My Professional Network, Graphically

A few months ago, I was thinking about my professional network and wondered what it would look like if it were mapped out. It turns out, LinkedIn has a lab project to do just that. I loaded up my profile and a few minutes later, this came out (click for larger version):

Each dot in the above chart represents a person, and each line represents a connection between people. The larger the dot, the closer the relationship. I am at the center, and unique clusters of people become apparent by their interrelationships, and they are grouped together in space.

The lab does not label the clusters, but it does identify the clusters by color, and it allows the user to identify those clusters and name them, as I have done above. Further, you can explore your network by hovering over the individual dots that represent people.

Essentially, five groups arise from my network: Family, Friends, and Educators on the left; Dean Health Plan at the top; CPM Healthgrades at the upper right; the UW Health System, which is composed of the University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation (UWMF), the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics (UWHC), and the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (UWSMPH); and finally the SAS Institute at the bottom.

The lab isn't perfectly accurate, but it is pretty good. I checked out a number of individuals and some don't make sense, but most do. As an example, my wife is one of the larger dots on the left, which makes sense, since she also has networked with our friends and family on LinkedIn (although I usually avoid doing so for a number of reasons).

The UW Health cluster is visually split, but there is apparent movement and interrelationship between the organizations. There are some people who traveled between the UW and Dean, one way or another. The same is true between Dean and CPM, with most, I believe coming from Dean to CPM. There are some hubs in each organization, likely managers, project managers, or other people who attended a lot of meetings (I think one of the big dots at Dean was an IT manager who sat in on a lot of projects).

Aside from family and friends, SAS is probably the oddest group. I have some connections, and they seem to be somewhat strong. Before I attended the SAS Global Forum, this chart may have looked quite different, since I made many more connections after the conference. The chart also shows how well-developed my connections were at Dean and the UW, and how I'm still fairly new at CPM. (I bet if I ran this today it would look a bit better developed.)

Of course, charts like these leave out people who aren't on such sites as LinkedIn, but I would think that all the other people would compensate for them when graphed like this. Additionally, I don't have much of a network for old jobs like the ones I had in college, nor have I really networked much with fellow college classmates.

It would be interesting to see what other people's networks look like, especially people who are essentially professional networkers, like HR professionals or recruiters. How do networks in different industries look (mine is mostly health care)? What if you have someone who only networks with family or friends? What does that show? Perhaps different geographic locations you've lived in? How about someone who is a world traveler?

This type of graph is very powerful in that makes you think about the data behind it and ask such questions as I have done. It opens up doors we haven't thought of and inspires curiosity.

Two Special Notes

A few weeks ago we were packing up all our stuff to move to our new house. During this process, I found two notes from former coworkers, delivered on my last day of work at different jobs. Here's the first:





Here's the transcription in case the image does not appear:

Dear Chris —
     I have enjoyed watching you learn and grow over the last couple of years. You have become and excellent analyst — UWMF is lucky to have you. I will miss your superb work, smiling face and Luca stories! Best of luck to you on this exciting step in your career! I wish you, Kyra and Luca much happiness!
     Sincerely,
     [name]

And here's the second:





with the text:

Chris
     I really appreciate the time and dedication and professionalism that you offered to the [organization's] projects and my RA project in particular. You pressed on to make this all possible, and I am grateful. Regrets for the frustrations along the way, but know that your contribution will be remembered.
    All the best with your next personal + professional pursuits! Congrats on the well deserved Scientist position!
    Thank you,
    [name]

I kept both notes because they are very meaningful to me, and I think this highlights how important it is to write hand-written notes of thanks to you colleagues: It can be touching, powerful, and memorable for the recipient, and the writer has earned a relatively permanent place in memory. It's a perfect way to not only show genuine gratitude, but also earn a positive place in the recipient's mind, whether for the purpose of networking, friendship, or simple kindness.

SAS Global Forum

I'm a SAS programmer, and I've always wanted to attend one of those big SAS conferences. So this year, when I heard about the SAS Global Forum, I applied for a grant from the University of Wisconsin and submitted two papers to present at the conference.

A few weeks ago I heard that I won the grant, and just last week I found out that both of my papers were accepted by the conference organizers. I'll be presenting both papers in the Coder's Corner section, with the following titles:

An Advanced, Multi-Featured Macro Program for Reviewing Logs
Standardized Macro Programs for Macro Variable Manipulation

If you plan on attending and you happen to follow this blog, please feel free to stop by and say hello! If not, I'll post the links to the papers as soon as their available from the conference organizers. For more information about the conference, go to http://support.sas.com/events/sasglobalforum/2012/index.html.

Hope to see you there!

Sound Advice for LinkedIn

The Job Doc has some good advice for how to behave on LinkedIn:

Avoid these 4 mistakes with LinkedIn

1) Never inviting anyone.

Hmm, this one's tempting. No one likes rejection; it forces you to relive high school. ... Last week, I invited 20 people to LinkedIn. Most accepted, a few ignored me. Nothing terrible happened.

2) Bad timing.

... Timing matters. Are your LinkedIn invitations too late, or too early? "Don't invite within two hours of meeting," says Rod Hughes, Director of Communications, Oxford Communications. "I typically wait till the next day," advises Rod. "Anything sooner seems stalker-esque."

3) Inviting everyone.

... "You need a policy," says Thom Singer, author of several networking books. "My policy," says Thom, "is The Coffee, Meal or Beer Rule, which means not accepting links unless I've had a real conversation."

4) Bad invitation.

At LinkedIn, the default invite is, "I'd like to add you to my professional network." But that's robotic. ... Tip: For better results, deliver a better invitation.

How do you go about inviting people into your network? Could you improve the way you go about it? I know I've used the default invitation far too often: usually because I'm in a hurry. Even a more personal default would be better than the LinkedIn default.

LinkedIn isn't Facebook either, where you can invite anyone on a whim. I've received a number of unwanted or unexpected invitations, some of which I probably should not have accepted given the "coffee, meal, or bear" rule. Those contacts I put in a "monitor" category, since I do not know these people very well and I'm not sure I want the association. Should their behavior be questionable, I remove the association with the contact.

What about you? How do you go about adding contacts?