The Network Singularity

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The Network Singularity — 2012-05-18T10:46:00Z

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Understanding Social Networks

The Network Singularity — 2012-05-16T23:06:01Z

Theories, Concepts, and Findings by Charles Kadushin

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Description

Despite the swift spread of social network concepts and their applications and the rising use of network analysis in social science, there is no book that provides a thorough general introduction for the serious reader. Understanding Social Networks fills that gap by explaining the big ideas that underlie the social network phenomenon. Written for those interested in this fast moving area but who are not mathematically inclined, it covers fundamental concepts, then discusses networks and their core themes in increasing order of complexity. Kadushin demystifies the concepts, theories, and findings developed by network experts. He selects material that serves as basic building blocks and examples of best practices that will allow the reader to understand and evaluate new developments as they emerge. Understanding Social Networks will be useful to social scientists who encounter social network research in their reading, students new to the network field, as well as managers, marketers, and others who constantly encounter social networks in their work.

Features

Fills a serious gap in the literature in the rapidly growing field of social networks.

Reviews

"Charles Kadushin is one of the sociologists who pioneered social network analysis and he has continued to make stimulating, thoughtful contributions. His new book provides a lucid, revealing introduction to the basic ideas and findings of the social networks field."
--Claude S. Fischer, University of California, Berkeley

"Finally! A sociologically informed and compelling introduction to social network analysis by one of the giants of the field. While there has been dramatic recent growth in the study of networks, new entrants often miss much of the rich history and compelling social theory that has been the field's foundation. This book represents an introduction to networks for social scientists and students looking to learn the 'why' of social network analysis, rather than computational detail. An all-around gem that should take a canonical place in social network courses."
--James Moody, Duke University

"Social networks are more than Facebook or a set of methods. Charles Kadushin is a veteran in thinking about what social networks do and what they mean. This thoughtful book provides a host of knowledge about how social networks operate in small groups, organizations and throughout society. Kadushin's ten master ideas distill the essence of social networks."
--Barry Wellman, S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto

"In Understanding Social Networks Charles Kadushin dispels the myth that social network research is simply methodology. The book is chock full of ideas that lay out vast terrains ripe for future research and exploration. All of the ideas are buttressed with historical documentation and developed within the context of existing social, psychological, economic, and other theories. Bravo!"
--Thomas Valente, University of Southern California

Words and Networks

The Network Singularity — 2012-05-16T07:18:23Z

Language Use in Socio-Technical Networks (WON 2012)

We solicit short papers for a workshop on research at the nexus of text analysis and network analysis. The workshop will be held at the ACM Web Science 2012 Conference in Evanston, IL, on June 22nd.

Workshop

While text analysis and network analysis have evolved into mature yet still quickly advancing fields, new work at their intersection emerges that enhances our understanding of the transformative role that language can play in networks and the relationship between information and networks. By jointly considering text data and network data we can analyze networks along multiple dimensions of human behavior. This has facilitated eminent work on collective problem solving through information propagation, language change, and the adoption of beliefs and sentiments, to name a few areas.

The overarching goal with this workshop is to bring together people that bridge the gap between text analysis and network analysis, and to discuss current advances and challenges in this new field.

What and how to submit:

We welcome short papers (2-6 pages) on algorithmic, methodological and applied empirical work that considers text data and network data. We are also interested in computational solutions that support this process.

Please submit your paper EasyChair. Please use the Word or LaTeX templates for WebSci12 for you submission.

Topics of interest include:

Semantic network analysis
Information networks
Mental maps
Joint utilization of natural language processing or computational linguistics and network analysis, e.g. in the context of social media analytics
Evolution and change of language, trust and reputation in online and offline settings

Important dates:

May 21: Short papers due
May 27: Acceptance notes sent out
June 08: Final version of short papers due
June 22: Workshop
June 22-24: Web Science Conference, Evanston, Illinois, USA

Organizers:

Jana Diesner, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The iSchool/ Graduate School of Library and Information Science
Web: http://people.lis.illinois.edu/~jdiesner/

David Reitter, Carnegie Mellon University, Dept. of Psychology and Penn State, College of Information Sciences and Technology

Web: http://www.david-reitter.com

Time For a Change

The Network Singularity — 2012-05-13T15:03:53Z

Customers Take Charge

The Intention Economy codifies monumental changes on the horizon. It’s been a theme of The Network Singularity for a decade.

