1972 Canada-Russia Summit Series Hockey Game 8: A Social Network Analysis Part One (1st Period)

The 1972 Canada-Russia Summit Series to some is a defining moment in Canada’s history. At the height of the Cold War, 28 hockey players went into a tournament thinking they it was an exhibition series that no one would take seriously. By the end, the 28 were defenders of Canadian hockey against the surprising hockey prowess and political power of the Russian bear. The final game, number 8 in the series of 8 was particularly dramatic. After a closely-fought first period, the Canadians fell 5-3 in the second, but came back to tie it in the third until 19:26 of the third period when Paul Henderson … well if you don’t know the story, you probably aren’t Canadian and don’t care anyway. Well, here’s the game on YouTube if you want to see more.

Game 8 is a good case for social network analysis centrality at work. A hockey game is a network where people pass a puck to and from each other over the course of 60 minutes. Each time the puck passes from one player to another, we can create a directed tie. We may also be able to make some statements about the game. For instance, is it more important to give or receive a pass from a diverse group of players? Who passes to the biggest passers? Who receives passes from them? Rather than going through all this preamble how about I just get to it?

The Roster

Maybe later I will add the last names, but right now I’m going with the numbers.  You can use this roster as a key to find your favourite players.

Team Canada

• 02: Gary Bergman
• 03: Pat Stapleton
• 05: Brad Park (if it weren’t for Bobby Orr, the greatest defenseman of his era)
• 06: Ron Ellis
• 07: Phil Esposito (big goal scorer and captain of the team)
• 08: Rod Gilbert
• 10: Dennis Hull (Brother to Bobby)
• 12: Yvon Cournoyer (The Roadrunner)
• 17: Bill White
• 18: Jean Ratelle (One of the great Rangers, amazing goal scorer)
• 19: Paul Henderson (A very good player, but the hero of the series)
• 20: Pete Mahovlic (Overshadowed by his brother Frank, but actually very good)
• 22: J.P Parise (Great player, but got thrown out early for threatening to slash the refs)
• 23: Serge Savard (Eventually became captain of the Habs)
• 25: Guy Lapointe
• 27: Frank Mahovlich (Big “M” – hero of the Toronto Maple Leafs)
• 28: Bobby Clarke (was chosen last for the team, but brought the Broad Street Bully element to the game.)
• 29: Ken Dryden

Team Russia

•  02: Alexandre Gusev
•  03: Vladimir Lutchenko
• 06: Valeri Vasilev
• 07: Gennadey Tsyganov
• 08: Vladimir Vikulov
• 09: Yuriy Blinov
• 10: Alexander Maltsev
• 12: Yevgeni Mishakov
• 13: Boris Mikalov
• 15: Alexander Yakushev
• 16: Vladimir Petrov
• 17: Valeri Kharlamov
• 19: Vladimir Shadrin
• 22: Vyacheslav Anisin
• 25: Yuri Liapkin
• 30: Alexander Volchkov
• 20: Vladimir Tretiak

Getting the Data Using R’s iGraph Library

The data were created using edge lists separated by spaces. Here is a sample of what it looks like:

Off16 Can07 
Can07 Can23 
Can23 Rus26 
Rus26 Rus22 
Rus22 Can29 
Can29 Rus22 
Rus22 Rus26

A few things that may be added in the future are the times of the pass, goals, steals (although this could be calculated on its own), power-play information and so on. But for now, I just have the edge lists. The first entry is the “from” player (Rus=”Russia”, Can=”Canada” and Off=”Official / Referee”) and the second is the “to” player.  You can enter the information in to an R graph object pretty easily using iGraph. You can assign descriptive values to the hockey players (vertices) by using V(df)$description.  In this case, I’ve used color to easily identify the Russians from the Canadians in the graph plots (igraph will automatically plot the colors if there is a descriptor available).

library(igraph)
el <- read.csv("summitseries.txt", header=F, sep="") #sep="" means any whitespace
df <- graph.data.frame(el) # create a graph from the dataframe el

#Create a color vertex trait so that Russians are red; Canada is white and the Refs are black.
V(df)$color <- ifelse(substr(V(df)$name,1,3)=="Rus", 
               "red", ifelse(substr(V(df)$name,1,3)=="Can", "white", "black"))

Overall Degree

Degree refers to the number of different people a person passed/lost the puck to, or received/stole the puck from. It’s basically a count of the number of “sticks” for each ball.

The code to calculate the values is this:

V(df)$degree <- degree(df) 

Each player gets a value based on the total number of pucks received or sent.  To plot:

plot(df, vertex.size=V(df)$degree, layout=layout.kamada.kawaii)

This is what the graph looks like:

This graph is not particularly meaningful, but it does offer a few insights. For instance, Phil Esposito (#7) was out a lot in this game and managed to both take passes away from the Russians as well as lose them. It kind of speaks to his garbage can approach to hockey – his play in this period, like most days was gritty and he found himself in the midst of almost every play. This also shows quite a bit of the classy Russian style of play with a lot of quick passes and fancy footwork. Almost every player on the Russian team had the puck quite a bit. Vladimir Shadrin (#19) is mostly ignored in the English world today, but he was amazing in this series, scoring more than even the Russian hero Valeri Kharlamov (#17) who barely shows up on the charts.

Out Degree

V(df)$outdegree <- degree(df, mode="out")

“Out” degree is the same measure, but only counting “outgoing” passes. These represent passes made or intercepted.

Like I said earlier, Phil Esposito (#7) was finding himself giving the puck away quite a bit in this first period, but also making some pretty strong passes. Brad Park was also pretty busy. Both these guys happened to score goals in the period by the way. On the Russia side, Lutchenko (#3) and Yakushov (#15) are nothing particular special in the pass department even though they scored goals as well. That could be because the Russians were much more team players.

