Monkeying around with Infochimps Data
Recently, I contacted the Infochimps team to get a snapshot of their great data sets from their work with Twitter. Check out the full blog post they did about it here, and enjoy the snippet below:
Back in May when our API was still in its infancy, Sean McDonald, founder of Jute Networks, requested access to the Trstrank data to explore the potential application of it on network relationship management. He created a proficient report and raised some pointed questions that some of our other datasets can now answer. We thought it prudent to showcase his work, not only because it’s just plain nifty, but also because it illustrates the exciting synergy of our calls and the particularly appetizing value of them to market researchers.
If you’re attempting to promote something on Twitter, it’s likely that you would want to focus on promoting it amongst the Twitter luminaries. Enter Trstrank, our exciting little measure of Twitter luminescence. Getting your product promoted by someone with a high Trstrank could potentially be marketing gold. The likelihood, however, of someone with a very high Trstrank nurturing your product’s visibility with a steady stream of cooing retweets is slim to, well, none. So how to know where to focus your evangelizing efforts?
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HATCH Asheville D&T Schedule
HATCH ASHEVILLE KICKS OFF THIS THURSDAY APRIL 16! All Design & Technology events are free & open to the public!
Visit www.HATCHasheville.org for more information and interactive / social scheduling.
This year’s festival brings four Design & Technology Mentors with diverse backgrounds and accomplishments; the mentors are here so you can connect with them. Each mentor will be giving a workshop, keynote or performance and be around town for you to grab a coffee and chat it up with them.
Want to engage in the conversation now and during the festival? Follow HATCH on Twitter @HATCHAVL and use hashtag #hatchavl, and friend HATCH on Facebook. . Want to help out? INVITE PEOPLE! Bring a friend, a colleague or someone who has mentored you (or someone you are mentoring).
Among the 50+ HATCH events, there are 6 Design & Technology flagship events:
Thursday Apr 15:
2:00pm Storytelling vs. Storydwelling Workshop with Jim Banister, CEO of Spectrum DNA, a design media studio. @Asheville Area Arts Council(AAAC) [Sched] [Facebook]
6:00pm Opening Reception for the Design & Technology Gallery, featuring a performance by Laura Escude, an installation of Bob Moog’s Archives and complimentary drinks and light refreshments. @AAAC [Sched] [Facebook]
9:00pm Networking Event for All HATCH Disciplines@ The Marketplace ($20 – food and drinks)[Sched]
Friday Apr 16:
10:00am Transforming WNC into An App WORKforce featuring local and regional leaders in app development. This discussion is about how we can build a group of people and companies building apps in WNC. @Innovator’s Lounge [Sched] [Facebook]
2:00pm If a Designer Can Imagine It, We Can Actually Build It Keynote with Rajeev Kulkarni, VP of Global Engineering at 3D Systems (three dimensional printing). @AAAC [Sched] [Facebook]
9:00pm Networking Event for All HATCH Disciplines @ Olive or Twist ($20 – food and drinks) [Sched]
Saturday Apr 17:
1:00pm From Play to Innovation with Brendan Boyle, Partner and Co-Chief Creative Officer at IDEO. This is a hands-on workshop good for people of all ages–bring your kids to this one! @Innovator’s Lounge [Sched] [Facebook]
5:00pm The Creative Process and Getting Past Being Stuck Featuring all of the Design & Technology mentors. Moderated by local economic development leader, entrepreneur, designer & all around geek, Matt Raker. [Sched] [Facebook]
9:00pm Networking Event for All HATCH Disciplines@ Innovator’s Lounge ($20 – food and drinks) [Sched]
Visit www.HATCHasheville.org for full event details and full mentor bios.
Brendan Boyle is a partner and co-Chief Creative Officer at IDEO, a leading design and innovation firm ranked independently as one of the most innovative companies in the world. Brendan’s role also has a special emphasis on entrepreneurship, both inside and outside of the company. His focus is on creating intellectual property that IDEO develops, along with promoting entrepreneurial thinking and practices throughout IDEO’s eight global offices. He is also one of IDEO’s spokesmen…
Rajeev Kulkarni is passionate about entrepreneurship, visual thinking and products that solve real needs. Currently he leads the Global Engineering and R&D for 3D Systems – a high-tech company that designs and develops 3D printers that print complex 3-D physical objects directly from CAD designs.