The Intention Economy is not only recommended, it’s required reading.

Check the rockin’ wiki on vendor relationship management (VRM) at Harvard.

The Intention Economy changes everything.

Value Network Patent

The Network Singularity — 2012-05-13T14:39:19Z

Many people here are familiar with the abrupt death of Value Networks, LLC, about a year ago. Since then an interesting patent was award on 6 Mar 2012 for a Value Network (USPTO # 8131567). It is definitely worth a look from a KM, network, market and complexity perspective.

Note: it is entirely unrelated to the obsolete boutique consulting activity called 'value networks' and its turgid, failed theory of ‘value network analysis’ (VNA). See:

http://www.google.com/patents/US8131567

To wit,

"Systems and methods including a computer network are provided. The computer network includes a plurality of affiliate computing systems, each affiliate computing system including a processing unit and storage, the processing unit executing one or more programs for supporting care of a patient. The computer network includes a centralized care network including a central health care computing system, the central health care computing system being coupled to each affiliate computing system by way of a network and including a processing unit and storage, the processing unit executing one or more programs for managing patient records stored in the storage."

This is interesting since it is a large-scale network integration to serve a specific knowledge-based purposes. Expect more in the future in other verticals and domains.

CFP

The Network Singularity — 2012-05-10T16:02:11Z

The 2012 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) The 2012 IEEE International Conference on Cyber, Physical, and Social Computing (CPSCom) The 2012 IEEE International Conference on Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom).

These conferences will provide a high-profile, leading-edge forum for researchers, engineers and practitioners to present state-of-art advances and innovations in theoretical foundations, systems, infrastructure, tools, testbeds, and applications for the internet of things, cyber, physical and social computing, and green communications, as well as to identify emerging research topics and define the future.

iThings: The Internet of Things (iThings) is a network of Internet-enabled objects, which aims at increasing the ubiquity of the Internet by integrating every object for interaction via embedded systems and leads to the highly distributed network of devices communicating with human beings as well as other devices. Combining with the infrastructures of the every heterogeneous networks including Internet and mobile networks, these objects can communicate with humans, and enable peoples to monitor and control them and enjoy their intelligent services in anytime and anywhere.

CPSCom: topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to:

- Cyber-physical systems and society

- Social computing

- Pervasive/ubiquitous computing

- Sensor/actuator networks

- Security, privacy, and trust

- Applications and services

GreenCom: Computers, communication systems and other IT infrastructure have been posing severe environmental problems by consuming significant amounts of electricity, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and causing pollution during their production and disposal.

To reduce these environmental problems and create a sustainable environment, new models, algorithms, methodologies, tools and systems are needed so we can generate green IT systems with high energy efficiency, low greenhouse gas emissions, less harmful materials and easily being reused and recycled.

Authors are invited to submit original papers that MUST NOT have been submitted to or published in any other workshop, conference, or journal. All papers must be written in English and submitted electronically through the Web site. For more information please see the Web page.

Each submission should be regarded as an undertaking that, if the paper is accepted, at least one of the authors must attend the conference to present the work in order for the paper to be included in the IEEE Digital Library. Accepted papers will be published in the proceedings of iThings 2011 by IEEE Computer Society (EI indexed).

Websites:

http://www.ieee-iot.org

http://cpscom.univ-fcomte.fr

http://greencom.univ-fcomte.fr

Important dates:

Paper submission due: May 15, 2012

Notification of acceptance: June 30, 2012

Final manuscript due: July 15, 2012

- Julien Bourgeois
University of Franche-Comté
Julien.Bourgeois@femto-st.fr

Leading Issues in Social KM

The Network Singularity — 2012-05-08T20:53:42Z

Leading Issues in Social Knowledge Management

A collection of important Social Knowledge Management papers ISBN: 978-1-908272-38-6 Published by Academic Publishing International.