In Degree

V(df)$outdegree <- degree(df, mode="in")

Not too much more to say about this one, except that it’s not too different from the outdegree measures. This is not that surprising given that if you have the puck either you are going to pass it or someone will steal it from you. I should also note that goalie Ken Dryden (#29) was pretty busy in this period. Not good for Canada.

Bonacich Power (Beta=0.5)

Now we can look at some eigenvector-like centrality measures. There are a variety of them, but I’ve decided to use Bonacich in this case. Bonacich uses a beta value that assigns a weight to the degree centrality of the neighbours. In the case of a positive value (cooperative networks), the more “passy” your neighbour, the more power you have. Unfortunately, this method produces both positive and negative values which is a little challenging for plotting.  So I have a little linear mapping function that I borrowed from here:

linMap <- function(x, from, to)
          (x - min(x)) / max(x - min(x)) * (to - from) + from

And then assign the values and plot.

V(df)$eigen <- bonpow(df, exp=0.5)
plot(df, vertex.size=linMap(V(df)$eigen, 0, 25)

The picture is a little bit different in this case. Now we see the great New York Ranger, Jean Ratelle (#18) finding his way into the largest influencer position along with Bobby Clarke (#28). On the Russian side, Yakushev (#15), Karlamov (#17) & Mishakov (#12) find themselves in their rightful place as the elite members of their team. Phil Esposito, on the other hand shrinks to almost nothing.  Why? Well, he tends to find himself taking and losing the puck from defensive players more than picking up passes from his line-mates Yvon Cournoyer (#12) & Frank Mahovlich (#27).

Bonacich Power (Beta=-0.5)

V(df)$bonpow <- bonpow(df, exp=-0.5)
plot(df, vertex.size=linMap(V(df)$bonpow, 0, 25)

The picture is also quite different when looked at from a negative Bonacich power perspective. Usually negative bonacich power is used for networks that are competitive in nature, when it’s much better to have less powerful neighbours.

In this case, it’s pretty obvious that its the defensemen that have the least powerful as neighbours.  This makes sense because defensemen usually end up playing with a wider variety of forwards than other forwards do. Canada’s top defenseman, Brad Park, certainly found himself passing to and from the lesser lines in the first period, and likely stealing from Russia’s lesser lines as well!

Conclusion (for now)

This post goes to show that you can get a different answer from a social network analysis depending on how you decide to measure it. There are no mind-blowing revelations here (likely because the game was somewhat even at this stage) but still quite a bit of diversity among the different graphs that it gives pause. At the end of the day, this is why it is important to think clearly about your research question before you start looking at your data.  If you don’t, you’ll probably find yourself getting the answer you want just by rolling through different measures. I haven’t even gone through all the possibles – betweenness, closeness, clustering values and alpha centrality are all measures I’ve decided to leave out just for now (but may revisit later).

Another thing that might be interesting to look at is what the centrality values look like when I separate the Canadians from the Russians – from that perspective you could see how well the teams play with each other. Also, we could look at the edges where the puck changed hands from one team to another. In this case the negative bonacich power may be quite telling as per who was really coughing up the puck to the wrong people.

The data is not up in my git site yet, but I will share it eventually. I’ll keep the data open so that people can add or edit it as needs be. Certainly there may be problems with the way I coded everything. It was not always easy to see who was touching the puck. Sometimes I just had to guess based on position and the usual line-ups.

Libraries and Power

I don’t work in libraries anymore. Instead, I am doing research in public policy. I have gone from my days of community-led service development and critiques of professionalism to considering, essentially, how people come to do what they are told. Then I thought about libraries again, because somehow, libraries, public ones in particular, are places where people kind of do do what they are told. Of course public librarians have their share of war stories where they, for whatever reason, have had to kick people out for some misbehavior or another. But for the most part, people do what libraries tell them to do. Here’s a little catalogue of why:

• Tradition

“We’ve always done it that way!” is a pretty powerful force in our societies. But unlike the critics of the phrase claim, it is not solely a source to avoid change. Instead, it is a source of what Charles Lindblom called the “science of muddling through” or what more formally has been called incrementalism. Fitting into pre-set town and city routines is a pretty important source of power.

• Symbolism

While librarians often lament the stereotypes that get associated with them, it is still a source of considerable power. Librarians are perceived as dangerous, polyglots, subversive, inspirers of communities. Thank goodness these stereotypes are perpetuated in popular culture. Librarians have symbolic significance to their communities, even when they do nothing but sit at a desk and scowl. They represent people advancing themselves through knowledge and people feel it when the librarian scowls at them. Not because they are walking around with weapons and military power, but because they represent a measure of social authority.

• Bureaucracy

Seen as one part of a large network of institutions that govern how and what we learn from each other, a library exemplifies the power inherent in rationalism, routines, emotional distance and hierarchies. Although a good amount of the service ethic that underlies this model has dissipated with library 2.0 and the “roving” model, consider the way we librarians suppose they should answer reference questions. A good amount of the practice involves pretending we have emotional distance away from the subject. Even when we talk about being enthusiastic about reading, the efforts are based in a somewhat precarious idea that reading is objectively beneficial, rather than just something librarians love doing and want to compel others to join in.

• Institutions

“Pay your fines.” “Bring the books back on time.” “Don’t dog-ear the pages.” “Shhhhh!” These are all institutions that libraries to one degree or another use to compel their users to behave in one way or another. While these sorts of things seem quite minor, they also have a heavy influence on the behavior of a community. If you say that someone has three weeks to return a book, that creates a cycle of library visits that occur once every three weeks. That’s going to have an effect on everything from parking to coffee sales.

