April 28-29, 2015: Innovation Enterprise #DataViz15: Talk about mapping social media networks

04FebMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

Data Visualization Innovation Summit

April 28 & 29, San Jose, 2015

Data in. Decisions Out

The Data Visualization Summit is taking place in San Jose, April 28 & 29, 2015.

The summit is located at the San Jose Convention Center, 150 West San Carlos Street, San Jose, CA 95113.

There will be a talk about the ways social network analysis can be applied to better understand the shape and structure of social media.

Using the free and open NodeXL, non-programmers can now easily import, analyze, visualize and share reports on social media networks.

March 30-31, 2015 – Predictive Analytics World San Francisco – Think Link: Connecting to the Power of Social Networks with no Programing with NodeXL

04FebMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

There will be a one day crash course on all things “big data” at the upcoming San Francisco Predictive Analytics World conference on Monday, March 30th, 2015. Get the Big Data big picture with a day of introduction to the major concepts, methods, challenges, and best practices related to leveraging large volumes of information.

There will be a session on social media network analysis using NodeXL at the conference as well.

http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/sanfrancisco/2015/agenda.php#day1-1120b
11:20am-12:05pm

Track 2: Social Data
Think Link: Connecting to the Power of Social Networks with no Programing with NodeXL

Networks are collections of connections — they are everywhere once you start to look. Learn how to collect, analyze, visualize, and publish insights into connected populations. Using the free and open NodeXL addin for Excel, anyone who can make a pie chart can now make a network chart. Create insights into social media, collaboration, organizations, markets, and other connected structures with just a few clicks. Easily publish reports with visualizations and content analysis. Apply social network analysis to your own brands, email, discussions or web sites.

March 17-19, 2015 MURTEC (Multi-Unit Restaurant Technology Conference) at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas: NodeXL Hands-on Training

04FebMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

There will be a NodeXL Hands-on Training session at the MURTEC (Multi-Unit Restaurant Technology Conference) at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas. March 17-19, 2015

The IT Leader’s Guide: How to Map Your Brand’s Social Media Network

Speaker: Marc A. Smith, Director, Social Media Research Foundation

Social media matters – it matters to consumers – and that social chatter can matter to you if you understood how to interpret it. Learn to identify your key social media influencers and use that information to amplify your brand’s message. Uncover connections between sales and social media data, empower marketing to uncover new dining trends and brand champions, and even impact loss prevention efforts. This session will teach you how to apply social media network maps to your brand (and competitor’s). Restaurant executives, in particular those with a technology mind-set, will find great value in learning how to build, interpret and use social network maps. Participants will have an opportunity to map their own brand on social media using the free and open NodeXL (http://nodexl.codeplex.com) tool.

Bring a Windows laptop running a recent copy of Office to participate in the exercises!

This is an example NodeXL social media network map and report for the hashtags #MURTEC, #HotelTechForum, #RestES or htmagazine:

Maps and reports like these reveal the structure of an online conversation, revealing the key people, groups, and topics.

The “mayors” of this discussion are:

@htmagazine, @vivianfatule, @htmagazinetv, @colorvisionc9,
@auramusicrd, @team_techy, @paolamunnigh, @chasanmiguel,
@lissyvalerio, and @josiasortizg.

The most commonly used hashtags related to this topic are:

#htmagazine, #restes, #fromage, #fort, #hospitality,
#yoveocolorvision, #htrest, #viande, #antigaspi, #mobile

Maps and reports for a range of dining and hospitality topics will be presented at the MURTEC training session.

How to import matrix data into NodeXL

09JanMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

Some network data sets are created or received in the form of a matrix.

A matrix can be directed or undirected. In this example, we will import a directed network.

First open a blank NodeXL template.

Next open the matrix workbook in the same instance of Excel (just drag it into the title bar of the current NodeXL Excel instance).

Here is a simple asymmetric matrix with weights for tie strengths.

To import this matrix, switch back to NodeXL and select the Data>Import>From Open Matrix Workbook:
2015-NodeXL-Matrix Import

A matrix may or may not have labels (row and column headers) and the user should define what their data set looks like.

The matrix may represent a directed or undirected network (if it is undirected the matrix must be symmetrical!).

