Social network bandwidth

Interesting conversation today with friend and colleague Tom Carlson who's fast becoming a raving social network fan. Actually, it's always in our blood until we discover the framework that unleashes it.Anyway, we were talking about rating the quality of our connections on a -10 to +10 scale. As it turns out, each of us, given everything on our personal plates, have finite bandwidth of time and energy we can give to the quality of our connections. It is our experience that our strong +9 and 10 connections often require more care and feeding than our more superficial +2 and 3 connections.So we can visualize having a bandwidth of, say, 50 points on any given week on personal and professional scales. If we have two +9's, that leaves 32 points to distribute among maybe a few of +4's and 5's and...

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Network Weaving 101

One of the basic building blocks of weaving networks is "closing of triangles". A triangle exists between three people in a social network. An "open triangle" is where there is an opportunity to introduce two people by the third person who knows them both -- it is a triangle with one missing link like in the diagram immediately below. A "closed triangle" is where all three people know each other.Here we see our friend and colleague Ed Morrison, of iOpen, connected to two of his clients -- the economic development folks in both Lexington, KY and Oklahoma City, OK. He knows each of these groups, but they do not know each other. Much could...

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Cleveland Entrepreneurs & Their Colleagues

Entrepreneurs for Sustainability[E4S] is a NE Ohio network of entrepreneurs and change agents from business, government, academia and non-profit sectors who are implementing sustainability principles. They celebrated the Open House of their new work/meeting space this week. Included in that celebration was a network map of almost 600 NE Ohio entrepreneurs and their colleagues who run sustainable businesses in the Cleveland-Akron-Canton-Youngstown Ohio region. As with most network maps, this one [printed wall size], soon had a crowd around it pointing, laughing, taking notes & pictures, and discussing. Several people, who did not find...

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Regional Innovation Networks Workshop

June 29 & 30Open Source Economic Development: New Practices and Tools for Economic Development - an invigorating curriculum for leaders to create and lead collaborations, map and enhance regional networks, jumpstart innovation, engage in �strategic doing� and measure results. Workshop PresentersEd MorrisonJune HolleyValdis KrebsJack RicchiutoTime & PlaceDates: Thursday, June 29 & Friday, June 30 Time: 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. Place: Baldwin Wallace College Berea, OhioStrosacker Hall College Union Open Source Economic Development is a new approach that teaches you how to develop the open economic networks that drive innovation. Regis...

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At My Waterloo Days with Waterloo Center for the Arts, Waterloo, IA.

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