• Networks

Watching the growth of library blogs between 2005 & 2009, there could be no doubt in my mind how librarians were quite successful in exercising power through networks. I am no longer a librarian and still feel compelled to speak to a library audience. That’s because librarians make friends with other librarians and they back each other up. This will put librarians at an advantage in comparison to others who do not have those network connections.

I suppose I’ve only partially covered this topic and I am sure there is more you can add. I’m not even sure if this is even surprising to most people. I guess the most important thing I am trying to convey is that power does not have to be overt to be important. Libraries influence the behaviors of even those who never go to libraries. It’s good to keep that in mind.

Material vs Post-Material Visions of Community

Being online has a weird effect on people.

When I read my timelines,  I hear much about one community or another being spoken of in very broad terms, without so much as a whimper about what these communities mean. If I play a game, am I a gamer? If I once was a librarian, will I always be a part of the library community? If I have an autistic son does that make me part of the autism community or do I also have to be aneurotypical to belong? If I liked Anthrax at some time in my life, am I a metal head?

Sometimes we seek ‘communities’ out and other times ‘communities’ are pushed on us. But what do they mean? Well, I think you need to distinguish between what are material communities and what are post-material or symbolic communities. Although that is the sort of separation that will be harder to define in some cases than in others.

But perhaps we can start with the idea of community as being versus community as doing. Community as being is mostly a symbolic thing. I am French in the sense that my parents were (mostly) French. I am not French in the sense that I speak the language fluently. Being French is mostly a symbolic notion of the French community. It means I can pretend to have a lot in common with some of my favourite French people like Pierre Bourdieu, Jean Baudrillard and Bruno Latour. The irony of all this is that while I have an affinity for these philosophers, I lack the actual ability to communicate with them! This distinction is what I mean by material versus post-material visions of community. In symbolic (post-material) terms I have access to the French community because of my last name. In material terms, I offer them nothing nor they me – there’s no real relationship that defines us as being in the same group.

But these symbolic ideas about identity do make a difference. Bourdieu’s Distinction offers a pretty convincing catalogue about what determines people’s tastes (usually class identity). If you are French, you get pay-offs for looking the part, even if you don’t do French. That’s why I typically brag about wanting to be an old man with a flask of Calvados, espouse the value of free speech (likely to a greater extent than others) and have tourtiere for Christmas Eve. It’s also why Nova Scotia has a tartan, when the actual social make-up of the province is almost anything but Scottish.

On the other hand, there is something in the post-material idea of community that lets us off the hook. In a discussion about the anti-vaccine movement I heard someone talk about an affinity for “the autistic community” as if that had salience beyond the words used. The autistic community I know includes a range of people including social workers, parents, sisters, brothers, babysitters, health professionals, psychiatrists and, of course, people with ASD. For my son, autism is something that is thrust upon him, he’ll have none of it. He belongs to an “autistic community” for two main reasons: 1) He is not accepted in the mainstream at school and 2) he benefits from treatments that are offered to him by health and social services. Otherwise his “community” consists of a few loyal friends, frequently of people older than he and his family. There are people around him that do “autism” and he variously loves and hates them for it. But the key point here is that in the “doing” community, he has people who both support him and hold him accountable when he doesn’t meet the expectations of the group. To me, that’s the “real” (material) autism community. It stands in contrast to the more idealist “autistic” community consisting of Sheldon Cooper, the silicon valley and any number of ubercool geeks. It’s possible that I am being unfair to my anti-vaccine person (by the way, vaccines do not cause autism and yes, you should vaccinate your kids. Also, if you don’t vaccinate your kids, I do think its okay for the government to force you to to protect others), but I did not see any evidence of “doing” autism in her/his tweets.

On the other hand, my son has material needs as well. And frankly, there are very rare and and special people who are willing to provide these to him. Things like friendship and support and understanding. People do not learn these things by receiving information, hearing recitals of theory or watching memes. Instead, they discover how to give these things through conversation, not only the in the occasional generosity of silence (“please listen”), but also the generosity of authentic feelings about the world.

I thought about this after reading this article by a male feminist writing about people in the MRA. Behind every marxist, capitalist, feminist, mra, gamergater, libertarian, hippy, yuppy hipster is a real story of how they got to where they are. It is a real gift when you can get that story, no matter how privileged or oppressed the person is. To me, critical theory (or rather their practitioners) forget this at times. And that power is more fluid than personal or group identities. The only thing worse than having power and privilege is not bothering to use it to make the world a better place.

Socrates says that getting to that point of clarity and learning requires nothing short of intellectual midwifery.  Whoever you are, it’s inside you and getting it out is going to be painful, arduous and messy. We need more people with the kind of empathy and understanding that bring new things to this world.

Ten Implications of Social Networks That Matter

“What exactly do you do?”

I was told this would happen when I was doing my PhD.

The true answer to this question is “I write code in R, do maths, write articles, manage data and read lots of books” but this doesn’t really answer the question implicit in the subtext.

“What do you do?” actually means “what do you accomplish” or, perhaps in even more market-ey jargon “what difference do you make in the world?” In answer to that question, it is probably better that I should say: “I describe political groups in order to help them identify potential blind spots, function better internally and connect their ideas to resources.” Also, I tend to focus on the habits of social groups in online social movements. And generally, I use social network analysis to do that.

There are tutorials and classes about the main elements of social network analysis if people actually care about things like degree centrality, clustering and path length. It’s all quite fun stuff, especially because I enjoy things like Linear Algebra. However, the details of social network analysis are different from their implication, which are often more interesting. So, I thought to offer ten core implications that make Social Network Analysis Matter.