Laura Escudé is a critically-acclaimed music technologist, violinist, composer, sound designer and educator. She specializes in the software program Ableton Live and became one of the first Ableton Certified Trainers in 2008. In 2009 she worked with Cirque du Soleil on their production “Viva Elvis” as an Ableton programmer, toured Europe with acclaimed world music band Niyaz, was a tour consultant for Kayne West and recorded violin on EastWest’s Quantum Leap Silk sound library with MESTO.
Jim Banister is CEO and Chief Creative Officer of SpectrumDNA, Inc., a studio based in Park City, Utah, developing web/wireless “engines of engagement,” including the award winning social wordplay engine, The Addictionary, and the new white-label integrated social marketing platform, PlanetTagger.
To learn about volunteering opportunities, make special requests of the mentors or ask any other questions, contact the head of the D&T discipline, Sean McDonald at mcdonald.sean (at] gmail.com or 828.545.9539.
Envisioning Networks: Art from Booksmuggler
About a year ago, we started working with a friend of mine who is a talented motion graphics and visualization artist. We were building a video that explained the value of JUTE Groups to people, but due to changes here in the company, we had to shut down the project. It pains me that the project was never completed, but we still got some really interesting conceptual work that should be shared with the world.
The work below is by Nick Owens (www.booksmuggler.com) who did more than we could have asked for him in the couple short weeks that this project was alive. I’m sure, if we’d been able to see it through, these would have been one of the best pieces of marketing collateral we ever developed.
Hope you enjoy…
-Sean
Video Draft 1
Images
Gov. Perdue (NC) gives a “shout out” to JUTE Networks
Around 4:00pm EDT today I got a few text messages from people attending the Institute for Emerging Ideas (IEI) Forum in Raleigh, NC. Governor Bev Perdue (D-NC) had just highlighted JUTE Networks as a company that had started a “tech startup” in North Carolina. Thanks for mentioning us Gov. Perdue!
In response, I wanted to say thanks, tell you a little bit about IEI and check out any data I had on Gov. Perdue.
IEI is self-described as:
The Institute for Emerging Issues (IEI) is a public policy, think-and-do tank that convenes leaders from business, non profit organizations, government and higher education to tackle some of the biggest issues facing North Carolina’s future growth and prosperity.
You can learn more at their website: http://www.ncsu.edu/iei/
I went into the data I had readily available from the National Institute for Money in State Politics. What I had were the top donors in NC–just a few people–but two of them had given to her campaign. You can see that and some more visualizations in the gallery below.
(Red = Republican; Blue – Democrat; thick line = a donation of $2k or more)
Social Network Visualization of the Presidents of the USA
I recently attended a MeetUp of the Los Angeles Semantic Web & PHP Meetup Groups. It was a presentation on the Factual API. Factual is a very cool company building a platform for “open source data.” I pulled down some data to test and created the following visualizations, which reveal…well, something about American Presidents. I’m not quite sure what that something is, but it’s interesting to me. What do you think?
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Interconnectivity of Presidents Over Time
This shows the shared connections to universities & branches of the military over time. I have grouped them into groups of 5 presidents at a time, which are the ones highlighted in yellow. This is the most interesting case I found. The middle of the 20th century appears to be the least interconnected.
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Presidents & Their Colleges / Universities
This is interesting because it is not, as I would have hypothesized, all Harvard and Yale folks. In fact, the Harvard / Yale crowd is most best represented at the beginning of the country and in the last 50 years. A lot of presidents did not attend college.
followup: State Money visualizations for California
As a followup to the last blog post on State Money in Florida, here are the visualizations I rendered from the State Money data on California:
Top donors with donation sizes indicated by link thickness; republican = red; democrat = blue.
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Top Republican donors. One does NOT donate to Gov. Schwarzenegger.
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Why does this guy support the one Democrat?
State Money Analysis: Florida in 2008
Over the last month, I’ve been working with Edwin Bender and The National Institute on Money in State Politics (NIMST), which operates FollowTheMoney.org. This not-for-profit organization provides a database similar to the Sunlight Foundation’s database of political donations, but NIMST focuses exclusively on state elections.
