“Reality is faith that smells of truth”

Paolo Brunello presented his Net-Map experience in ICT in Burundi at the International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development in Doha. But as you watch this

or read this (161 KB), you will see how this is not so much a presentation of empirical research but much more a very [...]

Best guess is a good guess

There is one thing that I often hear, when I do Net-Map interviews: People admit that they are not quite sure about the influence of actors, the networks that connect them , the how and the why. The easiest solution is to let them off the hook and say: Well, if you’re not sure, let’s [...]

Scale Free Thinking

Most of what I write (here and elsewhere) is rather concrete, drawing from real world examples, own experience, pushing some hands-on ideas. That’s because most of my learning is people-to-people learning, through hearing stories, making experiences and linking unusual things to each other.
However, every once in a while  I read something that is more on [...]

Julius Nyangaga about using SNA to understand innovation systems

Dr Eva Schiffer recently took us (a group of researchers from the International Livestock Research Institute, ILRI) through an introductory session to Social Network Analysis – the concept, the methodologies, its application.  Most of us were from the innovation side of the research world where qualitative constructs and processes in systems are easily appreciated. But [...]

“Viral Explanation”

This is very important for you if you want your thinking to spread through your extended networks, beyond the small circle of people you can reach directly and beyond the small group who will read what you write: If you explain your stuff so well and so vividly at the same time that it will [...]

What is the best network structure?

This is often the underlying question when we map out networks: Participants are eager to know if they have the correct, the best network structure. But giving a normative answer to this question (as in: This is how your network should be) isn’t as easy or straightforward as they might hope. Because before you can [...]

Visual Facilitation – in your head

There are a lot of cool visual facilitators out there who capture processes, discussions, results of meetings in drawings. But the other day I realized that visual facilitation can start before anyone even touches a crayon. When the members of the RENEWAL Aids and Nutrition Research Network discussed ways, how the national or regional level [...]

Martin Luther King about Power and Love

“Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change. … What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the [...]

How do we have to analyze this now?

I think my colleagues were hoping for the standard answer: If you draw a Net-Map, these are the steps you have to do and these are the centralities / network properties you have to look at and if the value is over 0.5 it means this and that.
Yesterday I sat down with Ekin Birol [...]

It’s not about where you sit, but between which chairs you sit

Together with my colleague Frank Hartwich from the Swiss College for Agriculture I am working on a paper about the influence networks of a multi-stakeholder water governance organization in Ghana and today he pointed out the different kinds of brokers to me that you can have in a network. He will do some impressive quantitative [...]