This results in data appearing in the Edges worksheet of NodeXL:
2015-NodeXL-Matrix Edges

This can then be visualized as a network where the edge weights are used to set the thickness of the lines connecting two nodes:

December 8 – 10, 2014, World Bank, Washington DC: INTERNATIONAL CORRUPTION HUNTERS ALLIANCE (ICHA) – Network analysis for detecting fraud

26OctMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

THIRD BIENNIAL MEETING OF THE WORLD BANK GROUP’S

INTERNATIONAL CORRUPTION HUNTERS ALLIANCE (ICHA)

ENDING IMPUNITY FOR CORRUPTION

December 8 – 10, 2014, World Bank, Washington DC

I will speak about the value of a network perspective for the discovery of fraud and corruption in financial data at the December 9th session of the World Bank’s upcoming meeting of the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative.

“The World Bank Group’s International Corruption Hunters Alliance (ICHA) brings together heads and senior officials of corruption investigating bodies and prosecuting authorities, anti-corruption experts, academics, and representatives of international organizations from over 130 countries. The 2014 meeting of the Alliance will focus on fighting corruption – and the vast illicit outflows generated by corruption – by sharing know-how and experiences in the use of both traditional and alternative corruption fighting approaches.”

All financial transactions create a network as one person transfers money from one account to another. A list of transactions creates a web of connections with an emergent shape or pattern. Within these patterns are key positions occupied by people with special power in the network. Mapping these transaction networks can reveal the hidden traces of financial crime.

November 3 – 5, 2014 – Restaurant Executive Summit – Mapping restaurant networks in social media

25OctMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

The 2014 Restaurant Executive Summit will be held on November 3 – 5, 2014 at the Ritz-Carlton in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

The theme of the event is “How to Feed Consumers with a #Digital @ppetite”

I will speak about the ways that restaurants and dining experiences are discussed in social media. I will show network maps that visualize the relationships among people who talk about restaurants created with the free and open NodeXL social media network analysis and visualization application.

Here are some recent NodeXL social media network maps for mentions of major chain restaurants featured in the NodeXL Graph Gallery:

DunkinDonuts

McDonalds

Chipotle

@olivegarden

These maps illustrate the shape of the crowd that gathers around the names of major chain restaurants. A few Twitter user accounts occupy key positions in these network crowds, these are the influential voices that are repeated widely by others.

Closer inspection (click through for details) reveals smaller groups or clusters which form as a smaller set of people interact with one another more than with the larger population. These groups have distinct topics of interest which are summarized in the content report associated with each visualization.

The network and content report can reveal the topics of interest to various groups in the discussion as well as the key people within each group.

Three phases of social media network success for marketing

19OctMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

The social media landscape is complex. Social media network analysis makes it easier to understand and navigate social media.

Using the NodeXL social media network analysis add-in for Excel from the Social Media Research Foundation, I have made a large collection of network visualizations and reports, many of which can be seen in the NodeXL Graph Gallery.

Now that I have seen many social media network maps I observe that marketers are often interested in building “broadcast” network patterns. This is one of the six basic social media network patterns documented in the recent Pew Research Internet Project report about Mapping Twitter Topic Networks.

There are at least three phases of possible success for a social media marketing effort: phase 1, you get an audience of people who will retweet what you post. Phase 2, some of your audience gets its own audience for the content they repost from you. Phase 3, a dense web of relationships emerges, a community of relationships. This is a desirable phase because it sustains the conversation event when new messages from the brand account are not created.

29-30 September at the University of Melbourne – Talk about social media networks

07SepMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

Best Practice in Data Journalism Workshop

PROGRAM
29-30 September 2014

Terrace Lounge, Level 1, Walter Boas Building, Parkville Campus

(Campus map at http://maps.unimelb.edu.au/parkville)