Their data has been featured prominently in many publications. Most recently, I came across it in the New York Times article “Health Lobby Takes Fight to the States,” which cites the NIMST report “Take $2 Million…and Call Me in the Session Health Care Interests Gave Healthy Doses of Contributions.”
This is an excellent use of this type of data. I encourage you to read the article and the report.
For a test run, NIMST gave me a sample set of data to process in Jute. Admittedly, I have not perfected the analytic techniques here and there is a lot more work to do to make the data relevant. Edwin Bender said to me in a prescient email
“Clay Johnson of Sunlight Foundation said recently that data visualizations are a dime a dozen, but meaningful visualizations are priceless.”
These are the top 5 donors to state candidates in FL in 2008. The largest donations went to the FL Republican Party. These donors give a large number of $500 donations (shown in orange).
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So this is my first attempt at meaningful visualization. I give myself a “B-” on it. I took the data from FL, a state where I’m familiar with state politics after playing a prominent volunteering role with my mother’s unsuccessful run at the state house in 2008.* In the following visualizations, there is a very simple visual index: REPUBLICAN = RED; DEMOCRAT = BLUE; $500 DONATION = ORANGE.
The interesting about this is:
1) The top donors in the state are largely bi-partisan in their giving. Why? Do their recipients sit on influential committees? Is there a specific piece of legislation they wanted to support? A specific fundraising volunteer who brokered these donations?
2) There are a surprising number of $500 donations. Why so many?! What is the significance of a $500 donation to a state official? UPDATED: ”$500 is the legal limit for a campaign contribution to an individual candidate. That amount can be given once during the primary and once during the general election.” according to Linda McDonald, my mother.
Why? I’m not sure. I hope this blog post will help me find out.
FYI: you can access this data set in a network document called “state money FL v1″ by using the Jute guest account. Or, request your own account and I’ll share the data set with you.
Top 2 Donors in FL State Politics in 2008
These are the top 2 donors in FL state politics. What is their political bias?
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Paul Tudor Jones, II
Mr. Jones supports candidates from both parties and both parties' state offices. Why?
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Guy M. Spearman, III
Guy M. Spearman, III also supports candidates from both parties and both parties' state offices. Why?
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Whole Network Analysis: Top 5 FL Donors
Whole Network Analysis shows a surprising number of $500 donations among the top 5 donors in FL state politics in 2008. $500 is the maximum donation permitted.
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Assumed Industry Affiliation
By extrapolating industry affiliations from the companies where donors self-report that they work, we can look at trends of how industries' money flows to parties. This is not really a factually valid analysis--just an exercise in using Jute to crunch NIMST data.
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Finding meaning in this data…
This data set is just a trial, and this blog post is just to get some initial feedback. My hope is that we can elevate this into a funded research project, analyzing trends in the NIMST data, and finding specific, relevant examples that we can publish. Also, I’d like to work with a campaign to help them in their fundraising and strategy development.
There is a lot more than needs to be done to “take this to the next level.” That includes:
Cross-referencing this data with other data sets, like: which campaigns actually won seats in the State Legislature; which committees the elected officials sit on and chair; which federal candidates these donors supported; and, ideally, which candidates I know (or my clients know) and how they can leverage existing relationships to get value out of this analysis. (That last one comes from existing, internal databases.)
But for now, I hope you’ll help me find meaning in this data. If you’d like access to more analysis from other states, or you are interested in publishing this material, please contact me via email or via phone at 828/545.9539.
Sean McDonald
co-founder, Jute Networks
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*A little editorial here: Linda McDonald ran a hell of a campaign against a competitor with an exponentially larger war chest. In a district where a Dem hadn’t had a chance in a generation, she lost by a razor thin margin. And the people of the state of Florida are worse-off because she doesn’t represent them.
Independent Sector: a quick case study
Independent Sector is the leadership forum for charities, foundations, and corporate giving programs committed to advancing the common good in America and around the world. Their nonpartisan coalition of approximately 600 organizations leads, strengthens and mobilizes the charitable community in order to fulfill their mission. Their constituents include some of the world’s leading non-profit organizations like the Gates Foundation and the Kellogg Foundation.