1. Your Thoughts and Ideas Exist in a Social Context

Sorry for the jargon, but this basically means that your ideas are at least partly a function, not only of who you know, but also of who also knows the people you know.

2. It Matters Whether A Social Context Runs Both Ways

You get ideas from others, and sometimes you get to share them back directly. Other times, you share the ideas and it goes nowhere. Even other times you share the idea and it goes through a round of “telephone” before it comes back to you looking like something completely different than what you said.

3. Social Costs are Important

The more attention your ideas get, the more likely it is that there will be some social costs that come with that attention. Some people are more free to share their opinion in public forums than others. Therefore, we should not be surprised to see only a few voices left over after a big online drama.

4. Most Major Social Problems Online are Actually Local New York (or big city) problems.

Manuel Castels famously theorized that flows of information across networks are a source of power. More specifically, he argued that virtual space is guided by a “space of flows” that focuses attention on public problems. This space — namely the space of ideas that have mainstream appeal — is usually dominated by those who are the best connected overall. That’s why catcalling ends up being a salient women’s issue that captures more attention than the atrocities of boko haram. People in New York are overall better connected than those in Nigeria and have much more power to spread their messages whatever they may be.

5. Both Friends and Acquaintances Matter to Us

Friends give us both social support and hold us accountable when we don’t behave as we should. Acquaintances help us access communities that we otherwise wouldn’t have access to. Friends will give us their shoulders when we lose our jobs, but acquaintances will most likely help us find a new job. So says Mark Granovetter.

6. The Org Chart Rarely Tells the Whole Story

There are people with cushy executive titles and then there are people that we trust to get the work accomplished. Sometimes you need to get the latter person onside before you can get approval from the former.

7. Networks are Usually Dynamic

Networks in real life are often like an amoeba. There is a nucleus that stays more or less stable, but the overall the shape can change dramatically from one moment to the next. Perhaps there may be a way to tell how the shape of the amoeba changes based on the actions of people in the nucleus. Interesting hypothesis – I might test that out some day.

8. As Time Goes By, The Default Network Shape Will Be A Star

It may not be the best situation for our communities as a whole, but most networks will feature a few “representatives” that with a whole bunch of followers. In social network graphs this looks like a “star” with one person in the center and everyone else following that central person.

(Notice how everyone seems to follow that one orange ball in the centre?)

9. “Brokers” fill the holes in our relationships and Make Us Stronger as a Group

Inside any social group, there are those few people who will show up to a biker bar in the three-piece suit, or attend a Symphony concert in a mohawk. Watch these people because they connect groups in new and interesting ways and encourage innovation. So says Ron Burt (more or less).

10. Social Network Analysis can find Rabble-Rousers

It’s a double-edged sword, but using social network data, you can find the person who matters most in a network. Consider the hypothetical example of British Colonialists looking for this revolutionary named Paul Revere. In short, there are a lot of ethical questions to consider when using social network analysis. Like any tool, it’s bound to benefit those with resources to use it the most against those who are capable of using it the least. Edward Snowdon seems to have a very important point here.

That’s 10 things. Hopefully it helps provide a bit of context for people who know nothing about social network analysis. At the least I hope it shows the potential power the method has to describe the invisible ways that our friends friends’ friends have a real impact on our daily lives. And I did it by showing only one social network graph!

Anyone else have any ideas on some of the big picture things that social network analysis can tell us?

Doing Democracy: Ten Thoughts about Using Social Media for Policy Change in Canada

So you have a social cause that you want to promote online. Some media attention would be nice, but even better would be if you had a Twitter hashtag trend across the world, or if you had your heartwarming promotional video trend on Upworthy. If only a large part of the voting population could hear what you have to say, the government would only have to listen, wouldn’t they?

There exists an unfortunate assumption among those who engage in online social activism that public attention is always a good thing and that nothing will ever change unless the whole world knows about it. The media in particular feeds this idea partly because it actually does benefit from attention (because advertising revenue) but that’s not entirely fair. Journalists are professionals after all, and there is a long standing value throughout history that the media is there to support the ‘little guy.’ And, even in the age where traditional media is in a period of slow decline, the media’s main tool is drawing attention to social problems.

But attention is a pretty blunt instrument. Once unleashed on the world, it is quite difficult to control. For example, there is a story I told a ways back in my TedX talk about Social networks and public policy. As part of a consultation for the new Halifax Central Library we got people together in the Foggy Goggle to knit a yarn bomb. A co-conspirator decided to place the invitations to the consultations by adding clothespins and string to the piece. What happened next was amazing – people added candy, lovenotes, stories, cartoons etc to those clothespins – it was beautiful.

We posted it on YouTube and amazingly it found itself on the YouTube front page. However, unlike the response from Haligonians, the response from YouTubers was mostly hate. We were criticized for the aesthetics of the piece, for being hippies, for not giving the yarn wrap as a blanket for homeless people and so on. This is an example of what Maarten Hajer calls “multiplicities” in his great book Authoritative Governance. A message that makes a ton of sense to one audience will totally bomb with another. This usually has to do with the base assumptions of different networks. In short, attention — even positive attention — is unlikely to move policy makers unless it is somehow connected to power. So, if you want to create policy change, you need to think about how your particular social movement will be connected to power. So, I came up with ten thoughts on how you might do this. This is not backed by research, it is only some conjecture based on my reading and observation.