Edited by: David Gurteen

Published by Academic Publishing International

Perhaps one of the most surprising if not actually unsettling things about the Internet and the Web is that there is always something new on the horizon and that it is very difficult to see where this new technology will take us. When ICT was just about big computers and organisational systems it was pretty obvious where the technology was moving us. We all knew about Moore’s Law and that we were going to have greater capacity, smaller and faster devices every year. And during the 1990s and the first decade of the third millennium we all became used to what the Internet and the Web had to offer.

But Social Software in the form of Web 2.0 is different. It has put technology in the hands of people who we would never have given it a second thought a few years ago.

Leading Issues in Social Knowledge Management contains leading edge research which addresses some of the main issues for those of us who want to use Social Software in a Knowledge Management context or who want to study it or research it. There are 10 research papers as well as an introduction from David Gurteen who is a leading thinker in this field.

ISBN: 978-1-908272-38-6

Modes of Explanation

The Network Singularity — 2012-05-05T22:21:44Z

Three days to discuss and learn about our use of modes of explanation. A look at how our mode of explanation affects our affordances for action.

American University of Paris 22-24 May 2013 See http://modesofexplanation.org

Speakers include: Nancy Nersessian, Paul Thagard, David Snowden, Rukmini Bhaya Nair, Kevin Kelly, Hugo Letiche, and Timothy Allen

Suits and Spooks

The Network Singularity — 2012-05-01T12:53:03Z

http://www.taiaglobal.com/suits-and-spooks-anti-conference/

The purpose of Taia Global’s Suits and Spooks anti-conference is to bring members from the 16 agencies in the U.S. Intelligence Community together with innovative thinkers from a wide variety of disciplines including technology, finance, entertainment and science, for a day of frank discussions and innovative problem solving. Our first event was held in a loft in downtown Palo Alto, CA on September 24, 2011, followed by Suits and Spooks DC held in Arlington, VA on February 8, 2012.

Suits and Spooks LA will be held at the Bel Air Bay Club in Los Angeles on June 29, 2011. This one day anti-conference co-sponsored by Taia Global and the Pacific Council on International Policy‘s National Security committee will feature the following speakers in a beautiful setting overlooking the Pacific ocean. The objective of the day’s activities will be to engage in frank, off-the-record discussions concerning the need to shape a new paradigm on how we think about and act upon security in today’s increasingly wired world.

11 Simple Rules

The Network Singularity — 2012-04-27T05:56:11Z

1. Think first of the other fellow. This is THE foundation — the first requisite — for getting along with others. And it is the one truly difficult accomplishment you must make. Gaining this, the rest will be "a breeze."

2. Build up the other person's sense of importance. When we make the other person seem less important, we frustrate one of his deepest urges. Allow him to feel equality or superiority, and we can easily get along with him.

3. Respect the other man's personality rights. Respect as something sacred the other fellow's right to be different from you. No two personalities are ever molded by precisely the same forces.

4. Give sincere appreciation. If we think someone has done a thing well, we should never hesitate to let him know it. WARNING: This does not mean promiscuous use of obvious flattery. Flattery with most intelligent people gets exactly the reaction it deserves — contempt for the egotistical "phony" who stoops to it.

5. Eliminate the negative. Criticism seldom does what its user intends, for it invariably causes resentment. The tiniest bit of disapproval can sometimes cause a resentment which will rankle — to your disadvantage — for years.

6. Avoid openly trying to reform people. Every man knows he is imperfect, but he doesn't want someone else trying to correct his faults. If you want to improve a person, help him to embrace a higher working goal — a standard, an ideal — and he will do his own "making over" far more effectively than you can do it for him.

7. Try to understand the other person. How would you react to similar circumstances? When you begin to see the "whys" of him you can't help but get along better with him.

8. Check first impressions. We are especially prone to dislike some people on first sight because of some vague resemblance (of which we are usually unaware) to someone else whom we have had reason to dislike. Follow Abraham Lincoln's famous self-instruction: "I do not like that man; therefore I shall get to know him better."

9. Take care with the little details. Watch your smile, your tone of voice, how you use your eyes, the way you greet people, the use of nicknames and remembering faces, names and dates. Little things add polish to your skill in dealing with people. Constantly, deliberately think of them until they become a natural part of your personality.

10. Develop genuine interest in people. You cannot successfully apply the foregoing suggestions unless you have a sincere desire to like, respect and be helpful to others. Conversely, you cannot build genuine interest in people until you have experienced the pleasure of working with them in an atmosphere characterized by mutual liking and respect.

