Who would you call if your car needed a
jump? What if you needed help building a
deck? Fixing your dryer? Talking through relationship issues? Your personal network is comprised of the
people you know and what they (and you) know.
Online professional and social networking has
made it simple to understand and visualize your personal network. LinkedIn allows you to easily view your
connections by tags, companies, location, or industry. Based on the profile created by your
colleagues, they are clustered and segmented into various buckets.
Facebook has similar options, but utilizing
the powerful analytics of Wolfram Alpha, you can dig into you connections to
understand how your network has been created.
To create this report, access the Wolfram Alpha site and enter ‘Facebook report’ in box. After allowing WA to
access your Facebook account, you will see a lengthy report that includes the
graph seen here clustering your connections based on their connectivity to each
other.
Analysis of your social network affords you
an opportunity to understand how new information enters your world. If your connections were limited to current
colleagues and family members, there would only be two primary inputs for new
information to cross your path.
Utilizing the analysis of your social networks (as well as your networks
within your workplace and within your industry), you can gain a better
understanding of the potential for you gathering a variety of new information.
Of course, people within your network (and
you within theirs) continue to learn new things every day. As they learn things, they share them – in
conversations, posts, tweets, and e-mails.
This organic spread of information within your network can help to
expose you to new information that you can then combine with your own
information or perspectives to continue to share. Much like having a varied network of people
increases the chances of your awareness of new topics, so too can having a
variety of locations you go for information.
Exposure to new information can, at times, be
overwhelming because of the sheer amount generated and shared. Much like Facebook can help you keep track of
hundreds of friends, using tools such as Google Reader (or other RSS-feed readers)
can help you process information from a wide variety of sources more
manageably. Increasing your efficiency
integrating new information can make you an essential knowledge broker within
your network. If you were part of a
closed network, no new ideas would enter the network, leaving a self-congratulating
network that maintains the status quo and squelches independent thought. By incorporating new ideas and surrounding
yourself with others who do, new ideas will continue to be introduced,
improving the overall network knowledge.
Recommendations
Variety is as important in your information
network as it is in your social network.
If you are an eLearning developer, your next great idea might come from
a blog featuring stories about non-profit websites as opposed to a blog on
eLearning development. As such, it is
important to follow a variety of blogs and sites. Below are a few recommendations that offer
eLearning and miscellaneous content:
- The Rapid eLearning Blog from Tom Kuhlman at Articulate is a must for all eLearning developers. It isn’t Articulate specific, but does focus on rapid eLearning development, PowerPoint usage and general design principles. http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/
- Fast Company magazine provides a variety of information on various topics in a well-written, enjoyable format. It covers topics such as apps, infographics, current events, and leadership information. http://www.fastcompany.com/
- The Mental Floss Magazine blog includes a very wide variety of enjoyable trivial knowledge. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/
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