In keeping with the subject of our book, Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, we wanted to see how the people that attended the event connected and what the network that formed would look like.

To do this we gave each attendee a sheet of stickers with a unique number on them.

We asked that each attendee exchange stickers with anyone they “linked” with and stick that person’s number on to the back of their sheet.

At the end of the night everyone turned in their sheets and I entered the data into Many Eyes, a new initiative by IBM’s Collaborative User Experience Visualization Lab whose purpose is to “democratize visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis.”

Looking at a visualization of these results is all the more interesting as I think back on the event and remember that each of my links was a real life connection with a real life person. For me, this is one of the awesome powers of visual communication. The image itself conveys information in a way that words simply could not. But on a more personal level graphic representations of ideas or memories provide a depth of understanding I just don’t get any other way.

As with most of the other people who read the book, I wonder how this new perspective and understanding about how networks form and work can be used in my design work. Will it allow me to devise a way for a network to grow or to remain healthy and vibrant? Can I use my new knowledge to make myself into a well-connected “hub” or identify existing hubs to become a more active and connected part of an existing network?

One thing I certainly got from the book was a new perspective on how the world works and there’s not too much more you can ask of a book, right?

Finally, to wrap this all up in a neat bow that ties together networks and the book club, head on over and join the new UX Book Club NYC Ning social network.

Looking forward to connecting with you.

- Ray