1. Anger is a resource, but not a solution: It is true that there are things in the world that make us angry, and it is excellent advice to say that if you are angry, then that is a time to think about doing something about it. Usually, this means express your anger to your social networks. Often, anger can be contagious, and start the conversation. But then what? Anger is kind of like sugar. Sugar is great, but almost no one wants to eat it on its own. You have to bake it into something inspiring. How about actually looking at the existing policy that is making you mad and re-writing it the way you think it should be?
2. Coalitions, coalitions, coalitions: So it turns out that you are on the wrong side of the current pendulum swing. You can trend your topic all you want, the government is probably just going to ignore you. However, maybe you can connect with groups that have some similar beliefs. These groups can come from odd places. For instance, radical feminists and social conservatives, who are frequently on different sides on the abortion debate, tend to have common beliefs when it comes to such things as victim’s rights and access to pornography. Thinking broadly about where your allies might be (even temporarily) can help your ideas find their way into even an ideologically opposite government.
3. Governments Don’t Always Respond to Problems: The truth is that there are no end to the number of problems that governments could respond to. Pointing out that a problem exists is not enough to make government move. One view of how this all works comes from John Kingdon and others. The idea is that problems, solutions and power all happen in different places — it’s not until these things connect that you begin to see change. Kingdon argues that these connections occur during “policy windows” (ie. attention-getting events). So, that’s what you ought to be trying to do during a protest, or tragic event – try to connect the problem with possible solutions and groups who may have the resources to encourage the public to change.
4. If it Catches On, Someone is Going to Represent Your Cause: Despite all the rhetoric that online media “democratizes” information because it gives citizens their own platforms to publish, the reality is that a very small number of people, perhaps only one, is going to become the representative for your cause. This doesn’t necessarily happen because someone is a tyrant or power-hungry, but because we all only have so many people we can pay attention to in the long run. And when given a choice, why wouldn’t we just go with the most popular opinion. One example is the role Michael Geist plays in representing the more “open” side of Canadian copyright law. And why shouldn’t he be? He’s a very knowledgeable lawyer and professor. This natural thing to happen in social networks can be a problem however, because it makes your cause look like a one person bandwagon. It is a good thing to think about how you can get multiple people’s voices in your network.
5. The ‘Boomerang Effect’ is a Thing:  From Keck and Sukkink’s Activists Without Borders, the boomerang effect refers to the way social movements can use international groups to enact social change. We see this somewhat with the Northern Gateway and Keystone Pipeline situations. The Athabaska peoples do not have a great amount of power to go up against the oil industry and a generally energy-positive government. However, using environmental networks in the US, they have managed to get considerable support for their cause with Canadian rock star Neil Young putting his celebrity behind it, and Leonardo DiCaprio using his ALS Ice Bucket Challenge moment to highlight the importance of treaty rights.
6. Homophily is a Thing: Homophily is a persistent trait of social networks. It means the tendency for people of like ethnicity, gender, race, class etc. to tend to want to be together. It can also refer, but to a lesser extent, to policy beliefs. This means that just because your cause got a lot of pickup from social media does not mean it has saliency across the board. You should not let your collective excitement and “me too-isms” make you overconfident. There are others in other places thinking completely different things about the issue. You might want to try and connect to them and see if there is any common ground.
7. Arguments are a Thing: I get how memes and slogans help to get a broad message across. The number of things I see followed by a comment like “this is just so true!” is just a little bit frustrating, because often, with even just a little bit of research, it is easy to find exceptions to the rule. As you will see in point #8, memes have their place – but be ready with a solid argument to defend your position. It is at the solid argument stage where you will start to see government agencies and departments responding to your ideas.
8. Think both “weak” and “strong”: There are ways we connect with each other to build trust and there are ways we connect to make acquaintance and perhaps have a little fun. My recent research suggests that you should try to do both. Activities that build strong ties on social media include acknowledging volunteers and donors, posting accountability information, and taking pictures of activities that your group is involved in. These things help people become emotionally attached to your cause. Activities that build weak ties include sharing a meme, connecting to celebrities and marketing Twitter hashtags. These things connect you to people outside your local network and open up doors to other ideas and allies.
9. Pass the Baton: Even though a small group of people are going to end up being the “heroes” of your cause (see #4), you can still build support by making sure that you have sub-causes that can let other voices come up to the top of the list. It is important to give as many different voices the highlight as you can. This may not happen with any single event, but over time you can show that you have solidarity by letting new faces come forward.
10. Empathy is a Muscle: The world is full of misery and this requires us to look at our worlds constantly with an eye to how we can improve things. However, we are also human. The truth is, people get fatigued as they come to serve social causes. This fatigue eventually ends up with a surprising lack of empathy for causes that are not our own. Do not fall into this trap. The best way to avoid empathy fatigue is to be selfish once in a while. Take a break from the Internet and go find yourself on a camping trip, take a vacation or spend time with family. The problems will still be there when you get back. Take care of yourself.

These are just some jotted down thoughts I have based partly on some readings, and partly on some research. I’d really appreciate any other ideas you have on the matter. Also, as a favor, if you like this post, I’d really appreciate it if you could share links to my articles on the Keystone XL Pipeline & the Third Sector.

Six Ways to Do a Presentation

People get anxious about making presentations. There are ways to manage this anxiety, but part of the reason people have this anxiety is that they think there is a formula for a “good” presentation and that they have to somehow fit the mold of that formula. It’s kind of like trying to be a rock diva without the sequins or a tech guru without the black turtleneck and jeans.

Too bad for these people that they watch too much mainstream news.

The reality is that the “good” presentation format is only “good” because a whole bunch of people have packaged it into a brand of sorts. People who are not part of that club have to think of other ways to get their message across. If you are doing a presentation for the first time, chances are your audience is not everyone in the world. More likely, you have a smaller niche audience with more specific needs. That means you have to think about your presentations a little bit differently. While I can’t give you a strict idea about how to reach  your audience in the right way, I can offer ten ways you could do a presentation and see if this gives you an idea about how you might approach yours. Here they are:

Lecture with Script

When you have done a lot of research, it is easy to get nervous about the details. Do not try to explain a mathematical algorithm in the middle of a presentation. You will draw a blank. Instead look to a script. You do not need to follow it 100%, but scripting it can help you get through the details without making a mistake. Tanya Boza has some interesting things to say about being a good lecturer, but advises against using a script. Well, I say scripts have their place depending on the situation. Although Tanya is right – it is much better if you can use your script without looking as if that’s what you are doing.

