Ross Mayfield's Weblog
Markets, Technology and Musings

Categories


blog-tribe.ryze.com
(by most recent)




Search weblog
Search WWW
 

 

Tuesday, January 07, 2003
 

Blog Lunch at MacWorld
Jason Shellen from Pyra is organizing a blogger lunch at MacWorld tomorrow.  I am going with Zack Lynch.
4:29:39 PM    comment []

Blogbuds

Today I launched a buddy-system for bloggers at the Blog Tribe.  And the response has been amazing. 

Lots of experienced bloggers have signed up as Mentors.  Tech execs, programmers, writers, career counselors, marketeers, people who ran BBS' in the old days, academics, authors and consultants.    Located in SF, Seattle, New York, DC, England, Germany, France or Argentina? You want help in French, German, Japanese or Spanish?  We've got it.  Heck, I could even wrestle up an Estonian if need be.

The Buddies who seek to be matched with Mentors are a diverse group as well, and the initial matching will be manual.  As expected, we have more Mentors than Buddies initially, as it will take time to reach out to new people, especially in the Ryze community.  We all have a friend who we would like or think should start a weblog.  Here's your chance to tell them about a new resource (real people) to help them get it going.  Have them email me Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog. to connect.

Back when I was a Boy Scout camp counselor we used the buddy system for teaching swimming.  Nobody in the pool without a buddy.  And when the wistle blew and we yelled "BUDDY CHECK" everyone was supposed to hold their buddy's hand high.  That way, less people were unaccounted for, let alone drowned.  Strength in numbers, one at a time.


4:22:16 PM    comment []

Technicolor Blogmap
An update to the Blogmap Project. Using the same Friendship links data from the Blog Tribe on Ryze, Valdis developed two new maps. The first map shows the Tribe's network within Ryze with Tribe Members colored in magenta and non-members in blue. This differentiation makes clearer the size and linkages of the actual tribe.

The second map only includes tribe members as nodes, and again using Friendship data, it uses InFlow's graphing capabilities to isolate a primary hub, myself. While I find the image disturbing, Valdis assures me this is natural for a community in its infancy. As the organizer of the network, most of the initial links will be with me, but this is quickly fading -- as cross-connections proliferate. Valdis points out this is already happening.

In fact, Valdis Kreb's paper with June Holley, Building Sustainable Communities through Network Building whitepaper defines 4 phases in community network development:

  1. Scattered Clusters
  2. Single Hub-and-Spoke
  3. Multi-Hub Small-World Network
  4. Core/Periphery

Valdis comments that the Blog Tribe is moving rapidly through phase I. As what he would call a network weaver, the image of myself being the primary hub is the clearest sign that I need to encourage others to weave as well. My role as a network weaver is to take two iterative and continuous steps: know the network (take regular snapshots and evaluate your progress) and knit the network (follow the 4 phase network knitting process).

Maps are great at revealing where you are. Combined with the whitepaper's framework, it reveals that while the network has gained some strength through the centralized communication facilitated, it lacks redundancy and wider contribution. Recall that the community is only 2 months old and it is one without a specific organizing principle except the common interest of blogging, and one could say the progress has been fantastic, when measured by membership growth and linkage structures. But that image still disturbs me.


7:55:48 AM    comment []


Click here to visit the Radio UserLand website. © Copyright 2003 Ross Mayfield.
Last update: 2/1/2003; 7:49:23 AM.
This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme, but severly tweaked.

January 2003
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
      1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30 31  
Dec   Feb

<--Older | Newer-->

Subscribe to "Ross Mayfield's Weblog" in Radio UserLand. Click to see the XML version of this web page. Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog. @Ryze FOAF


Subscribe by email:



Recent Posts

HotTopic Outline

Reciproll

Ecostats
Technocrati
Ecosystem
BlogStreet
BlogTree
Blogdex
Organica
Waypath
Google
Translate
German
Spanish
French
Italian