They rely on high-quality information about elected officials and their relationships to those officials. The first step–figuring out “who knows whom and how”–takes months and sometimes even years. With the help of JUTE, it takes just a few minutes to find a “pathway” from Independent Sector (IS) to key members of Congress. (Please note: the names have been changed, out of respect for the privacy of IS and their constituents.)
Jute found strong relationship pathways from Independent Sector to an Elected Official. This saves IS months of time in the “information discovery process.”
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Details
IS became our client in Summer 2009. In the fall, our Nexus team rolled into Washington DC for an on-site project to help the IS executive team convert their slow, social process of discovering people in their networks who hold established relationships with elected officials into an efficient business process. This allows them to spend their time actually building relationships, not just figuring out what the most beneficial ones are.
This conversion, when complete, will lead to a massive improvement in efficiency for IS and help to uncover the wealth of “relationship capital” that the IS team, board members & member organizations maintain. After just one week, the results were impressive.
Elizabeth Kohm, Vice President of Resource Development, described the change as, “being able to go from 0-60 in five seconds, instead of five months.”
When we arrived on site, we had a few concrete goals:
- Start with 6 data sets with over 200k records & mash them up into “database nirvana”*
- Find “pathways” of established relationships from the IS team to a specific elected official
- Generate reports that can be used by the executive team and board at IS
- Get to work, accessing the information and requesting introductions along those relationship pathways
In the end, the IS project was a success. This was a “prototype” project where we focused on a single elected official. We found 18 “pathways” from the IS team to that member of Congress. Our expectation is that among those 18 pathways, there will be many individuals who can, at the least, provide IS information about that elected official, and hopefully, one or two who have some influence with that official and can help IS educate and advocate for the non-profit and philanthropic community.
Can JUTE do the same thing for my organization?
Yep. That’s what we do. Contact Sean McDonald to learn how we can help you.
*A term coined by Patricia Read, Sr. VP of Public Policy and Gov’t Affairs at IS.
Guide to importing data in JUTE NRM Prototype
This video will walk you through the entire process. If you’re more of a self-starter, follow the steps below and consult the video if you need help.
Create a new Network and choose a template.
There are three standard templates in JUTE NRM PROTOTYPE: two for political data (one with full names, one with parsed names) and a Basic Network template. The Basic Network includes only people and businesses, as well as four standard relationship types (Professional, Personal, Family, Civic).
(If you are uploading data into an existing network, open that network, then go to Overview > Import Contacts & Paths.)
Creating Custom Network Templates
You can customize any network document by opening the network, then going to Setup. From here you can add new types of contacts and relationships (or “paths”) and create new fields.
Copying existing Network Templates
You can copy a Network Template when you are creating a new network by using the “Use an existing network as the base” option in the Create a New Network wizard. There is a bug in this dialog that requires you to click the option for “Use an existing network…” then choose the network you want to copy, then in order to advance, you have to click the “Start from a standard network type” button again, then click the “Use an existing network” button again.
Add initial data
From CSV
If you are using the Create a New Network wizard, in step 4 you will be asked to add data into your newly created Network Document. Option 3 is to add a CSV file. When you follow this option, you will be taken to the JUTE DATA IMPORTER, a nifty little tool we built to help you import data into a network format.
The first step is to select a file to import.
Click the “Select” button, then “Upload a New File” and “Browse.” If you have uploaded other CSV files, they will be in your file cabinet below. Once you have chosen a CSV file, choose if from the CSV file folder below (double-click the folder to open it), then select your CSV file and click “select.”
Next, choose the appropriate import settings.
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- “First row is a header row” means that your CSV file has a header row on it. This is used in the “detect data structure” feature and keeps JUTE from importing your headers as nodes and links.
- “Detect data structure” automatically places fields in the field of the matching name to the header row in the data set. If you are importing large or complicated networks, this is an extremely time-saving tool. Note: In PROTOTYPE, this function only works for nodes, not for links. This is a buggy script and will not always work 100%, but it is still very helpful.
