efios     Efios home Weblog     The efios blog: "It's all about people and networks"       19 May 2003 Blogs and power in network analysis CP Week has informally started! Today I have spent some time off the beaten track with some of the participants in Marin county and later during a dim-sum lunch, but we could not resist talking about communities, networks and our visions and practices. One of the things that I brought up (through a drawing on the back of a napkin, copied below) talking to Chris Blackmore is my that social network relationships work in blogs also have an imporant meaning, like it does for communities and networks. Blogs - perceived as tools for driving individual capabilities - also form networks of people with similar thoughts. Be it through subscription or RSS, bloggers read other people's blogs when they consider it relevant or interesting. This is how the network is created, comparable to voluntary membership in communities. My diagram shows the blog as the center of the network. The circle represents the clique of people that I am subscribed to - which are people that I relate to because of my work or interest. I form with them a community, but only in my perception (they themselves may have a different vision of the network). The people that I relate to, themselves relate to others in a similar way. I use these links to understand the way the people that I directly relate to, think. These second tier relationships however may have little or nothing to do with my personal interest, otherwise they would be first tier relationships. They help me to innovate my thoughts nevertheless, because they are out of the box I am thinking in with my personal first-tier network. The more tiers I reach and understand in the network (this is plain SNA) the lower the energy gets related to my interests or practice. This is fine, because the number of actors in the network at this level has also increased tremendously. We did not get anywhere with the discussion - but we concluded that social network analysis related to these thoughts, but the difference is that the power in the network is only perceived and based on an individual as the center of the network.. results cannot be applied to anyone else. This happened at 8:04:32 AM  Ideas and comments to this [] or trackback [] © Copyright 2005 Erik van Bekkum. May 2003 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat         1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Apr   Jun Blog categories: (All) innovation Social Networks Blogging Blogroll: [Macro error: Could not open the url, "http://www.efios.com/blog/gems/blogroll.opml", because it could not be converted to an outline.] 25 most recent: Intervision and communities of practice Weak ties in communities of practice Corporate SNA in CIO magazine Introduction to UCINET and social network methods The navigational aspects of social networks Blended Learning in KM Supporting Pioneering Leaders as Communities of Pr... WHO uses communities of practice to achieving univ... Communities for Project Offices Power struggle in radical innovation communities Xwiki, the MT of Wikis? Workshop Report on the Theory and Practice of Phys... Inquiry: Learning begins with Questions Deadline for VC2005 on the 30th of May Learning for development (Organizational Learning) ICTs and Social Capital in the Knowledge Society: ... NGMTI communities of practice Communities and change agents Informal learning and communities CITSA 2005 - Information Systems Analysis and I-KN... PhD Seminar in Copenhagen Business School Community of Practice in technology platforms The Encyclopedia of Virtual Communities and Techno... Workflow learning Using virtual communities in marketing APQC's blog on KM and Communities of Practice