The article about SPM eGroup was published in the New York Times on Sunday 3/9/03. Best place to find it is on our homepage.

I also put together an essay on "Strength of Weak Ties" and how SPM has implemented the theory in a very practical manner. See also the "About" section of SPM for more context.

I am now researching the best way for SPM to become a legal entity. We seem to be a combination of not-for-profit (the verticals), for-profit (the corporate that creates the software and processes and either francises them to the verticals or sells these services directly, and limited liability partnership (for the consulting practice). I been looking into Daniel Pink's "Free Agent Nation" to get ideas.

Blogger sure isn't very robust software. I just wrote a few paragraphs, tried to "post and publish" and it crashed. I should learn to save my work more often, maybe even type it somewhere else and cut and paste.

Just a couple interesting notes today.

Got an introduction to Valdis Krebs by Jan Hauser. Valdes has written some terrific articles about social networks on the web. We've exchanged emails and may meet at the upcoming March 23rd conference in SF called "Culture and KM".

My favorite use of the 12 Principles of Civilization

So far, this is my favorite use. Apparently the 12 Principles of Civilization are going to one of the key ingredients in making the Brazilian economy entrepreneurial.

My "12 Principles" along with the pyramid diagram (and my name) appear on one of the slides. It's a PDF and takes a bit of time to download.The 12 Principles are right in the middle of the presentation (not all slides have numbers). Whoever put this presentation together is truly enamored of every goofy little PowerPoint featurelet.

If anyone can figure out why the 12 Principles fit into this presentation, please let me know.

Translation of slides is below (done by Matt Perez).

Apresentacao do PowerPoint
... em "rede". e tudo de CLASSE MUNDIAL. Os 12 Principios da Civilizacao™
{Cynthia Typaldos}. Aplicacoes. Sistema Operacional Comunitario. ...

Translation and comments by Matt M Perez [mailto:mperez@dropby.com]

Sounds like a sales or investment pitch for something called c.e.s.a.r, a business that links Universities and researchers to businesses, particularly for IT and Communications solutions. They claim that with their process and their people (30 PhDs, gawd!) they can manufacture new businesses. This helps the local, regional, and national economy, and it makes people happy and motivated start new businesses.

How the 12 Principles fit in their pitch and how they use it is anybody's guess.

-- matt

IT COULD HAVE BEEN SAID ABOUT BRAZIL
The low salaries throughout the nation are due to low productivity of the Country. And not because the bosses are bigger vandals in Portugal than elsewhere ... Americans believe that jobs are an asset to be multiplied ... Europeans prefer to work for an enterprise, while subsidizing the unemployed ... the Portuguese will always protect those who are employed but don't want to work, ignoring those who look for work and can't find it.
-- Sergio Fiqueiredo, The Morning Mail, Nov 18, 2002
------------------------------------
chart
------------------------------------
CIN/UFPE: IN THE CONTEXT OF 1993
+ Global competition, Total
++ Where everything flows, including, and specially PEOPLE
++ Center of excelence ... done, but quickly going away
+ socio-economic demands by results ...
+ leading to the isolation of a qualified academy (intellect)
------------------------------------
The monumental problems that we face today cannot be solved by thinking at the same level that we did we when we were born -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
------------------------------------
And from that point?... how to tranform a "brain drain" into a "brain gain"?
++ it was necessary to revolutionize the relationship between Universities and Society and Business
++ developing models that are innovative, aggressive, professional, and self-sustaining
++ to increase the impact, relevance, and competitiveness of two products of the academic world...
------------------------------------
Result: a c.e.s.a.r, whose mission is to realize a
+ self-sustaining transfer of knowledge and information technologies between Society and Universities
------------------------------------
a c.e.s.a.r works as follows
+ from the top down
+ a guide to that which one c.e.s.a.r done, it's not what we know how to do...
+ but problems that the market fears, one pays to solve (if it hurts, it's worth paying to solve it?)
------------------------------------
our practice and our business is to make enterprises: and to make enterprises, it means...
+ to educate people in our practice (methodology)
+ to develop "valid" processes
+ to promote culture(s) on the net
+ and all this is WORLD CLASS
------------------------------------
The 12 principles of civilization {Cynthia Typaldos} chart
------------------------------------
How do we do our practice (methodology)
------------------------------------
a c.e.s.a.r is a innovation factory:
[two quotes in english]
------------------------------------
To genete businesses a c.e.s.a.r uses PEOPLE:
+ 300 professionals with diverse experience and profile
++ 150+ not engineers
++ 120+ software engineers
+++ 70% Sun-cerfified in Java
++ PMI, SPIN...
+ 10 PhD, 30 MSCs, 40 especialists and ...
+ 30+ in post-graduate (school)
------------------------------------
So what do these people do?
+ develop new IT and Communication innitiatives, from start to finish of projects for a market
+ such projects have been won from companies throughout Brazil [and not from overseas] and are related to solutions to business problems
+ many times we work of critical path projects for these businesses
+ a c.e.s.a.r is becoming one of the key providers of IT and Communication solutions in Brazil...
-------------------------------------
Who benefits
+ the local and regional economy: a c.e.s.a.r already is one of the biggest IT businesses of the region
+ local and national entrepreneurs: more than 30 new businesses, including a mobile, already are one of the biggest TICs businesses in the region [R$10M,
2002]
+ local, national, and internatianal investors: a c.e.s.a.r develops innovative investment opportunities - developing structured groups that are linked to the nacional and international economies
-------------------------------------
+ to foment hope in the possibility of starting local businesses as part of a process of regional development
+ to do that, we have to lead by example: we lear by doing
++ today's team members are the future leaders of the businesses generated
+ a basic principal is to develop a window of opportunities so large that everybody feels that they can do it because they can leave as soon as they decide to do it
-------------------------------------
what is the consequence of that?
+ a c.e.s.a.r is not a normal incubator, much less an incubator:
++ a c.e.s.a.r manufactures entreprenurial businesses
+ to do so, a c.e.s.a.r has to invest in methodologies, processes, tools, environments, quality, qualification, certification, training, laboratories innovation, management... this investment is made by and for ...
+ our entrepreneurs, quo have a lot of experience in the management of projects and businesses in their own sectors, particularly when compared with the traditional members of classic incubators
-------------------------------------
why are we here?
+ because innovation is c.e.s.a.r's first name
+ innovation model for...
++ development of solutions
++ new business generation
++ relationships with entrepreneurs and researchers
++ relationships with universities
+ because a c.e.s.a.r is a school
++ in many ways, a c.e.s.a.r works to "lose" human capital for society... people
who go there ... to INNOVATE!
-------------------------------------
c.e.s.a.r: a place of happy people
+ there's only two ways to live live. one way is as if nothing were miraculous; the other as if everything is a miracle. -- albert einstein
+ without effort, there's no progress, but with effort, too, there's no progress
-- Ryotan Tokuda, Zen Master
-------------------------------------

