Looking for free and easy SNA software

I use Visualyzer for visualizing and analyzing my Net-Maps and I love it. But while there is a free trial version, in the end it is a software that you have to purchase. As I want to further spread SNA literacy in developing countries, I am looking for free software that is [...]

Local Materials

In his comment today, Prakash Kashwan asks, whether we have used local materials for doing Net-Map, which reminds me that I wanted to put together a slide show of “stackable things” that could be used as influence towers. So, the answer is yes, and things that we have used include local board game pieces, bicycle [...]

Do we really need to draw all these links?

When we were net-mapping the innovation systems in poultry and maize in Ethiopia, we wondered: What is the benefit of spending so much time, drawing different links and is it maybe enough to just name the actors and put them on influence towers? So we tried a two step approach: With the first interview partner, [...]

Struggling with the Matryoshka Effect

You know these Russian dolls where a little baby doll sits inside a slightly bigger one that sits inside a slightly bigger one etc.? Sometimes, when doing institutional Net-Maps, I feel like I’m on a Russian tourist market, just surrounded by Matryoshkas. Only that the way organizations are nested inside each other is far more [...]

Mapping together

Below I have explored the idea of using Net-Map (through two computer applications called Visualyzer and GoToMeeting) in real time with groups all over the world online. While looking at ways how people can think together online, I came across this very instructive post about Online Graphic Organizers by Miguel Guhlin. He explores different free [...]

Do people or organisations form a network?

When I ask: “Who can influence this-and-that?” as a first step in a Net-Map exercise, it depends very much on the “this-and-that”, on the context and on the interviewees, whether they will come up with a lot of

organisations (Ministry of XY, NGOs, women’s groups, etc.) or
groups of people who do similar things or have similar [...]

Interactive Net-Mapping Online?

Could people all over the world sit in front of their internet and net-map together?
Today I discussed with Simone Staiger of the International Center of Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), how they could include a net-map exercise into their web-based knowledge sharing workshop. They have an online-phase, where participants from all over the world will be online [...]

Reaching the poorest of the poor in Nigerian Agriculture

Today I had a heated Net-Map session with a group of Nigerian visitors to IFPRI, who are all involved in the Fadama II project (funded by World Bank), that aims at improving the lives of the poorest of the poor in Nigeria, living and farming in the low lying fadama flood-plains. My colleague Ephraim Nkonya [...]

Power Tools

“Family portraits” (see below) is only one of the many tools that the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) introduces on their internet portal: “Power Tools“. Brief and engaging descriptions of participatory approaches as diverse as Market Chain Workshops, Interactive Radio Drama or Community Trade-off Assessment.

Participatory Impact Pathway Analysis (PIPA)

Network Mapping can help you to learn a lot about how and why your project works the way it does. But how do you integrate the 4 steps of Net-Map (Actors, Links, Influence, Goals) into a bigger framework of monitoring and evaluation? Boru Douthwaite and his colleagues call their integrated approach Participatory Impact Pathway Analysis [...]