11. Keep it up. That's all — just keep it up!

- Dave Packard
HP’s 2^nd Management Conference (1958)
Sonoma, California, USA

CASOS

The Network Singularity — 2012-04-26T17:16:28Z

CASOS Summer Institute 2012

Date: June 11-17, 2012

Place: Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA USA

Website

Registration Page

Topics Covered Include:

Social Network Analysis
Dynamic Network Analysis (multi-mode, multi-network) Link analysis
Network grouping techniques - Cliques, fuzzy groups, Newman-Girvan
Unstructured text extraction to network representation, and analysis techniques
Basic Approach to building and evaluating multi-agent simulation systems
Simulation model validation and docking
Hands-on introduction to CASOS tools: ORA, AutoMap, and Construct

Faculty:

Kathleen M. Carley, PhD, Carnegie Mellon University, Director of CASOS
Additional Faculty TBA

Purpose:

The purpose of the CASOS Summer Institute is to provide an intense and hands-on introduction to dynamic network analysis and computational modeling of complex socio-technical systems. Both network analysis and multi-agent modeling will be covered. Participants will be able to complete the institute without programming skills or in-depth understanding of particular social theories. Computer programming and basic social or organizational theory are not included under the topics covered.

Participants learn about current trends, practices, and tools available for social networks analysis, link analysis, simulation, and multi-agent modeling. Basic social network and dynamic network representations, statistics, analysis and visualization techniques are covered. Techniques for designing, analyzing, and validating computational models with and without network components are presented. There is also an emphasis on appropriate and inappropriate ways to critique computational models and network analyses. The strengths and weaknesses of computational and network approaches to examining complex socio-technical issues are discussed. Multiple computational platforms are explored and hands-on experience are provided. An examination of social network methods, complexity theory and procedures for integrating network-based metrics and statistics into computational models completes the program.

The software tools students will learn and work with include: ORA, AutoMap, and Construct, which are network analysis, information extraction, and simulations tools, respectively, that are developed at CASOS and widely used globally in business, government, and education.

Students are encouraged to bring their own data and to learn to use the CASOS tools to code, analyze, reason about and visualize there data. Hands-on instruction and assistance will be provided on how to import data to ORA from CSV files, SQL databases, email servers, UCINET formats, PenLink, I2/Analyst Notebook and other raw data formats. Students will work through a tool chain where they extract networks from texts, analyze those networks, and the using simulation techniques evolve those networks.

Curriculum:

The hands-on curriculum builds on both social network and computational analysis techniques, and illustrates how to use these techniques to study social, organizational and policy issues.

Who participates?

Participation is open to graduate students, faculty, and personnel from industry, education and government. Due to space restrictions we are limited in the number of participants, so register early.

Registration:

Registration information is on the website: http://www.casos.cs.cmu.edu/events/summer_institute/2012/

A direct link to the registration page is:

http://www.casos.cs.cmu.edu/events/summer_institute/2012/register.php

Please visit the website: http://www.casos.cs.cmu.edu/events/summer_institute/2012/ for additional information such as What to Bring, Where to Stay, Commonly Asked Questions, Parking, Maps, etc.

Thanks!

- Sarah Tedrow-Azizi
Executive Assistant
CASOS, ISR, Carnegie Mellon University
4212 Wean Hall
412-268-3163
sazizi@cs.cmu.edu

KM: Primum non nocere

The Network Singularity — 2012-04-23T10:24:29Z

When does KM happy talk become crazy talk?

Knowledge management (KM) too often approaches the wrong organizational issues. Yet, the practitioners fail to acknowledge their grave problems. Frequently, offenders are those that advocate ‘knowledge sharing’ or worse, much worse, a ‘knowledge sharing culture.’ Among these common KM offenders, the most harmful, by far, are those that advance information technology and process methods for KM.

First, please note that upwards of 70-80% of KM efforts are either extremely challenged or outright failures.

The problem is self-absorbed KM people, vendors, consultants, etc., believe they can create entirely new methods and force them on an organization. That leads to confident failure and collapse.

