meeting ("Sunbelt") of INSNA will be in St. Pete Beach, FL, Jan 22-27. Sunbelt is the pre-eminent meeting of social network researchers, always stimulating and fun.
The New York Hall of Science is the host of the 2007 NetSci conference and has also an ongoing exhibition on social networks. It shows kids hands on how social networks are established or fall apart.
It’s a very cool exhibition: the creator Stephen Uzzo has just walked us through it without explaining the different parts. Everyone had to experience for themselves how connections on the Internet are created for example, how a hub connects to the closest spokes around him (we were all standing on a light show type of board, where each of us was a node and when you move around the connections are changing, depending on the shortest path). There were also real spiders creating a spider web.
I will add more on this during the conference and hopefully some pictures...
During the last three weeks, I have attended two different conferences - both focused entirely on (Social) Networks: First, I went to Greece to attend the International Conference for Social Network Analysts (main audience/attendance: social scientists) and I am currently blogging from the NetScience conference in New York in the Hall of Science (main audience: scientists).
I talked to a lot of people and listened to a lot of talks at both conferences and I noticed a couple of interesting things:
1. Researchers in all fields, natural and social sciences are working on (social) networks and within their specific fields they are located in a very specific niche within their own discipline. This is reflected for example in the fact, that a lot of researchers feel obligated to explain what a social network is and what the definition of concepts such as centrality are.
2. The basic concepts and analysis methods are the same across all disciplines, but we all use different language to describe what we are doing.
3. Researchers in different fields have different needs for analyzing and visualizing their network data and those who have the abilities to do so are creating/programming their own visualization and analysis tools or libraries. This seems to be an exploding area and I see a potential to synchronize the different needs and tools across disciplines.
4. Academic disciplines on (social) network research are largely disconnected and innovation is occurring within the disciplines, but usually not across disciplines. It seems as if the wheel is reinvented, but because academic disciplines are isolated and siloed the overall network science field is extremely innovative for its specific audiences.
This is an abstract of todays PNG/CCCSN seminar with Richard B. Freeman (Harvard University). We encourage you to discuss his presentation via comments on the blog.
"With trade union membership falling relative to the work force, many workers cannot readily obtain the services that unions traditionally provided, ranging from information about their employer and the job market more broadly to representation in dealing with individual and collective problems that invariably arise at workplaces. This talk describes how unions and other worker organizations have used the Internet to provide some of these services, even in the face of employer opposition to traditional unionism. The US experience ranges from WorkingAmerica, which has quietly enlisted about 1.6 million members to reedyassociates.com, which pressured law firms to raise pay by informing law graduates about economic differences. The UK experience includes union provision of information to nonunion workers and a discussion board network for worker representatives. Harvard offers the worklifewizard,which provides information and answers work-related questions. I consider the extent to which these innovative uses of the Internet can create a new labor movement, better suited to the modern work force."
The winning entries of the Netsci “Competition on visualizing network dynamics” are posted here. The winning entry, by Aaron Koblin of UCLA, is a representation of flight data from the FAA. It is truly stunning in its elegance and beauty—something that even non network types would enjoy watching.
There are many worthy runner-ups. One I would highlight is the entry by Bender-deMoll, McFarland, and Moody, which shows the interactions patterns within a classroom, using the network visualization software SoNIA. It was particularly powerful, I think, in conveying the importance of timing and sequence in a communication network.
Today's blog entry raises the question to our readers how social software could facilitate the inclusion of immigrants and minorities. Furthermore, there is a link to two post-doc positions.
I recently attended a EU policy finding workshop which aimed to contribute ideas and suggestions drawn from social capital and ICT (Web20, social software) perspective to the preparation process of the EC Communication (2007) and subsequent Initiative (2008) on eInclusion within the i2010 framework initiative. The Riga Ministerial Declaration dentified the participation by immigrants and ethnic minorities (IEM) in the European information society as important to improve their possibilities for economic and social participation and integration, creativity and entrepreneurship. Greater employability and productivity of minorities are specifically mentioned as a target, for which tailored ICT training and support actions are deemed to be important.
The following questions guided our discussions during the workshop which I would like to post here to collect further ideas and suggestions:
- Under which conditions can social capital be used as a lever to counter a number of risks of digital exclusion and to exploit ICT-enabled opportunities to promote greater socio-economic integration and cultural diversity?
- Which contribution especially in a social capital enhancing perspective, can new ICT applications and services (particularly mobile phone and social computing) make to address crucial integration challenges, on the one hand, and to support the creative and entrepreneurial usage of ICT by IEM, on the other?
- Which kind of instruments can the European Commission mobilise to enhance social capital and its cohesive effects through the use ICT? How should innovation and research agendas be inspired to respond to the considered challenges? How successful experiences can be best replicated?