- “Merge Duplicates” will automatically merge dupes across the entire network document. By default, JUTE will rely on the field that is identified as the “label” in the Network Template to de-dupe. While some other processing takes place, it is not reliable. If you need to assign a unique id, that is possible. Email Sean to ask how.
Once you click upload, you’ll use a visual interface to “drag & drop” data from the spreadsheet fields into the appropriate node and link fields. This will create a “logic” for structuring the network.
You’ll start by assigning the appropriate fields to the nodes. Then, hold CTRL (CMD on Mac) and click one node, then draw a relationship to another node. This will create a relationship field and you can drag & drop the appropriate data into those relationships as well. Click “Continue” and your import should happen in 10-60 seconds, depending on the size of data.
(This part should be pretty intuitive. Watch the video if you struggle with it.)
There is a limit on how many nodes & links JUTE NRM PROTOTYPE can handle in each Network Document. While there is no “magic number” where importing stops working, there is a limit. That limit will be impacted by the degree of interconnectivity in a data set. A simple data set may allow you to upload up to 8,000 nodes (this is the most we’ve uploaded successfully) and a complex data set may stop working at 2,000 nodes.
You can sometimes “cheat” this limit by parsing your data into multiple CSV’s, but no guarantees that this will work.
If you encounter problems uploading…
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- If you are using OpenOffice, you need to save the CSV in a special way. When you save it, choose the “Edit filter settings” option and uncheck the “Save cell content as shown” box.
- Sometimes problems will come up if you add / delete a lot of nodes or links in the visual importer step. The solution is to just try again and not make as many mistakes.
- Jute will often have trouble adding more data to an existing network when there is already 3,000+ nodes in that network.
- You can email Sean if you have a hangup. He’ll help if he can..
From Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail / MS Live mail and AOL / AIM
THIS FEATURE IS CURRENTLY SO BUGGY THAT IT BARELY WORKS.
Sorry. You can try but it probably won’t work.
Visual Data Input
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- Add a relationship at any time by holding down CTRL (CMD on a Mac) and clicking on one contact then drawing a new relationship and clicking on the other contact.
- To add contacts (nodes) inside of the Network Document, click the “Add Contacts & Paths” button. Drag & drop the appropriate node type.
- There is a “Batch” mode for both Contacts or Relationships. Once you enable a Batch mode, you can drag & drop as many as you’d like to have. When you click “Save and Exit” you will be walked through a wizard to fill in additional information.
Editing information
You can edit information from the Profile view of any node or link. Just click on the field and edit away.
API
JUTE NRM PROTOTYPE does have a RESTful API. Email Sean to learn more.
How to use “guest access” for Jute NRM
We want to make it as easy as possible for you to try Jute NRM. So you have two options:
1) Contact us and request an account and you’ll get free access for 30 days.
2) Use the “guest” account (instructions below) to get access to an open account.*
*Keep in mind, this account is public and anything you do in this account can be seen by other guest visitors.
Instructions for using the guest account:
1) Visit http://nrm1.jutenetworks.com
2) user name: ”guest@jutenetworks.com
password: “networks”
3) Open the “You Network” public demo
Video walkthrough of using the guest account:
Old School Business Networking
An amazing article was recently published by Katherine Rosman of the Wall Street Journal. In “What Facebook Can’t Give You: Over 52 Years, These Men Have Evolved Into Movers and Shakers—Together,” Rosman writes about The Wednesday 10, a group of men who gathered every Wednesday in Manhattan. She opens the piece this way:
Before there was Facebook, there was the Wednesday 10.
In 1957, as men in their late 20s, they began meeting—initially over breakfast, then over dinners held at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel or at the Harvard Club in midtown Manhattan. Few were born to means. Many were sons of immigrants. Most went on to become luminaries in their fields—presidents of television networks, partners at banks, editors of magazines.
The article (take the time to read it!) goes on to show how their trusted relationships evolved into invaluable business relationships, and she goes into anecdotes about the group and her time meeting with them. It’s an extraordinary testament to what a small group of trusted relationships can do, when cultivated and put to work, with ambition but also with discretion.
These are the kind of trusted relationships we want Jute to help people to build.
