Developing network models of development
projects: An introduction > Network
Examples > Communications
strategies and actual practice
Network of events linked
by co-participants
Between 2003 and 2006
the Making
Markets Work Better for the Poor (M4P)
project funded 8 packages of research, through a competitive bidding
process. The research findings were subsequently publicised in a series
of 23 workshop, which included a number of workshops addressing
cross-cutting themes. Of all the 583 participants in
total,
99 (17%) were co-attenders of two or more events. The distribution of
co-attenders is shown in the graph below.
A record was kept of all
workshop participants, in a participants x events matrix.
This was used to generate a one mode matrix, showing which events were
connected to which events, by their common participants. On average,
each workshop was linked to 11 other workshops, by co-participants
(i.e. 50% of the other meetings). The average number of co-participants
linking any two meetings was 2, with the highest number being 11. This
matrix was then used to genetrate a network diagram, which is shown
below.
Key:
Line thickness = number of people attending the two linked events. I
have not shown weak links (1 or 2 people co-attending), because it
makes the diagram too complex to appreciate the main structure
Node size = number of other events the event is linked to (this
includes weak links to events - to 2 people co-attending)
Arrows show direction of participation. E.g. some people who attended
the Inception event attended the subsequent M4P week event.
But
the reverse is of course not possible.
The questions that can be asked:
- Is the
structure that can be
seen what has planned, or at least expected? How does it relate to the
project manager's ideas of what research should be influencing what
other research?
- Could
different promotion of these events have changed this pattern of
co-participation?
- Could the
idea of
co-participation be used in future events, by seeking out
co-participants during the events and asking them to identify issue
connections between the two events?
- Can the
project managers rule out some people's co-participation because it had
nothing to do with the content of the events?
- Are there
other co-participants who are especially important, and who need
follow-up one-to-one attention?
Network centrality
measures may be useful here. All
other things being equal, the events with the highest
in-degree
centrality should be the most recent, and the events with the most
out-degree centrality should be the earliest. In the network
above this is the case only with the highest values. The Inception
workshop has the highest out-degree and the M4P workshop (the most
recent) has the highest in-degree. In between were exceptions to the
expected trend. "Associations,
Contracts, Branding and Labelling" had the second highest in-degree,
even though there were six other events that followed after it.
Commercialisation and Supermarkets had the third highest out-degree,
though there were 12 (50% ) events before them. These differences
suggest that "Associations, Contracts,
Branding and Labelling" had above average "pulling power" as an event,
and Commercialisation
and Supermarkets may have generated above average interest in
subsequent events, compared to other preceding events. As
above,
the question to ask is whether this was expected or planned, or not?
Developing network models of development
projects: An introduction > Network
Examples > Communications
strategies and actual practice