Rather, people must recognize THEY serve the culture. The knowledge flow paths, the extant social network structures, aggregate behaviors, etc., are the culture. They are very powerful.

The key Latin maxim, taught to medical professionals for centuries, Primum non nocere (First, do no harm), is essential to KM people and consultants. Sadly, arrogance and technology are responsible for historical, expensive and widespread KM malfeasance.

For example, concerning knowledge sharing, most all organizations do NOT have knowledge sharing problems. In most all organizations, knowledge sharing is fine, thank you very much.

Once, at a municipal transportation authority, a large bureaucracy, they claimed a ‘knowledge sharing problem.’ They brought in a phalanx of ‘KM experts' to ‘solve the problem.’

At the same time the intervention started, a popular employee had her first baby. Literally, in a matter of minutes, the consultants discovered, the entire organization, of about 500 people, on many floors, in a downtown location, with very limited technology, knew the gender and weight of the new baby and that the mother was doing fine.

So much for the 'knowledge sharing' baloney.

Sophisticated information flow paths, nodes and hubs exist in this organization. They exist in every organization ever known. Identify and master these knowledge raceways and the knowledge problems are solved.

Meanwhile, they recognized they two problems were leadership and network comprehension. All knowledge-based organizations can be sharply improved with better leadership and network comprehension. Long story short, they corrected these issues and the problems were solved.

It is key to use techniques like appreciative inquiry, narrative, praxis intervention, conversation, social network analysis (SNA), dialectics and so on to divine the knowledge flow paths, influencers, network structures, etc., that define organizations. Focus on amplifying and mastering these sociological properties to achieve ever higher organizational signal–to-noise ratios.

Meanwhile, just forget about technology. It’s an expensive red herring. Above all, Primum non nocere.

SI Update

The Network Singularity — 2012-04-23T10:14:29Z

singinst.org

Recently, the Singularity Institute has offered a variety of jobs, opportunities, and prizes!

We are hiring:

Remote researchers (writing skill not required)
Rationality curriculum designers
Rationality teachers
Workshop consultants
Remote editors
Remote HTML/WordPress workers
Executive assistants

We would also like:

We are also giving out $500 prizes for suggested rationality exercises: details here.

Finally, a few other updates:

We are running 3 more rationality minicamps! The dates are May 11-13, June 22-24, and July 21-28.
Did you know that the Singularity Institute’s research fellows and research associates have more peer-reviewed publications forthcoming in 2012 than they had published in all past years combined? See our latest monthly progress report.
Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is being updated again, and has a snazzy new website, HPMoR.com.

- singinst.org

Technorati Tags: Singularity Institute

Organization Networks

The Network Singularity — 2012-04-15T00:43:08Z

Someone remarked, probably thrusting their index finger in the air, with the joy of pride and discovery, “Network maps are the new org charts!”

Org charts ARE network maps. They are a simple hub and spoke structure. Just turn the traditional org chart on it side.

orgnet.com

Rather unbelievable how limited network comprehension is and how slow people gain a network mindset. it is a real problem.

Changing the org chart, moving the nodes and connections, in an effort to improve performance, is primitive org/social network analysis (SNA).

People are often dismissive of the org chart. However, organizational hub and spoke network configurations are critical for continuity, resource allocation, governance and so forth. Org charts are often the formal networks of the organization.

Network neophytes then discover the informal networks. They make vague claims like this "value creation process" to describe the benefits of informal networks.

They make other odd remarks like, “…organizations are harder to draw using the traditional graphs and org charts." Hunh?

Traditional graphs are fine, what's needed are new network structures. New topologies that elaborate the informal networks help achieve deeper comprehension and positive outcomes.

Thing is, most managers already have a basic network mapping vocabulary through org charts. What they need is new structures, patterns and network mindset.

Network Evolution 3.0

The Network Singularity — 2012-04-12T16:06:14Z

New Directions for Organizational Networks Research

October 22-23, 2012

Fontainebleau

The INSEAD Conference on Network Evolution is a two day event where we will provide a forum for researchers interested in organizational networks. We are looking for submissions that have the potential to set directions for the organizational networks research over the next 10 years. The following is a sampling of potential topics to discuss, but the submissions can go beyond them:

a) What are the drivers of network dynamics

b) What are the network outcomes for individuals or organizations

c) How does membership in multiple networks affect outcomes for individuals and organizations

d) What are the new ways to think about network outcomes (e.g. creativity, performance, career trajectories)

We expect this to be small conference (around 30 papers) so that the participants can receive quality feedback. This is the third time INSEAD organizes the conference on Network Evolution.