Just discovered a very interesting homepage for INSAA:

"This page contains information about the International Network for Social Network Analysis and related subjects. INSNA Here you will find Social Networks information, reference sources and links to related home pages". There is a lot to explore here, it will take time to find everything of interest. I did join their listserve SOCNET. They link to three different journals on their home page:
Connections An official journal of International Network for Social Network Analysis
Social Networks
Journal of Social Structure

Particularly interesting is this link off the INSAA homepage called Hot Topics. The two hot topics are: Social Capital and Scale-free / Power Law and Small-world networks. There are scores of interesting links under each of these hot topics.

--------------------------------

Debi Jones sent an email today to the SPM Management regarding the paper Social Science at 190 MPH on NASCAR's Biggest Superspeedways by David Ronfeldt.

Debi writes (quoted with permission) -- "The author illustrates most of the concepts in the 12 Principles and the strength of weak ties*. It's a comprehensive treatment with an unexpected example. The great thing about his example is the 'real world' illustration of how we use identity and reputation and to make decisions about exchanges (transactions). The quote that caught my attention as related to SPM is: '...the way to out-compete is to out-cooperate.' The trick of knowing when to cooperate and when to complete is probably the distinction between being successful and just getting by. That's seems to be the point he's making when writing about Jeff Gordon's strategies and choices. An aside: I, also, was drawn to his distinction between the value of being a hub of the network versus being on the edge and connecting multiple networks. [Most people want to be a hub, however],I think the more desirable position is a connector between and/or across networks."

*Granovetter, M. (1973). Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology, vol. 78, 1973
---------------------------------------

Wow, I just Googled "strength of weak ties" and there are about 1,000 references. I'd did this about 6 months ago, when I was first researching how SPM might use the "strength of weak ties", and I sure don't remember so many links. Googling ["strength of weak ties" SPM] yields four relevant links. There was even an article in Fast Company in December 1996 that mentions this social theory -- "The Virus of Marketing", by Jeffrey Rayport, illustrations by Phillip Anderson, from FC issue 6, page 68:

Rule 5: Exploit the strength of weak ties
Sociologists have long noted that individuals with many casual social connections have a larger influence on communities than do individuals with fewer strong connections. Viruses thrive on weak ties. The movement of viruses over the Web -- a practically infinite collection of weak ties in countless virtual communities -- is a prime example."

Well, I'm exasperated. I just typed a tome on the SPM eGroup and its virtual structure, and Blogger got an error message and lost my work. Blogger is going down at 7pm, in less than an hour. This will have to be all for today.

I'm just starting my blog today, February 22, 2003. I've been using egroups extensively and expect that I will be doing more blogging than egroup publishing from now own. Here's some basic info about me:

My biography.

My websites: Software Product Marketing (SPM) eGroup and Typaldos Consulting.

My egroup on webcommunities/webcollaboration/social networking software.


My interests are web collaboration and communities, social networking software, software marketing, and "open organizations" [similar to "open source software"]. At SPM eGroup we are attempting to create an "open organization".

I just finished taking a fabulous 5 evening course at Stanford called "The Science of Networks" [Note...this link may break when Stanford moves on to the next semester's catalog.] The instructors, Stuart Gannes {Director, Reuters DigitalVision Fellowship Program, Stanford] and J. Christopher Ramming [Lecturer in Continuing Studies, Stanford] were outstanding. The reader for the class was excellent...I"ll see if I can get a Table of Contents to post here. The recommended book was Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks, but I had already read a similar, but somewhat more technical (according to the instructors) book called Linked: The New Science of Networks, so I didn't read Nexus. There is a private egroup for the class members so that we can continue our dialogue. A second version of the class may be offered in the Fall of 2003.

I plan to blog mainly about my career interests and the day-to-day challenges, operations, and successes in running the SPM eGroup.