ADVANTAGES: You can script the details. Will go off very well if you are a good writer. Tends to be formal, and usually rhetorical. Great if you are a politician or have to explain things in a very specific way so not to offend people.

DISADVANTAGES: Can be boring and/or un-engaging. You can lose personal contact with the audience if not rehearsed well. Can be over-prepared. Difficult to do ad hoc presenting within a script.

Lecture with Notes

If you are teaching a big picture concept without getting into the details, it may be better to go without a script. Instead, just quick notes will do you well. This is especially good if you have props to show, are teaching English, expect questions about the material. Johnathan Fields gives a great overview of how Martin Luther King used improvisation in his speech and changed the world.

ADVANTAGES: Great for an overview topic. People may feel more comfortable to ask questions. Good for abstract concepts that are hard to display visually. Excellent for people who like to perform and/or do improv. Can be especially good for a dramatic topic.

DISADVANTAGES: Tends to cover topics too generally. Information can be hard to retain if the lecture goes on too long. Can appear disorganized or unprepared, especially if people ask for details.

Power Point Presentation

Like it or not, the Power Point is a mainstay for presentations. I wish generally that we would not rely on it so much, but so be it. The key to remember is that power point should be a support and not a crutch. However, if you are so nervous about presenting that power point is your crutch, I have a few tips to offer you on the issue.

ADVANTAGES: Great for people with an eye for design. Visuals can really help support the topic if done properly. Easily shared on the Internet. Best option for sharing graphs and charts.

DISADVANTAGES: Waaaay over done. Gets tedious if the visuals are uninteresting; gets distracting if the visuals are overpowering. Appears “salesy” at times due to its prominence in the field of marketing. People ask you for your notes so they don’t have to watch the lecture.

Present Over Sound

It’s not often thought of, but it can be very effective to use sound to illustrate a point. This is the essence of podcasting, in fact, although sound does not have to be digital. If you have your own instrument, that can be even more fun. Take a look at Anna Russell explain Wagner’s Ring using music, for instance:

ADVANTAGES: It is not using powerpoint. Sound is a great way to describe emotions, tension etc. Obviously it is excellent for showing music. It’s an excellent way for musicians to show their talents while making an argument. Very effective with visuals, perhaps removing the need for a script or notes.

DISADVANTAGES: Requires a lot of preparation. Can be distracting to try and speak over a music set. Queues can be missed, causing awkward breaks in the performance.

Q&A

I once did a presentation by simply asking the same question in three different ways. This may seem lazy (and it is) but the reality is that the audience collectively often has much more information and knowledge than the person speaking.

ADVANTAGES: Almost no preparation required. You need an eye for facilitation to ensure as many voices as possible are heard. Crowd wisdom often brings amazing insights.

DISADVANTAGES: Need excellent questions. Always the threat of no one having any thoughts (although this is rare if you are patient). People looking for something unique will often be disappointed. Can come off as overly “new age” or maudlin. You need to be comfortable with a bit of awkward silence.

Structured Alternatives (AKA “Large Group Methods”)

There are a variety of presentation structures that can open the door to more audience participation. Fish Bowls, Talking Circles and World Cafe are some examples, although there can be many more.  These can range from very easy to facilitate (talking circle pretty much just needs a stick or other object to make happen) to very challenging (World Cafe is pretty complex to organize). Either way, they all represent different ways of providing something a little different from lecture-style.

ADVANTAGES: Can be very inspiring. Can open up some voices who otherwise would not want to speak out. Self-coordinating while happening.

DISADVANTAGES: The structures can be a little difficult to explain. Not everyone is free to be honest and open, so these styles can leave them vulnerable. There can be a “musical chairs” kind of effect, so you need to be comfortable with moments of chaos.

So here are six examples of alternative styles of presentations that you can offer your audience. Not everything has to be a power point! What kinds of presentations have you encountered that seemed just a little outside the box?

Philosophy Cafe by Anna Mudde

On Monday, I attended the Philosophy Cafe at the Artesian Gallery. My son and I went there religiously last year, but in the fall our schedules meant that we couldn’t attend unfortunately. Monday’s talk was by Dr. Anna Mudde and titled “What’s it Like to Be You?” I don’t want to share all of her thoughts on the subject, but it had to do with the idea of metaphysics – namely, what do we see and what is it like to experience “red” for instance?

Except a little bit more than that, because how we experience the world, Mudde argues, has implications on our moral and ethical behavior. For example, how the racist experiences people of colour will influence their moral and ethical decisions such that they are quite different from the person who is non-racist. How this process happens is a focal point for the metaphysical discussion on “what’s it like to be you?” This then becomes a discussion of ontology or roughly, the study of being, especially in terms of categorizing things. In the case of the racism example, the ontological question may be about categorizing people in terms of equal, inferior or superior.

I offered a challenge to this view, namely how would we tell the difference between a difference in ontology and a heuristic (a short cut or general rule to help us make choices). In theory, heuristics work most of the time, but fail some of the time, but in the end they help us get to decisions quickly so we can save time. For instance, our racist may not be a racist, but instead has a shortcut in her head that she should not trust strangers. As it turns out, the person of colour is noticeably a stranger (still an ontological concern) but the moral element of racism in this case is not an ontological concern, but one of an error that can be corrected with new heuristics.