We live in a time of hype about the power of social networks. We live and work in time where Facebook blurs the boundary between personal and professional relationships. But we can’t forget that Facebook also blurs the line between the people with whom you have close relationships, and the people you barely know. My family and closest friends can see pictures of my mountain biking trip, but so can some of my clients, and some people I barely remember from high school.
Today, people find their customers, clients, business partners and sometimes even their lovers online. In most cases, the people they meet online are strangers, who evolve into trusted relationships. On occasion, one person makes an email introduction because she thinks that other two people ought to know each other.
But rarely to we get to have a lot of insight into the close relationships of the people we already know. Rarely do we really know “who knows whom and how.” It’s not only that this is a tremendous amount of information to collect and remember, it is also a social challenge to ask people who they know and how well they know them. So we learn little bits and pieces at a time about who knows whom and how.
In amazing, influential networks like the Wednesday 10, one of the things they know is who knows whom, and how. At least, that tends to be the case. That information is shared throughout the group. Introductions are made, and new relationships blossom.
With the type of networks that we analyze and visualize with Jute, we can see large portions of people’s networks of relationships. This transforms the process of learning who knows whom and how from a lengthy, social process to a rapid, business intelligence process.
Unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, Jute is focused on trusted and often valuable relationships.
In a perfect world, the use of a tool like Jute could help people form thousands of groups of people who have an “enlightened self interest,” like our old friend the Swamp Fox talks about all the time.
How can you help Matt Raker be successful?
Big news here at Jute Networks: one of the co-founders, Matt Raker, has accepted a new position as “Senior Director of AdvantageGreen” at AdvantageWest, the economic development group for Western North Carolina. Matt’s job will be to help entrepreneurs build “green” businesses in the region, eventually building an ecosystem of green businesses and jobs there.
I have no doubt Matt will be successful. He is smart, talented and incredibly driven. Add to that, he has a depth of knowledge in economics and sustainability that is unrivaled in my network of colleagues and friends.
I will miss Matt, not only for his hard work and critical thinking, but also for his dedication to building Jute, the world’s first Network Relationship Manager. Matt has led the design, product development and QA for the product since Day 1. It will be very difficult to find another partner like that. (Realistically, it’ll take 3 or 4 people to replace one Matt Raker.)
There are a key points I want to make here:
First, Asheville and Western North Carolina couldn’t have a better advocate for this type of economic development. Matt is not a bureaucrat–he is an entrepreneur. He always has been, and I think he always will be.
Second, Matt will continue to use the Jute platform in his new position. I have no doubt that Matt will be the uber-power-user who continues to provide invaluable feedback on how to improve Jute.
Finally (and most important), we all have the opportunity to help Matt build a valuable network. Please take a minute to email Matt, congratulate him, and connect him to the leaders you know in economic development, green / clean technology and investment.
Very few people realize this, but Matt and I didn’t start “just any company” because we were friends. We barely knew each other when we started Jute. But we had a shared vision–really, a remarkable degree of solidarity on what the product should do and on what the user should experience when managing a complex network of relationships. That is why we started the company.
Today, as Matt moves on to his next venture, I have the same admiration for his talent and his goals. I will do whatever I can to help him be successful, and I encourage you to do the same.
Jute goes (RED)
I created a custom visualization for the (RED) campaign. Let me know what you think, and share it if you think it’s important to fight AIDS in Africa.
It’s World AIDS Day today. I don’t think I need to outline why this important, but if you’d like to know more, check out joinRED.com where there are videos and all kinds information. You can even pimp your Facebook page with their tools.
Something that’s really important to me (Sean) is that all kinds of traits transmit through relationships. This is what we call “sociographic” transmission, although the academicians have yet to settle on a lexicon that deems that phrase precise. We’ll leave the vocab up to Stanford…we just analyze networks.
Anyway, what I tried to reflect in this visualization is the idea that we are all influenced by our friends and that we can influence each other. This type of incluence is–obviously–one of the most powerful forces on earth.
So take a minute, do something, and convince somebody else to go (RED).