Accordingly, recommendations were structured around the following areas: deepening understanding, research and innnovation, cooperation, awareness & marketing, good practice promotion, monitoring and benachmaring, legislative action and finally provision of "public" services. Now its your turn. One example for an "immigrant" oriented website was a project in the Netherlands for Moroccans.
Besides your comments to this blog you can also go directly to the eInclusion of immigrants and minorities project website and gather more information or share your ideas.
There are also two post-doc positions available at IPTS in lovely Seville, Spain. The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) is one of the seven scientific institutes of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) so you should work in a very interesting environment. Paul Timmers who is leading the project was the former head of the EU eGovernment Unit. If you are interested in investigating, from a technological and socio-economic point of view, the future of eServices and Web 2.0 technologies, and have knowledge in one or several of the following research lines: eInclusion, eLearning, eGovernment and eHealth you should send them your CV by no later than May 25.!
I will be giving a talk today as part of the Cambridge Colloquium on Complexity and Social Networks titled: “Life in the Network: The Coming Era of Computational Social Science.”
My key assertions (following from themes I have touched on in this blog) are that:
1) An increasing fraction of human behavior (especially relational behavior) leaves substantial digital traces—whether in the form of phone logs, e-mail, instant messaging, etc. (See Ben Waber’s recent post on the netgov blog on the instrumentation of human behavior.)
2) Increased computational power allows the analysis of these digital traces—e.g., through natural language processing, statistical analysis of massive (millions of individuals) longitudinal data, etc.
3) The preceding two points suggest (I argue) that we are on the precipice of dramatic new insights into collective human behavior. I say that noting that it is not inevitable that those insights will be produced. Human institutions tend to be fairly conservative. Will the relevant data become openly available for research? Can we work across the silo’s, which this work would require? Can we build the infrastructure to facilitate the types of collaborations and capacities needed?
In any case, I will be talking about this, with illustrations from four ongoing projects, today, 12:00-1:30, in the Fainsod room at the Kennedy School, Harvard.
EPROM’s first academic year has been extremely eventful. We have successfully developed a mobile phone programming curriculum and taught hundreds of Kenyan and Ethiopian computer science students Python, Java, and SMS-based mobile application development. These classes have lead to dozens of projects concerning the development of mobile phone applications specifically for the African market. Several of these projects have gathered international media attention, while others are being formed into start-up ventures based in Nairobi, Addis Ababa, and beyond. Throughout the remainder of this year we will be focusing on supporting these research projects, training faculty to continue teaching the curriculum, and introducing the initiative to other neighboring countries in East Africa – still the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world.
I took this picture two days ago in Addis Ababa during our Java for Mobile Devices class. While I'm currently back in Kenya, next week I've got appointments with the local universities in Uganda about curriculum sharing opportunities. It's nice to see EPROM really starting to take off. Check out the updated research page as well...
I recently stumpled on the following website which offers a neat collection of various network images/ visulizations and links to the respective projects in the field of social, art, biology, business, computer systems, food, internet, transportation, knowledge, music or pattern recognition. I am sure you can find something for your next powerpoint...
This is an abstract of todays PNG/CCCSN seminar with Devon D. Brewer (University of Washington). We encourage you to discuss his presentation via comments on the blog.
"Social scientists and field epidemiologists have long appreciated the role of social networks in diffusion processes. The cardinal goal of descriptive epidemiology is to examine “person, place, and time” in relation to the occurrence of disease or other health events. In the last 20 years, most infectious disease epidemiologist have moved away from the field epidemiologist’s understanding of transmission as embedded in contact structures and shaped by temporal and locational factors. Instead, infectious disease epidemiologists have employed research designs that are best suited to studying non-infectious chronic diseases but unable to provide meaningful insight on transmission processes. A comprehensive and contextualized infectious disease epidemiology requires assessment of person (contact structure and individual characteristics), place, and time, together with measurement of specific behaviors, physical settings/fomites, and the molecular biology of pathogens, infected persons, and susceptible persons. In this presentation, I highlight examples of research that include multiple elements of this standard. From this overview, I show in particular how the main routes of HIV transmission in poor countries remain unknown as a consequence of inappropriate design in epidemiologic research. In addition, these examples highlight how diffusion research in the social sciences might be improved with greater attention to temporal and locational factors."
I am pleased to announce the launching this week of the NSF-supported (via the Center for Technology and Governance at SUNY) International Working Group on Online Consultation and Public Policy Making. We will be meeting 4 times over the coming year, with the Program on Networked Governance will be hosting the opening meeting of the working group at the Kennedy School this Friday/Saturday. The initial component of the meeting is public (see details below). The overarching questions motivating the working group’s mission will be (a) how to evaluate the policy and other social impacts of online citizen consultation initiatives aimed at influencing actual government decision making, and (b) how the optimal design of such initiatives is affected by cultural, social, legal and institutional context. There will be a variety of outputs from our work, aimed at both academia and the policy world, including a report evaluating the policy and design issues with respect to online deliberation, and a book.
