Advancing The Science of Networks in Communities
SONIC lab Director Noshir Contractor will be presenting Friday, September 30th, at the Workshop on Information in Networks (WIN) at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
The title of Contractor’s presentation will is “Using Web Science to Understand and Enable 21st Century Networks”.
For more details on this workshop, go to http://winworkshop.net/index.php.
On Friday, October 7th, from 10:00-12:00p.m. Robert Ackland will be leading a workshop on Hyperlink Network Analysis in Frances Searle Room 1-459 on Northwestern University’s Evanston Campus.
If you plan to attend, please email Marilyn Logan: mjlogan@northwestern.edu, by Thursday, September 29.
This presentation will involve a demonstration of hyperlink network analysis using two software packages: the VOSON System (a web-based application for hyperlink
network construction and analysis) and VOSON+NodeXL (a VOSON plugin to the NodeXL Excel 2007/2010 template for social media network analysis). Topics covered
include: creating a hyperlink network (identifying seed URLs, setting the webcrawler parameters); node preparation (methods for filtering and controlling the grouping of web pages); coding of node attributes; basic social network analysis metrics; network visualization; clustering; website content analysis. Participants wanting to use the software are requested to bring their laptops with Mozilla Firefox and VOSON+NodeXL installed, and must have (free) VOSON user account.
See http://voson.anu.edu.au and http://www.uberlink.com for information on the VOSON project and software. See http://nodexl.codeplex.com for information on NodeXL.
Robert Ackland is a Fellow at the Australian National University, where he conducts empirical social science research into online social and organizational networks. He leads the VOSON project http://voson.anu.edu.au, coordinates the ANU’s Master of Social Research programme and teaches on the social science of the Internet and online research methods. Robert has degrees in economics from the University of Melbourne, Yale University (where he was a Fulbright Scholar) and the ANU, where he gained his PhD in 2001.
For full details, view the flyer pdf.
Yuval Kalish, an assistant professor in the Department of Management of Tel Aviv University will be leading a workshop on Wednesday, September 14 from 2:00-5:30 pm in Frances Searle, Room 1.459.
This workshop provides a hands-on tutorial on how to fit Exponential Random Graph (ERG) Models for social selection using Pnet.
If you plan on attending, please RSVP to Marilyn Logan by 5pm September 13.
ERG models have been referred to as the most promising technique for the modeling of social networks (Snijders, 2007), and has wide applications in the area of organizational studies and communication studies. Topics include: the logic of ERG models, Parameter selection and estimation, parameter interpretation, Goodness of Fit, and troubleshooting convergence issues.
We will discuss Multivariate ERG models if time permits and there is participant interest. Participants are requested to bring their laptops after they have downloaded pnet from: www.sna.unimelb.edu.au/pnet/pnet.html and made sure that it works on their computer.
Director of SONIC Lab, Noshir Contractor, will be teaching a workshop on Social Networks concepts and analysis techniques in Trento Italy next week. The course will introduce and illustrate social networks as a suitable conceptual tool to depict and empirically analyze complex datasets characterizing the cloud-computing era. More information can be found at the University of Trento’s website.
SONIC director, Noshir Contractor, was the keynote presenter at VOSS “Toward a Science of Virtual Organizations” invitational workshop. The workshop was hosted by the University of Central Florida and National Science Foundation in Orlando, Florida, May 16-17, 2011.
For more information regarding the workshop please visit: https://sites.google.com/site/ucfdelta/voss2011.
The SONIC lab was bustling on April 28 with children visiting campus for Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. SONIC led two workshops designed to teach children, ages 10-16, basic concepts in network science. The kids explored network concepts such as degree, balance, and brokerage by examining Harry Potter’s friendship network. Then, they had a chance to apply their newly-learned skills when they constructed their own friendship networks out of M&Ms and pretzel sticks. The workshops were a hit, and we’re hoping to see some of the participants back in a few years in the classes of 2016-2022!
Communications of the ACM, May 2011, features an article on the “Web Science meets Network Science” workshop co-hosted by SONIC at Northwestern University. Read the article at http://bit.ly/flfp2C.
At the beginning of last month, SONIC helped host the Third International Workshop on Network Theory: Web Science Meets Network Science. The photos have been posted on the event page: you can view them here. Thanks again to everyone who made the workshop such a success!
Annenberg Networks Network, Northwestern’s SONIC lab, and Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO) hosted the Third International Workshop on Network Theory March 4th-6th, followed directly by the NICO Complexity Conference at Northwestern University’s Allen Center. Although the weather in Evanston turned surly, members of the SONIC lab, along with some of the most influential and brilliant scholars involved in network and web science, discussed the future of the field, major challenges, and opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration. We’ll have photos available in the next couple of days (look out for a new slideshow on our homepage!) and video from the conference talks available by March 21st.
In the meantime, you can read an excellent blog post at the Complexity and Social Networks blog about a talk given by Stanley Wasserman and the discussion that followed by SONIC’s own Brian Keegan, a graduate student in the Media, Technology, and Society program. There’s also a tweet-record of the official back channel of Third International at #webnetsci.
Our sincere thanks to everyone who participated in the conference!