But there is a counter-challenge. The heuristics very likely also come from ontology. What is a stranger except a category of person that exists outside one’s circle of friends. There’s something a little bit dark about our “non-racist” who would build a heuristic in her head that causes her to distrust strangers, and especially visible strangers when in fact there are invisible strangers that could be just as dangerous.

All the while, it was an interesting discussion as the Philosophy Cafes usually are. If you are interested, the next one is titled “The mind and the natural world: a brief history of thinking about thinking” by Dylan Ludwig and will happen on February 23rd at 7:30pm at the Artesian. If you come, be sure to say hello!

Eleven Things that Turned Podcamp Halifax 2015 Into Fabulous Clickbait

Ever since that summer time Third Wednesday meeting with Jon McGinley, Craig Moore and Ben Boudreau I’ve been calling Podcamp Halifax “my baby.” This is only true in the sense that I care a lot about the event and the many people who put the effort into making it great. In reality, Podcamp Halifax belongs to a large number of organizers, presenters, sponsors, and participants and they will continue to make it great long after I start to forget about it.

Nonetheless, I thought I’d share eleven things that I noticed about Podcamp Halifax that made it so great this year. Here is the list.

1. Podcamp Halifax is not just click-bait.  Yes, my headline title is total baloney. Click-bait is a term used to describe a media story that has a catchy or controversial headline, forcing fans, trolls, and raging mad flamers to click on the article only to find that the story itself is a poorly researched and purposely antagonistic piece of glurge surrounded by ads for building your abs in 20 easy steps. By contrast, Podcamp Halifax has always been a sincere attempt at helping people understand the world of social media just that little bit better. The speakers are volunteers and you get out of it pretty much what you give, which is often quite a bit.
2. It has been a sell-out  every time it happens. Sell-out is not really the right term for it, but every time Podcamp Halifax issues free tickets, those tickets get snatched up right away. It’s always been a challenge because for free events not everyone is bound to show up (the rule of thumb is about 60% attend), but we always overbook knowing this.
3. The Speakers Rock. While there’s definitely room for improvement on the diversity front (more on this later), the speakers who sign up to present at Podcamp Halifax very generously take time away from their busy schedules (including quite successful businesses at times) to share what they’ve learned and the truth is that people walk away loving it. While sometimes you do have presentations that are little more about sales than sharing, the spirit really revolves around sharing first, and I appreciate people’s work for that.
4. My Audience Rocked. Sometimes I try to put out a presentation with slidedeck. Other times I just crowdsource. Two years ago it was slide deck – that’s because I was a PhD student doing all kinds of theory I was excited about. This year, I crowd-sourced.  I spent about about 5 minutes describing people like Pierre Bourdieu, Elinor Ostrom and Robert Putnam and then just asked “so – how does Twitter make you want to change your behavior?” The answers were multifaceted, brilliant and at times conflicting. I tried to offer a few things here and there from my research, but overall the audience drove my presentation and I was all the more proud for it. Bonus: my personal goal was not to finish my slides and that happened — IN SPADES. 🙂
5. The Organizers Rocked. Tracy, Joanne, Kelli, Carmen, Ian, Ben, Kendra, Kula Partners, Verb, Michelle Doucette, The Halifax Hub, Mindsea, Halifax Public Libraries and a whole whack of other sponsors (if you are not in here now, wait for it – I’ll add you soon enough!). Organizing Podcamp in a new space probably came with new unique challenges and everything continued to go off without so much as a (noticeable to me) hitch.
6. A Conversation Happened. One of the great things for me is that @AtomBombshell raised the issue of privilege and inclusion at podcamp. I’ve thought about this a lot, ever since the first Podcamp. The reality is that Podcamp has behaved in a laissez-faire way for a long time now. The intention has always been to be as inclusive as possible, and perhaps we just assumed that an open forum would be at least more inclusive than a closed one. The reality is not so much. We’ve tried a bunch of things before, including a presentation in Arabic that included precisely zero attendees. This cost me a colleague and friend, as, for whatever reason, I failed to convince the people I invited to show up in Dartmouth on a cold winter’s day in January. It was horrendously embarrassing for the presenter in particular and for me as an extension. If you follow the #podcamphfx twitter tag, you can see a lot more in the discussion. I do have a few thoughts on this though.
   1. Inclusion is a tricky and complex thing, and takes more than theory to make it happen in the real world. For reasons I cannot always understand, communities develop a shape and colour of their own and not everyone is going to feel comfortable even when they are invited. This is the story of libraries for pretty much forever, which tend to attract middle-class white women more than men. ≈
   2. If we broaden the idea of inclusiveity just a bit, there are some things we can celebrate. From a library perspective, Podcamp Halifax was an opportunity to show that libraries had something for men too. While I am aware of privilege in broad terms, I ask that you suspend that line of thinking just for a bit. I remember asking some teens to help volunteer for us at one podcamp and seeing this young awkward highschooler who generally felt excluded from society because he liked html and javascript say that he felt like he belonged for a change. He could see people doing jobs with that html and javascript and he became really excited about his future.
   3. Another story I have is of a man telling us that a library was his worst nightmare because he had dyslexia. Podcamp for him meant that he could belong to a library again. While it’s not really the same thing as inclusion, there is really a great element that connects people that otherwise would not be connected. Not all diversity is visible and we shouldn’t always assume that white means homogenous.
   4. In terms of attendees, Podcamp Halifax has always had a strong contingent of women compared to other technology conferences I’ve been involved in. I am not sure why this is the case, although perhaps the library has a little bit to do with it.
   5. None of these things excuse in the least bit our lack of success in bringing new voices into the Podcamp speaking circuit. Things that tend to work imho are 1) inviting people to co-present, especially citing that as individuals they bring value to Podcamp and should share what they know, 2) starting with the people who attend – something about Podcamp attracted them to the space, it is great to ask people what else they can bring into it so other people can benefit, 3) emphasizing the “un” in unconference. I’ve seen entire presentations based on crowd-sourcing ideas from the audience. If you get people opening up about their experiences with social media, they become more aware that they know much more than they think they do.
   6. Humility is a good thing, and the team at Podcamp right now understands that very well. I asked a person of colour to present once, and even though it wasn’t my intention, he did give me a little jab about being a token for our Podcamp. He proved conclusively that this was not the case, if it was ever the case. The presentation was amazing – one of the highlights of that day. Nonetheless, inclusion sometimes means you will take jabs, not always deserved (not always not deserved either), but at the end of the day, those jabs will mean a better event. Accept them and don’t always try and make excuses.
   7. All things said, Podcamp Halifax is a community, not an organization. If you see a gap, expect to be asked to come with ideas on how to fill it. Frankly, the people at the heart of organizing Podcamp are already putting plenty of work into just getting peoples names on the tags, forget trying to solve Global inequality. There are no end of problems to notice. What is in low supply are solutions to those problems. There is also a privilege inherent in knowing that you can complain about something and leave it to someone else to try and fix it. Except you won’t always get away with that at Podcamp.  🙂
7. The Library is Fabulous. This was the dream realized. Part of the pitch for Podcamp Halifax was that it was the sort of thing that could show how a library can play a community building role and that a Central Library would only knock that out of the park even further. It was a fabulous space.
8. There is a Future for Podcamp. It’s hard to say how this will transpire, but there are many directions that Podcamp can go in the future. For instance, perhaps there is a way to reach out to other communities like music, theatre, dance and so on. Maybe something like South by Southwest? Other options have included adding another day, bringing back Battle decks and having a keynote speaker again.
9. Podcamp is More than Just One Day. The most rewarding thing I’ve seen over the years is how much community building podcampers usually end up providing in the long run. Businesses have grown, social groups have started and thrived, blogs and podcasts have launched, friends have become partners and so on. The real value of Podcamp is what happens afterwards. I look forward to seeing what else comes up. That’s why I try to remind presenters that “whoever comes are the right people.” If you only get one or two people to come to your presentation, then you present to those people and they may have the exact ideas to get you going further.
10. What the heck is a podcamp? I used to spend a lot of time trying to explain this to people. I’m not sure I should bother that much any more. It’s just a thing about social media that a lot of people love. The reason people love it (I think) is because they are invested in it. So they care about what you need and want to try and give it to you whatever that is. It’s about sharing and learning and eating and playing and friending and following and a bunch of other things. Godspeed to all of you!
11. More video! We could use more people dedicated to recording and streaming podcamp presentations.  This takes a large amount of work, but would be more than worth it. Unfortunately, I think we need to reach out again to the podcasting community to help make this happen!