Practicing what we preach, ideas/suggestions on what we should pursue should be posted here, with links to work and resources in this area. I will make sure that anything (reasonable) posted enters the discussion in some fashion (with credit, of course).
The event this Friday:
Peter Shane (Ohio State University) & Stephen Coleman (University of Leeds)
Launching the International Working Group on Online Consultation and Public Policy Making
12:00-1:30, March 30, 2007
Location: Bell Hall (Fifth floor Belfer building, KSG)
Welcoming remarks will be offered by Valerie Gregg, Assistant Director of Development, Digital Government Research Center, Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California and Peter M. Shane, Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis Chair in Law, Ohio State University. A keynote address will be presented by Stephen Coleman, Professor of Communication, University of Leeds, who will be discussing "Future Research Directions in Public Online Consultation."
International Working Group on Online Consultation and Public Policy Making
US Co-Chair:
Peter Shane (Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Studies, Ohio State University)
International Co-Chair:
Stephen Coleman (Institute of Communication Studies, University of Leeds, UK)
Working group members:
Steven Balla (George Washington University)
Patrizia Bertini (European Internet Accessibilità Observatory, Italy)
Andrew Chadwick (Royal Holloway College University of London, UK)
Sungsoo Hwang (PhD Candidate University of Pittsburgh)
David Lazer (Program on Networked Governance, Harvard University)
Jeffrey Lubbers (Washington College of Law, American University)
Laurence Monnoyer-Smith (University of Technology Compiègne, France)
Beth Noveck (New York Law School)
Kerrie Oakes (PhD Candidate Griffith University, Australia)
Oren Perez (Bar-Ilan University, Israel)
Polona Pičman (Štefančič University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Vincent Price (Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania)
Alicia Schatteman (PhD Candidate State University of NJ at Newark)
Peter Strauss (Columbia University)
Scott Wright (De Montfort University, UK)
In case you have nothing to do this Sunday, here is a short follow up on the DLD conference 2007 which I noted in an earlier entry. There was a panel with Erik Wachtmeister (asmallworld), Lars Hinrichs (xing) and Matt Cohler (facbook) which covered various aspects of social networking platforms (i.e. business models, future). Here is a link to the full video of the DLD social network panel discussion "The Link Society" moderated by former Alando and Jamba founder Oliver Samwer. In order to watch the video please click "Monday - January 22" on the navigation bar on the right, scroll down to "10:30 am The Link Society" and then just click on "Play video".
This is an abstract of todays PNG/CCCSN seminar with Daniel Diermeier (Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University). We encourage you to discuss his presentation via comments on the blog.
"We use agent-based modeling to study collective problem solving in complex social networks where information aggregation and consensus building is modeled as the density classification task. We show that simple individual aggregation rules in conjunction with complex interaction patterns are highly efficient in solving the density classification task. We then investigate the effect of conservatism and partisanship on classification efficiency in large populations. We find that conservative agents enhance the populations’ ability to efficiently solve the density classification task despite large levels of noise in the system. In contrast, we find that the presence of even a small fraction of partisans holding the minority position will result in deadlock or a consensus on an incorrect answer. Our results provide a possible explanation for the emergence of conservatism and suggest that even low levels of partisanship can lead to significant social costs."
Here are the related publications:
Global Coordination in Modular Networks
Efficient system-wide coordination in noisy environments
This is an abstract of this weeks PNG/CCCSN seminar with Andrew McCallum (University of Massachusetts, Amherst). We encourage you to discuss his presentation via comments on the blog.
"The field of social network analysis studies mathematical models of patterns in the interactions between people or other entities. In this talk I will present several recent advances in generative, probabilistic modeling of networks and their per-edge attributes. The Author-Recipient-Topic model discovers role-similarity between entities by examining not only network connectivity, but also the words communicated on on those edges; I'll demonstrate this method on a large corpus of email data subpoenaed as part of the Enron investigation. The Group-Topic model discovers groups of entities and the "topical" conditions under which different groupings arise; I'll demonstrate this on coalition discovery from many years worth of voting records in the U.S. Senate and the U.N. I'll conclude with further examples of Bayesian networks successfully applied to relational data, as well as discussion of their applicability to trend analysis, expert-finding and bibliometrics."
Here is a link to Andrew's talk: "Bayesian Models of Social Networks and Text with Application to Political, Legal and Bibliometric Data"
A quick announcement of the "Visualizing Network Dynamics competition", organized by Katy Börner, Stephen Uzzo, Marcia Rudy, Elisha Hardy (truth in advertising, I am one of the judges).