MONDAY 29 SEPTEMBER

9-9.30AM	REGISTRATION AND WELCOME
9.30-9.45am	WELCOME AND INTRODUCTIONS- DR MARGARET SIMONS AND CARLTON CONNECT
9.45am-11	Presentations and Q and A from journalists: Marc Moncrieff and Craig Butt – Fairfax Media; Lisa Cornish – Red Cross (formerly News Corp); Harrison Polites – Business Spectator.
11-11.30	MORNING TEA
11.30-12.30	Presentations by Journalists (continued): Ed Tadros – Australian Financial Review; Matt Liddy, ABC; Nick Evershed – The Guardian in Australia.
12.30-1PM	ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION AND IDENTIFICATION OF COMMON THEMES AND CHALLENGES
1PM-2PM	LUNCH
2PM-2.30pm	AURIN – Exploring the potential – Presentation by Professor Richard Sinnott, University of Melbourne.
2.30-3pm	NodeXL – Exploring the potential – Presentation by Marc Smith, Director, Social Media Research Foundation
3-3.30pm	AFTERNOON TEA
3.30PM-5PM	Panel Session – Big Data. What Next? With Craig Thomler (Delib), Professor Paul Jensen (Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne); Jodie McVernon, (School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne), Scott Ewing, (World Internet Project, Swinburne Institute for Social Research.)

There will be a 3 hour session introducing NodeXL on Tuesday from 2-5pm 30th September at the main Parkville campus of UniMelb. The event is open to the public and is free.

It will be in the Old Arts Building Lecture Theatre B.

The main session will run from 2-4pm and there will be an additional hour for those that want to stop on for further training, finishing at 5pm

If you want to use NodeXL in the session, you will need a Windows laptop, and the Windows version of Excel (2007/2010/2013).

You can download NodeXL in advance from: http://nodexl.codeplex.com/.

Map and Building:

http://maps.unimelb.edu.au/parkville/building/149#.VCTinmS1Zlo

Download instructions:

http://nodexl.codeplex.com/releases/view/117659

Talk September 12th: Retail & Consumer Goods Analytics Summit, San Diego – The Impact of Social Media on Data & Analytics

30JulMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

RIS News, the leading media organization for retail executives, and Consumer Goods Technology, the leading source for the consumer goods sector, have partnered to launch the 2014 Retail and Consumer Goods Analytics Summit. The conference hashtag is #RCAS2014.

I will speak on September 12th at the event. I present the Closing Keynote from 2:30 – 3:10pm on Friday. My talk is titled:

The Impact of Social Media on Data & Analytics

Speaker: Marc Smith, Director, Social Media Research Foundation

People talk about the products and services the use, love or hate all the time in social media. These conversations can be better understood through perspective of social network analysis. Network theory views the world as a web of connected people. Network analysis builds measures and visualizations of collections of connections to reveal the key people, groups and issues in these conversations. Using social media network maps and reports the confusing landscape of tweets and posts comes into focus. Information visualizations of the virtual crowds of people gathered around every brand, product, event, or service highlights the range of variation in the shape of these crowds. Six different patterns have been identified so far, allowing social media managers to recognize the nature of the brand network they have and the nature of the network they want to have. Network measures are useful as KPIs for tracking not just the size and volume of a social media stream, but also the shape and structure of the pattern of connections. The six patterns: divided, unified, fragmented, clustered, and in and out hub and spoke, are a useful guide to strategic engagement in social media.

These are social media network maps and reports for the terms risnewsinsights and “consumergoods OR cgsm2014 OR cgtmagazine“:

risnewsinsights Twitter…

consumergoods OR cgsm20

NEW: NodeXL updates Twitter user and list importer

06JunMay 7, 2015 By Marc Smith

NodeXL has new updates to its importers for Twitter users and lists.

We have released an updated version of NodeXL that simplifies and merges the previously separate User and List importers.

The new, streamlined importer treats an individual user as a list of one.

Lists can be defined by pointing to an existing Twitter List or simply entering a list of delimited user names into the text box.

The updated importer now collects many more tweets per person and parses these messages to generate reply and mention edges.

You can now define a group of Twitter users and find out how much they reply and mention one another.

You can even pull in the followers of each person, to see if they reply or mention people they also follow.

But ever since June 11, 2013, Twitter has made access to the “follows” edge data very difficult (its just very slow). Designed and implemented prior to the update that restricted access to the follower network, the original NodeXL Twitter list importers relied mostly on queries that are now impractically slow for all but the smallest lists of users who have small collections of followers.

The update to these User and List importer is partially an adaptation to these changes. The importer shifts away from the follower network to focus on the communication interaction data in the content of Tweets. Since Twitter offers more generous access to Tweets than to information about who follows who, we are obliged to make better use of what they do offer.

The results are insightful! Here is a map of the connections among the members of the United States Congress.

April 28 & 29, San Jose, 2015

Data in. Decisions Out

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