SCIENCE! YouTube, the Keystone XL Pipeline, & Not-for-profit Social Media use

Amid promises of, well, nothing, I’ve been thinking about restarting this blog. There are a few problems with this idea. 1) This blog is called The Other Librarian and, well, I am not really a librarian right now in the employment sense. Of course I will always be a librarian because … well, just because. On the other hand, I am more pretending to be a data scientist and researcher instead.

That brings me to some great news. I have two peer reviewed publications that have been released this month. I am excited about both, because finally I have been able to conduct some research about the value of social media to our daily lives.

The first is What Potential for YouTube as a Policy Deliberation Tool? Commenter Reactions to Videos About the Keystone XL Oil Pipeline where I look at comments on YouTube and evaluate the consequences of engaging citizens on social media. The answer is complex of course, but in general, if you use social media to engage the public, you will find 1) people will ignore governmenty videos, 2) topics related to minority groups (eg. First Nations Rights) will tend to be overlooked, 3) the most popular videos will be the ones where the topic is related to some form of identity (libertarianism, environmentalism etc.) 4) on the whole, the aggregated content will be somewhat “wise” in the sense that it generally covers the main issues that researchers pay attention to (with the caveat of #2). Overall, I am really proud of this paper because it was great fun to produce.

The second paper I wrote with Kathleen McNutt and it looks at social media use by not-for-profits. Using Mark Granovetter’s classic paper,  we argue that strong social media engagement requires attention to “strong” (emotionally intense) and “weak” (interest-based) connection strategies.

Beyond this, I have been doing a heck of a lot of writing for my dissertation which is about policy agenda setting and online engagement. I am also *very* excited about Podcamp Halifax coming up in January which will happen at the new and AMAZING Halifax Central Library. If you ever chatting to me about Podcamp, you’d know that my evil master plan was that the meeting could happen in the new library where it could expand to a much grander audience. That’s happened thanks to the lovely people who’ve taken the baton and improved on it year after year. Hopefully there will be a facilitated program about the future of Podcamp: whether it will keep going the way it is, or changing to something new given that the opportunity for growth is now quite grandiose. With the right partners, perhaps there could be a South by Southwest sort of program or a Winter arts & business somethingorother? I don’t know – the great thing about Podcamp is that it uses the wisdom of the crowd in such a way that whatever gets decided, it is likely to be smart. Obviously, we wouldn’t want to use the free aspect to put other conferences out of business – but on the other hand, there is plenty of room for community-based learning and sharing which helps everyone in the end!

Anyway, what are you excited about with social media?

Facebook and Rapport

This came up in previous discussions recently, so I thought I’d share them. This blog is pretty much closed, but maybe I’ll bring it out again for reblogs.