Trent Reznor is an Entrepreneur
If I go onstage I want to give people everything they want and more. I’ll wash their car for them on their way out. -Trent Reznor
Trent’s a musician…but also an entrepreneur. My kind of entrepreneur…
-Sean
From avclub.com via US Airways in-flight magazine
FDR & The Independent Sector
President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) was quoted recently, in a speech by Diana Aviv, President and CEO of Independent Sector. She quoted him, saying:
“I have the profound conviction that the American people are now determined to put forth a mightier effortthan they have ever yet made … I call for that national effort. I call for it in the name of this nation which we love and honor and which we are privileged and proud to serve. I call upon our people with …absolute confidence that our common cause will greatly succeed.” –FDR
What a great quotation to pull for her speech [pdf link] in a room full of “Independent Sector” leaders–non profit professionals, foundations and the supporting industry members. Ms. Aviv delivered a message of aspiration and innovation. She has a great vision for collaboration across sectors to re-invigorate our nation.
We’re proud to announce that over the next week, we’ll be working hands-on with Independent Sector in DC. We’ll publish some examples of the work we’re doing, and in cases where it will line up with IS’s goals, we may share some of the resources we’re developing for non-profits.
Published from the Charlotte airport…
We’re in DC Nov 12-19
For those who follow the blog and are in DC…Matt Raker and Sean McDonald (Jute co-founders) will be in Washington, DC for an on-site project with a client from Nov 12-19.
If you’d like to meetup while we’re there, email Sean or call him at 828/545.9539. Hope to see you there!
Montana businesses networks — via implu
I recently came across implu (www.implu.com). It’s self-described as:
implu is an online tool for prospecting, networking and market research. No other site keeps you informed with daily news, custom searches and daily email alerts. No other site provides you with an executive’s business associations allowing you to network your way into new clients. No other site provides comprehensive company information on just one page.
Seems to provide a lot of interesting information by scraping the web. I pulled a CSV file from implu (and gave them big props for having an easy way to do that…) and uploaded into Jute NRM Prototype.
Nothing spectacular in the results, but it’s interesting. It would be much more interesting as a layer of data mixed with my personal data.
Montana Businesses — Whole Network
H&R Block Executives in Montana
Key Networks in Montana Zip Code 63141
What do you think?
Analysis of Green Markets
We’ve recently started paying attention to the OpenCalais (OC) project by Thomson Reuters. Basically, Sean has a penchant for anything that has “open” in its name…
The project describes itself this way:
Calais is a rapidly growing toolkit of capabilities that allow you to readily incorporate state-of-the-art semantic functionality within your blog, content management system, website or application.
Huh? Translated into human, that means: OC takes information published on the web, identifies people, facts & events, then outputs data that geeks can use. This all happens automatically. With OC output, geeks like us can take it even further to figure out who knows whom, and how. Or, in this case, who acquires whom, who invests in whom and other transactions in the “green energy” markets.
The OC website has a nice “Showcase” function that allows people who have utilized the OC API to post their projects. One of the projects, Who’s Who in the Financial News has developed a listing (spreadsheet) of “Private Equity, Green Energy, Acquisitions and Alternative Investments.” So we grabbed that data and uploaded it to Jute.
The results are very interesting. Part of the intention of this blog post is to find people in the field who can help us interpret the results. If you’re interested, email me and he’ll give you access to the Jute Network Document I used to create this.
So here are the results, and few questions that came up in working with this network. I haven’t bothered to make this a formal report. We’re just feeling it out…
Can we start to extrapolate trends based on a network of relationships? For example, could we identify the next strategic partnership that will be formed based on the existing 2nd and 3rd degree relationships?
Does network proximity indicate corporate strategy? That is to say, does a network that is distant from another network do so intentionally?
What would it take to make this a comprehensive data set? (This is clearly only part of the story…)
What would an investor do with this information?
Getting started: a key for the color-coding of the visualizations
For these visualizations, companies have been "tagged" and color-coded as shown in this index
OIL
companies and tags related to"oil"
"2nd degree" of connections to "oil"
Interesting connections
Why are "oil recovery" and "cement plants" in close proximity to each other?
If you Google “rti international + oil recovery + cement plants” you’ll find that cement can be used to capture CO2 and that the DOE has announced $1.4 billion in projects to capture and store carbon. One company in particular, RTI International has announced major changes in its management team, including a new SVP for “Integrated Value Chain.” (a.k.a. They are building a new network.)
