Tom, Validas and others, I know I am late to this discussion, but having just gonethrough some experiences lately, I thought I would share: I agree that many people, employed and unemployed,

There may be some learnings in the US government with its Intellipedia. Two CIA employees, Sean Dennehy and Don Burke, presented "From the Bottom-Up: building the 21st Century Intelligence Community"

A better way to think of weak ties is as "bridging" ties -- connections you have to people that run in different circles and therefore have access to different information/knowledge/opinions/

Tom, None, as far as I know. I am coaching several recently riffed friends in "network building". The only thing many of these professional outplacement firms[every friend got a different firm

Tom, One more tidbit on weak ties. A close friend and colleague from British Telecom once told methat your close knit group of strong ties will give you great access and deepsharing, but not

Thanks, all, for your thoughts, pointers and insights. The Granovetter work was especially illuminating and helpful. Hadn't heard of him before - very helpful pointer. So that pretty much clears up

Tom, Regarding the efficiency and requirements of working in twonetworks—I am familiar with those working in that environment as myclients. Both the US State Department as well as the US Navy

I have tried to provide some response to this question: -How do you avoid duplication of information on both networks? This is never easy but a few suggestions may be having clear processes for

This is all explained in the book "Getting a Job" by Mark Granovetter. Written in 1974 it is very relevant today. Parts are very academic, but overall it is a very worthwhile read about how

I wonder if this is a function of your strong ties (people closer to you) seeing pretty much the same opportunity landscape you do, and moreover knowing your likes and dislikes, filter quite heavily

Tom, I think you have just replicated one of the most famous finding in social network research - Mark Granovetter's 1973 paper "The Strength of Weak

I'm in the midst of job hunting, looking for my next position. One of the tools I am using extensively for this is networking - no surprises there, I guess. I'm part of a job search work team that

OK, I don't see sociology as 30,000 feet only... but ethnography works for me! Anthropology works for others. The important part is the human social element of learning and teaching and

Valdis, Instead of "The sociology is MORE important than the technology!" woudn't it be "the ETHNOGRAPHY is more important than the technology..."? All the issues you bring up are up close and very

You make a couple of good points Mike. They fit in with my experience with these issues. 1) NEVER let people rate their own expertise/ability/knowledge. Let the knowledge seekers reveal who is

I don't think there are two different things here as current tools are providing these types of functionality in to a single application. The problem of expertise location is firstly one of what is

Bonjour SIKM Leaders! I am a Knowledge Manager at NATO HQ in Brussels Belgium and I would like to get your thoughts on the following problem. NATO HQ is in the process of totally revamping their

Hi Jim. I did a case report for Inside Knowledge magazine several years ago on a expertise locator system at Lend Lease Corp. in Australia that was NOT software driven. You can read a text version of

We have done many dozens of projects with social network analysis to locate experts, mentors, advisors, influencers. We started this work at TRW Space & Electronics in Redondo Beach, CA in the