In an earlier blog post, I mentioned that I would become more proactive about the organization of a Spanish language meetup in Nottingham. There used to be two groups which have now merged into one. We are meeting on Wednesday nights from 7 to 9 pm at Edin’s. If you are interested in joining the group, you can check out our events here. We are looking forward to welcoming like-minded people who are equally interested in Spanish language and culture.
My friend Nils König is currently running a survey for his PhD dissertation. He will analyze how attitudes of internet users vary towards corporate blogs and how reading preferences are shaped by cultural, demographic and experience factors. The survey is conducted in English, German and Russian, and will eventually enable an inter-cultural comparison of corporate blog reading and commenting behavior. The questionnaire comprises 17 questions, which will take about 10 minutes to answer. Please, take a moment to help Nils with his project.
via kingnils.de
The 6th UK Social Networks Conference will take place in Manchester from the 12th to the 16th of April, 2010, and offers an interdisciplinary venue for social and behavioural scientists, sociologists, educationalists, political scientists, mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists, practitioners and others to present their work in the area of social networks. The primary objective of the conference is to facilitate interactions between the many different disciplines interested in network analysis. The conference provides a unique opportunity for the dissemination and debate of recent advances in theoretical and experimental network research.
This year special attention would be dedicated to the history of network analysis, its link to mixing methods techniques and environment and network evolution.
Keynote Speakers
As a social scientist, I find it particularly thrilling to be working on a phenomenon that is very up-to-date. I am not looking at ancient data or analyzing people who have passed away a long time ago, but instead I focus on people’s behavior and attitudes in today’s world and their impact on how organizations conduct business. I was delighted to read this week’s special report on social networking by The Economist. Please find below my notes and a few thoughts on the report.
1. Networks facilitate creative endeavors
Social network sites allow people to connect to each other and swap relevant information. This is likely to enhance organizations’ creative potential and tap into the wisdom of the crowds. The days of specialist silos are long gone. Organizations can leverage their employees’ knowledge effectively by employing collaborative technologies.
2. The network effect & exponential utility growth
The network effect and resulting feedback loops have been observed with the introduction of a variety of techological inventions, such as the phone, the Internet, etc. It states that the value of a product or service increases as more people use it. The same is true of social network sites. The more people seem to use Facebook or Twitter, for example, the better and more nuanced the information we obtain on these networks.
3. Cluttering of social network sites
I have heard a number of people express worries about the plethora of sites that have recently sprouted. There are places for all kinds of interest groups. Staying on top of these developments is time consuming. What I expect to see more often in the future are portable identies, such as Facebook Connect, that allow their users to take their profile information from one site to another. This is a keynote presentation about Identity 2.0 by Dick Hardt, Founder and CEO of Sxip Identy. He makes this point very vividly.
4. Cultural change: openness & self-esteem
Another common concern regarding the use of social network sites is the loss of privacy. How much do people reveal about themselves on their online profiles. Do they give away too much personal information let alone proprietary company intelligence? In the interview, Martin Giles is being asked whether the use of social network sites even transforms personality. He speaks of a polarizing effect where celebreties, in particular, blow up their egos massively or become very humble through the use of social network sites. I have not come across any study that would confirm this hypothesis, however, the question of how the use of social network sites affects measures of self-esteem has been addressed before. The Journal of Cyberpsychology & Behavior is a good source for further references.
5. Is ‘Enterprise 2.0’ just a hype?
“In the business world there has also been much hype around something called ‘Enterprise 2.0’, a term coined to describe efforts to bring technologies such as social networks and blogs into the workplace.”
To my mind, this statement is a bit too playful. If you look at Gartner’s 2009 Hype Cycle Special Report, many of the quoted technologies have surpassed the point of inflated expectations. Blogging, Wikis and Social Network Analysis are now on their way to maturity. This argument can be backed by a couple of books that have recently been published, for example Andrew McAfee’s Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges and Niall Cook’s Enterprise 2.0: How Social Software Will Change the Future of Work.
via gartner.com
6. Social networking = social notworking?
“The executives’ biggest concern was that social networking would lead to social notworking, with employees using the sites to chat with friends instead of doing their jobs.”
Again, this is a question of how collaborative technologies are employed and what incentives are being used to engage employees. I have written about this earlier. A paper on the ‘Effects of feedback and peer pressure on contributions to enterprise social media’ has been published in 2009 by the Hewlett-Packard Laboratories and provides more references on the subject.
I am a big fan of Spain and Latin America. I have spent several months studying in Spain and Cuba, and I worked in Ecuador for a while. Some of my friends are similarly interested in the Spanish speaking hemisphere which allowed me to do some more traveling in Mexiko, Colombia and Venezuela while they were there. Over the past year, I attempted to locate the Spanish speaking community in Nottingham. However, I was not particularly successful. Last weekend I decided to become more proactive about the issue. According to Gumtree, there seems to be one group meeting on Monday nights in the city centre. The waiting list for Nottingham on Meetup consists of 295 people. This makes me think there is plenty of untapped potential. If you have heard of any regular meetings, please do let me know. If you have any suggestions regarding the organization of a meet-up, I would also be happy to hear about them. I was thinking of bringing people together in the Bar de Nada maybe once a month.
