Bas Reus' quest on self-organization and online collaborative spaces

This week I’m attending my first conference as a PhD candidate. It’s called Sunbelt 2013, and because it is in Hamburg and it rains non-stop, it better could be named Rainbelt. Nonetheless, this is the place to be this week for network researchers. And as I’m studying social networks, I’m glad to be here as well.

As a newbie, I can see it’s definitely a place where people meet old friends, make new friends and where it’s fun being part of it. Especially when on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights the drinks are included.

Yesterday and today I attended a workshop on dynamic networks and the software program ORA presented by Jürgen Pfeffer from the Carnegie Mellon university. A great tool, and when you are looking at temporal data, I think it’s essential. Probably a tool I can use in the near future.

Starting this afternoon, and continuing until Sunday morning, there are sessions where everyone can present their work. There are so many parallel sessions, that you will miss most of them because you have to choose carefully which ones to attend.

And as far as going into town and see what Hamburg has to offer, there is limited time for that as the Sunbelt program is very full, and I have to prepare for my presentation on Saturday morning as well. I will talk about people who bridge online groups by being an active member in multiple groups (which is slightly different from what you read behind the link). The data for the research comes from the online community we support at one of our clients from Favela Fabric, where I work.

At the picture below you see my view at the moment, it looks kind of silent and peaceful, but it’s getting busier every minute.  Now I will continue to prepare my presentation while I still have some time…

View from the west wing building 2nd floor.