“So if you think about it in this way, you’re sitting in the center of a series of expanding circles of friendship or acquaintanceship with a very small inner core of about 5 best friends, and then there’s a sort of layer outside that which include about 15 people, and another layer outside that of about 50, then you’ve got your 150. As you go down through those layers, the quality of the relationships is declining, but it seems 150 marks a real drop off. Now, there’s at least two other layers we know about beyond that, one at about 500 and one at about 1500. There are suggestions for layers at about 5000 out beyond that, too.”
—The BEAST: America’s Best Fiend
March 2009
8 posts
“I know of web teams that have one person per 30,000 pages. I know of web teams that don’t even know how many pages they have. I know of web teams that don’t even know how many websites they have. Is that quality? Is that management?”
—How many webpages can one person manage?
Measuring Social Participation in a Science Museum
Inspired by both Peter Morville and Gene Smith, I created a honeycomb diagram for our science museum’s social participation as a way of measuring the success of the social experiments we’re conducting.
Gives a sense of place. Connects user to the physical space of the Museum, perhaps even redefines what the Museum’s space is for that person.
Educates. Teaches the user something they didn’t know (or didn’t realize they knew) before. Could be about themselves, their world or the Museum itself.
Encourages sharing. Incites the user to share (thoughts, media, etc.) either with the Museum or with their friends on behalf of the Museum.
Builds a relationship. Provides a way for the user to know the Museum or another user better through participation/interaction.
Fosters dialogue. Creates, establishes or otherwise encourages commentary and the back-and-forth of ideas and opinions. Can be synchronous or asynchronous.
Establishes transparency. Gives user an intimate view of the inner workings/strategies of the Museum.
Science as a way of knowing. Encourages curiosity and highlights science as a way to satisfy it. Demystifies the traditional assumptions people make about science.
Pictured above is how I’ve used the honeycomb so far, labeling each one as a different experiment we’re conducting and coloring in the areas I feel are strengths. I’m also handing out “coloring books” for other staffers to rate projects from their perspective.
Martha Stewart tweets to her 50,000+ followers asking if she can get her “tech guy eliad” to tweet for her on occassion. Glad to see her tweet a few hours later that she’ll be the only one doing the tweeting @MarthaStewart.