Keynote speakers:

Joel Baum (Toronto)
Ron Burt (Chicago)
David Stark (Columbia)

Discussants / participants:

Martin Gargiulo (INSEAD); Henrich Greve (INSEAD); Herminia Ibarra (INSEAD); Martin Kilduff (Cambridge); Joe Labianca (Kentucky); Bill McEvily (Toronto); Melissa Schilling (NYU); Guiseppe Soda (Bocconi); Brian Uzzi (Northwestern); Aks Zaheer (Minnesota)

INSEAD organizers:

Andrew Shipilov; Rose Luo; Jarrett Spiro; Michele Rogan; Frederic Godart; Bart Vanneste; Kim Claes; JungYun Han

Please submit a full paper to network.evolution@insead.edu by June 10, 2012.

There is no attendance fee, but the participants should cover their own transportation and lodging in Fontainebleau.

ContextDD 2012

The Network Singularity — 2012-04-10T07:40:40Z

ACM KDD 2012 International Workshop on Context Discovery and Data Mining http://www.contextdd.org In conjunction with ACM KDD 2012 Beijing, China, 12 - 16 August, 2012

With the emergence of mobile computing and social networking, there is a huge amount of data that can be collected and studied. Smartphones provide a unique platform for studying human behaviour and the environment in ways that were never dreamed before, because they can record context from sensors embedded in the device.

According to Dey, context can be defined as any information that can be used to characterize the situation of an entity where the entity is a person, place or object that is considered relevant to the interaction between a user and an application, including the user and applications themselves. Perhaps, the most ubiquitous and often collected context is that of location, which is usually GPS for building location-based services. This has given birth to context-aware computing, being able to use context in a computing framework for ubiquitous computing applications and mining human intelligence.

There has been much research into defining context, context models and context inference, but still many challenges on how to deal with the different types of context that can be collected on a smartphone such as the accelerometer and gyroscope, and context fusion, that is, how to make sense of diverse types of context (such as social context, emotional context, physical context, etc). in order to understand the task or behaviour.

The ContextDD 2012 workshop is an international forum for researchers and practitioners to present innovative ideas and results on all aspects of context computing, in particular coming from the data perspective which includes theoretical foundations, techniques and methods, tools and platforms, prototypes, evaluation, practical implementations and applications for discovering and making sense of context. The workshop aims to attract and bring together mobile computing, cyber-physical computing, ubiquitous computing, social computing and data mining researchers and practitioners with diverse backgrounds who have an interest in context. Our objectives in the workshop are the following:

- Identify the various aspects of rich context mobile computing

- Review the state of the art of these algorithms and novel applications

- Gather researchers and practitioners in sharing their experiences on context computing

- Identify further research challenges and topics needed to be addressed on national and international level

- How to bridge the gap between context research in academia and industry, and transition the research from lab to consumer applications

- Recommend strategies where short-term commercial and consumer values may reasonably be expected;

- Create a research framework, agenda and social network for rich context mobile computing for further collaboration after the workshop

The workshop will be a half day workshop. Besides research paper presentations, the workshop will feature an Invited Talk (keynote) and a Panel Discussion session. The workshop will be held in Beijing, China in August 2012, in conjunction with the 18th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD 2012) (http://www.kdd.org/kdd2012).

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

- Rich context data collection and how to collect different types of context while taking energy efficiency into account

- Context modeling techniques

- Context processing, activity recognition, labeling, feature selection

- Context inference algorithms and performance: complexity and accuracy

- Context awareness methods and frameworks

- Context aggregation to semantics

- Algorithm for discovering, mining and reusing of context information

- Prototypes of context data processing

- User behaviour from context

- Applications of context discovery and data mining

- Contextual recommendation

- Mobile,social and human context

- Intelligent mobile systems, platform and framework that use context

- Context-aware services and applications

- Tool and evaluation support for context modeling and development

- Privacy and security issues with context data collection and use

IMPORTANT DATES:

Paper Submission Deadline: May 8, 2012

Author Notification: June 1, 2012

Final Manuscript: June 18, 2012

Workshop date: August 12, 2012

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS:

Authors are invited to submit original papers that must not have been submitted to or published in any other workshop, conference, or journal. The workshop will accept full papers describing completed work, work-in-progress papers with preliminary results, as well as short position papers reporting inspiring and intriguing new ideas.