Below are excerpts from the announcement.
The "Visualizing Network Dynamics" competition will be held as an integral part of NetSci07. The competition will invite researchers, practitioners, and educators from such diverse disciplines as anthropology, sociology, history, social psychology, political science, human geography, biology, economics, communications science but also art and design to submit the best-of visualizations of evolving networks, activity patterns over networks or combinations of the two. Competition applications will comprise large resolution static images or video footage together with a detailed explanation of datasets used, analysis or modeling techniques applied, and visualization design. Applicants will also be asked to list and explain major insights gained and to discuss the value the visualization might have for educational purposes.
The competition aims to harvest the best examples of meaningful (as opposed to purely artistic) network dynamics visualizations, to raise the bar for the documentation and communication of the process applied to generate those visualizations, and to sensitize people to the importance of visualization for formal and informal education and the communication of science in general.
Correspondingly, visualizations will be judged based on:
* Truthfulness of the data representation
* How well the visualization serves the needs of its ‘clients’
* Quality of data preparation and analysis
* Layout and design of the visualization
* The significance of insights gained
* Educational value
* Visual appeal
* Description of work
Awards
The Top-3 winning entries will get free registration to the NetSci Conference 2007 and cash prices in amounts of $100, $200, and $300 that are sponsored by the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center at Indiana University.
The Top-25 winning competition entries will be printed in large format and displayed at the Network Science Workshop and Conference. Winning animations will be projected in large format.
A DVD with all valid entries and their accompanying information will be shared with all Conference attendees. All valuable entries will also be made available online as a general, free resource for anybody interested in the study or communication of dynamic networks.
The DLD conference which will take place from Jan 21st-23rd will be covering digital innovation, gaming, arts and science from the perspective of Europe, the Middle-East, America and Asia. There will also be a panel with representatives from asmallworld, xing and facbook covering social networks. The topics include the concept, success stories, and future prospects of social networks. The panel tries to answer questions such as: How does life change through social networks. What is their impact on society. How relevant are social networks to people's lives. How will traditional entertainment and media companies interact? More on that next week.
Regensburg, September 3 - 7, 2007
Submission Deadline: February 15, 2007
The annual EGOV conferences bring together leading researchers and professionals from all over the globe and from many disciplines. Over the years, the interest has increased tremendously. The 2006 conference attracted about 130 participants from 28 countries all over the world including developing countries, with 30 contributions in outstanding research, 30 contributions in ongoing research, 15 projects contributions and 5 workshops. Hence the EGOV Conferences have become a reunion for academics and professionals as well as an important ground for networking.
General information for the EGOV conference can be found at egov-society.org; Info on the location and for further conferences at the DEXA conference cluster.
List of topics includes the following...
Continue reading "Call for Papers: 6th international EGOV conference 2007" »
For those interested, the pre-eminent social network conference is taking place on the island of Corfu in Greece, May 1-5, 2007. Sunbelt is a wonderfully informal but intellectually rigorous conference-- I highly recommend it if you are interested in the topic of social network analysis. Should you wish to submit a proposal for a presentation, the deadline is January 30, 2007.
A description from the website:
The International Sunbelt Social Network Conference is the official conference of the International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA). Located in the scenic Dassia Bay of Corfu island in Greece, Sunbelt XXVII will provide an interdisciplinary venue for social scientists, mathematicians, computer scientists, ethnologists, and others to present current work in the area of social networks. Workshops and conference sessions will allow individuals interested in theory, methods, or applications of social network analysis to share ideas and explore common interests.
Thanks to the first people who joined and added their markers/stickies to the Social Networks Researchers map. As many of you have probably noticed the Website and UI is still in its Beta stadium and buggy. I have already sent a couple of bug reports to Sociallight and they have been very receptive. So, if you experience bugs, have ideas on how to improve the UI or what is missing you should also let them know at: support [-at-] socialight.com which should be helpful if they see/feel the power of our community!
Besides that: Please feel free to add markers of other researchers you know to the map!
Please join us in the effort to build/create the first Google-Maps mash-up of the global research community on social networks. Please go to the following website called Sociallight and add your or other peoples information (location, name, research interest, URL) to our channel/map called "Social Networks". Registration is necessary to add a marker but is free and can be done in less than 5 minutes. As you can see we have already added 4 people to the map as an example. If you like it connect to our harvard_png profile after you have added a "sticky note".
Besides some other neat features with regard to mobile phone environmental tagging and location based services, the site offers the opportunity to build ones own social network with other users. After reviewing different google maps mash-up tools we decided this one is the best solution for our purpose the moment.
Please spread the word and add your information to the map! Thank you!
The next annual conference of INSNA (International Network of Social Network Analysis) will be held in Corfu, Greece, in May 2007.
Submission deadline is January 30, 2007. You can find the website