All in social network analysis
To create change we have to move people to a new way of acting with each other (behaviors). The concept behind Viral Change is to make those behaviors infection: spread, copy, reinforce, and spread more.
Pete Warden - of Facebook mapping fame - also has Mailana that lets you map networks. The main application looks at Twitter, though he seems to have some other analysis capabilities as well.
The speaker, Chris Fletcher, is responsible for Knowledge Management in the Asia Pacific region for the consulting practice of Deloitte.
There is a running discussion in the blogosphere on layers of a social networks and how trust or value is tied to each layer.
People have expressed plenty of paranoia about social network analysis techniques that exploit existing corporate data stores. So, it shouldn't be surprising to see reports of companies that are selling their tools to snoop on their employees.
Computerworld interviews the authors of some new research on IT and productivity. Looks like some interesting though easily misinterpreted results.
I came across "How to measure effect of communities at the macro level?" by Mukund Mohan at the same time that I've been thinking about the reasons organizations look into communities. These ideas fit together nicely.
Hai Zhuge has an article on "Discovery of Knowledge Flow in Science" in the May 2006 issue of Communications of the ACM. Zhuge focuses on the scientific citation network that is a familiar topic in academic circles, but the concept applies anywhere you can find citations, such as in blogs.
Howard Rheingold links to an interesting look at social networking services in "Unraveling the Taste Fabric of Social Networks." Short version: the authors describe a mechanism for describing people's interests as a fabric of tastes with some browsability components.
SNA expert Robert Cross writes about "Knowledge Loss in Organizations." I like the emphasis on using SNA as a diagnostic tool, particularly as he talks about the differing impacts of Central Connectors, Brokers, and Peripheral Players.
BusinessWeek's Oct 3rd cover story, "The Real Reasons You're Working So Hard..." is an interesting article on the history of long hours and how the problem is spreading outside of the U.S. It also covers a number of possible solutions.
Dave Pollard and some friends have developed Seven Principles of Social Networking. Throughout the article, he suggests that because of these principles, social networking applications have been going about the problem from the wrong angle.