Submissions must be in PDF format and not exceed 6 pages in length.

For detailed submission instructions, please visit the workshop

website: http://contextdd.org

All papers will be peer-reviewed by members of the Program Committee and be evaluated for originality, significance of the contribution, technical correctness and presentation. At least one author of each accepted papers must present their work at the workshop. Accepted papers will be included in the ACM KDD 2012 Workshops proceedings published by ACM (placed in ACM Digital Library) . Extended versions of selected best papers will be considered for publication in special issues of SCI-index international journals.

Workshop Chairs:

Jilei Tian, Nokia Research Center, China Alvin Chin, Nokia Research Center, China Enhong Chen, University of Science and Technology of China, China

Program Committee:

Guanling Chen, University of Massachussets-Lowell, USA Li Chen, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China Yiqiang Chen, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China Anind Dey, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Antti Eronen, Nokia Research Center, Tampere, Finland Alfred Kobsa, University of California Irvine, USA Jeff Pan, University of Aberdeen, UK Mielikainen Taneli, Nokia Research Center, Palo Alto, US Jianyong Wang, Tsinghua University, China Xing Xie, Microsoft Research Asia, China Linli Xu, University of Science and Technology of China, China Zheng Yan, Xidian University China and Aalto University, Finland Zhiwen Yu, Northwestern Polytechnic University, Xian, China Daqiang Zhang, Institute Telecom SudParis, France Yanyong Zhang, Rutgers University, USA Yu Zheng, Microsoft Research Asia, Beijing, China

Landmark in Human Neuroanatomy

The Network Singularity — 2012-04-02T12:01:12Z

“Getting a high resolution wiring diagram of our brains is a landmark in human neuroanatomy.”

“…an astonishingly simple architecture…”

- Thomas R. Insel, M.D.
National Institute of Mental Health

Brain wiring a no-brainer?
Scans reveal 3D grid structure

Technorati Tags: neuroanatomy

Social Business

The Network Singularity — 2012-03-27T12:10:00Z

Pundits and others are hand-wringing and crying over the failure of ‘Social Business.’

The first problem is these people are too dim and too lazy to know even the definition of social business. Rather, they think it is just the next stage of the firm including the commercial enterprise. Good grief.

For the record, a social business is a non-loss, non-dividend company designed to address a social objective within a highly regulated marketplace. The term was coined and used mostly by Nobel Peace Prize laureate, professor Muhammad Yunus. If you don’t know who this is, please, look it up.

For virtually everyone else, social business is pure hyperbole. The hubris is palpable. Even worse, people are breathing their own exhaust. It’s suicide.

With the major exception of Prof. Yunus and the breakthrough work in Bangladesh and elsewhere, social business belongs in the pantheon of dopey business terms. For everyone else it is just another disgusting rhetorical excess.

ALL business, from time immemorial, is social. No exceptions.

It’s time for the pundits to give us a break. While you are relaxing, please acknowledge.

Economics is a branch discipline of sociology; all human activity, particularly business, is social.
Two enterprise views drive productivity and productivity growth (innovation) –

1.) Transaction cost economics (TCE)
2.) Knowledge-based view (KBV)

Insofar that people using new information technology can improve TCE and KBV productivity then it is good and will create prosperous outcomes.
The purpose of business is to create a customer. (Drucker)
Enlightened view will not be the business norms until we finally retire the ever-so-popular Fordist mindset of business. That’s a long way off.

It does little good to put lipstick on a pig. However, people wake-up and do it every day. It is called managerialism and it sucks.

Let’s put ‘social business’ on the shelf with these other legacy terms. Then, well, let’s get down to the business of business!

C’mon, business is not about managing new terms. Business is about leadership, leading and creating the future.