More visualizations of oil networks
"networks within networks" highlighted within the 2nd degree network of oil
VantagePoint Venture Partners is highly connected within the "oil" network
When you start paying attention to the highly connected members of a network, and go learn some more about them at their website, you can see that VantagePoint Venture Partners highlights that:
We were the first large venture capital firm to recognize the opportunity here and have since committed $1 billion for this burgeoning opportunity.
More analysis shows their priorities and their co-investment partners.
a look at VantagePoint Venture Partners' 1st degree network
VantagePoint Venture Partners co-investment network
Whole Network Analysis
A different way to view the data set is to pare it down to only analyze relationships between companies that are “investments” and then identify the best-connected members of the network. You can apply the same analysis to all the relationship types, which is what is documented below.
(Note: use the key at the top of this page to see the color-coding in these visualizations.)
Investments
"Whole network" analysis of "green" investments
M&A
Mergers & Acquisitions within the "green" business world
Collaborations
Collaborations in the "green" business world
Organizations who are drivers in Collaboration
Red circles represent "high traffic nodes" and brown halos represent "power nodes"
Joint Ventures
Notice that most joint ventures--as they appear in this incomplete data set--are among just two partners
Subsidiaries
Alliances
Alliances seem to involve more organizations and to bring in more diverse networks
Looking at the Big Picture
Investments among all relationship types
Investments are dark lines
The dense cluster in the middle gravitates around oil investments
Best-connected member
I ran an analysis of each of the major relationship types and continued to pare the results down by increasing the scale on the “whole network” analysis, which requires that the organization be more connected.
While the visual results are almost irrelevant (they display only one or two results) the list is interesting:
Alliance: GWS Technologies & Praxair, Inc.
Collaboration: OTCBB MNGA, PGE & SSTP Europe
Investments:
Joint Ventures: GWS Technologies
M&A: Cleantech Invest AG
Subsidiary: HSBC Alternative Fund Services & Arotech Corporation
While there is no universal correlation between a position in a network and upcoming activity, I would hypothesize that the organizations that show up on the list above are worth watching if you’re in a related field.
Topic-Specific Visualizations
Wind tree
Solar 3-degree Network
Oil
Natural Gas
Ethanol tree
Electric Car Network
Funding Network
Gallery
We’re offering up all of the visualizations we rendered for this analysis. Some are documented, others are not. If you have questions, just shoot us an email.
Paul Graham is our hero
It’s worth a few minutes of your time to read Paul Graham’s most recent article on “What Startups are really like.”
If you don’t know Paul Graham, you should. Check out www.PaulGraham.com or his Wikipedia page.
You should also look into his book, Hackers & Painters. It is a brilliant summary of designing a startup company, and the software that it delivers to customers.
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Favorite Paul Graham quotations:
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Dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as ’suits’.
For the most ambitious young people, the corporate ladder is obsolete.
Everyone by now presumably knows about the danger of premature optimization. I think we should be just as worried about premature design – designing too early what a program should do.
Advanced Analytics & Business Network Visualization
Gartner offered up their top 10 list for strategic technologies in 2010. [read the full article on ZD NET]
Ranking in at #2 is “Advanced Analytics” which aren’t exactly defined, but are address in the quotation below. My perspective is that Jute is a form of Analytics–it’s analytics for your network of professional relationship. Jute helps you make better decisions with the data that you have by converting that data to information. That process of analysis and visualization is the hallmark of great analytics software of every stripe.
Here’s what ZD Net quoted:
On the analytics front, Gartner said in a presentation:
We have reached the point in the improvement of performance and costs that we can afford to perform analytics and simulation for each and every action taken in the business. Not only will data center systems be able to do this, but mobile devices will have access to data and enough capability to perform analytics themselves, potentially enabling use of optimization and simulation everywhere and every time. This can be viewed as a third step in supporting operational business decisions.
The rub: New technologies need to be created to search and organize unstructured content and data.
That’s right. And that’s what Jute offers–a solution to search and organize that unstructured data.
Gartner's Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009 / 2010