Optimistic

The Network Singularity — 2012-03-22T23:36:00Z

Noted author and futurist Vernor Vinge is surprisingly optimistic when it comes to the prospect of civilization collapsing. Vinge's latest novel is called The Children of the Sky.

“I think that [civilization] coming back would actually be a very big surprise,” he says in this week’s episode of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “The difference between us and us 10,000 years ago is … we know it can be done.”

Vinge has a proven track record of looking ahead. His 1981 novella True Names was one of the first science fiction stories to deal with virtual reality, and he also coined the phrase, “The Technological Singularity” to describe a future point at which technology creates intelligences beyond our comprehension. The term is now in wide use among futurists.

But could humanity really claw its way back after a complete collapse? Haven’t we plundered the planet’s resources in ways that would be impossible to repeat?

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Social Network Analysis (SNA)

The Network Singularity — 2012-03-21T19:35:53Z

The LINKS Center at the University of Kentucky is offering its annual summer workshop on social network analysis June 3-8, 2012 on the University of Kentucky campus. The workshop features sessions by Filip Agneessens, Steve Borgatti, Dan Brass, Rich DeJordy, Dan Halgin, Jeff Johnson, David Krackhardt, Joe Labianca, Ajay Mehra and Tom Valente. There is a 20% discount for registering before April 15, and students pay half-price. To sign up, visit the workshop website.

Here is what is offered:

1 Pre-workshop Works-in-Progress conference (1 day) Sunday, June 3. Led by Jeff Johnson and Joe Labianca.

· This is a developmental session for people working on (or contemplating) a network research project. Participants present their ideas and get help from other participants and from our panel of experts. The format will include a few plenary talks and many small-group working sessions

2 Introduction to Social Network Analysis (4 days) Monday-Thursday, June 4-7. Led by Dan Brass and Dan Halgin.

· A 1-day theoretical and empirical overview of the field, followed by

· A 3-day comprehensive survey of the concepts and methods of social network analysis, including data collection, data management, centrality, social capital, cohesion, and hypothesis testing. In addition, participants learn how to use network analysis software, including UCINET and NetDraw.

3 Analyzing Social Network Data (4 days) Monday-Thursday, June 4-7. Led by Rich DeJordy.

· A more technical version of Intro to SNA that covers most of the same topics but focuses more on the software and interpreting the equations & formulas that define many network concepts

· Begins with an overview of the graph-theoretic and matrix-algebraic underpinnings of network analysis

· Includes lab sessions in which participants work through analysis exercises using the software

4 Advanced Network Analysis (4 days) Monday-Thursday, June 4-7. Led by Steve Borgatti.

· For people interested in both a deeper and broader look at network theory and methods. Topics include advanced centrality methods, analysis of network change, advanced approaches to 2-mode data, analyzing negative ties, working with multiple relations, and testing unusual hypotheses

5 Stochastic Network Models (4 days) Monday-Thursday, June 4-7. Led by Filip Agneessens.

· This course begins with a 3-hour mini-module on the general concept of statistical network modeling and an introduction to R. Then there are two days on exponential random graph models (ERGMs). This is followed by a one-and-a-half-day session on Siena-type longitudinal models

6 Networks and Health (1 day) Friday, June 8. Led by Tom Valente.

· Social network analysis used in the context of understanding health-related behaviors, interventions and disease epidemiology.

7 Networks and Organizations (1 day) Friday, June 8. Led by David Krackhardt.

· Social network analysis used in the context of organizations and management. Both the academic research side and the applied side will be covered.

8 Special Topics Mini-Modules (every day from 4-6pm). Various instructors.

· These are short, in-depth sessions on a variety of topics. We are currently envisioning modules on: online surveys, working with IRBs, data entry, cognitive social structures, missing data, and E-Net software for personal network research.

· Also available in the 4-6pm time slot are data labs where you can bring your data and work on it with the help of one of our assistants

9 One-on-One Consulting Sessions

· An opportunity on each day of the workshop to discuss your research in-depth with Ajay Mehra (and, very likely, others). These sessions are held each afternoon and evening by appointment.

Visit the workshop website for full details. Please note that all sessions are capped at about 55 participants, so you might want to register early.

Thanks,

- Steve Borgatti
https://sites.google.com/site/uklinkscenter/2012-summer-workshop