Jim Moore’s blog: Innovation, Strategy, Public Policy

Here is a story about revolutionary potential–supercomputers that you and I could build–out of cheap parts–and do real science..

Brad deGraf has written a wonderful piece
that deserves wide readership:  Smart Mobs vs. Amway, comparing
liberal action networks and the Republican get-out-the-vote initiative
that was described recently in a New York Times Magazine story. Here is the NYT story (I bought it, its available for 90 days) and here is an excerpt from Brad’s comments:

Many Democratic readers wondered how the Democrats – who are nowhere near as organized – could compete with such a machine.

The answer, probably, is that the Dems won’t. Instead, it will
be the massive ad-hoc network of networks working feverishly to
re-defeat Bush outside of the traditional Democratic machine, networks
(self-)organized in a completely different way.

If Kerry wins, it won’t be primarily because the Democrats made
it happen; he will simply be the lucky beneficiary of numerous and
diverse groups (MoveOn, True Majority, Americans Coming Together, Votewatch,
NOW, the unions, most of Hollywood, numerous voter registration
efforts, environmental groups, etc.) whose organizational model is as
different from the Republicans as the Minutemen were from the Redcoats.

Great, if true!  But I wonder–will the Smart Mobs prevail?

Howard Dean developed a rich set of nested networks of support–but
these nets did not, apparently, engage those people most central to
word-of-mouth influence in their communities.  Dean lost every
primary but his home state of Vermont–and in most cases finished in
third place. Something went wrong.  It would be a tragedy if the
Democrats and liberals invest heavily to create new networks, but in
the end miss the members of the broader community who are
most important to the vote.

As uncool as the Republican Amway method seems to folks like me–and
to readers of the New York Times Magazine–the Republican method may
attract more of those who are most influential in their communities.

There may be a way to systematically study the question.  Here
is the argument: What really matters is affecting the
word-of-mouth influence processes in communities.  Word-of-mouth
rules. 

We need to know which of the two systems–liberal network or
Republican hierarchy–is most likely to affect word-of-mouth influence
processes.

A several-decades study of word-of-mouth influence by Roper
indicates that a few people have an especially high degree of
influence over the conversations and word-of-mouth memes in their
communities.  Roper studies the sociology of influence in detail,
and reaches out to the most influential people to learn their
opinions.

Now there are methods of using commercially-available marketing
databases (think: Experion) to identify these especially influential
people in large data sets.

It would be fascinating to identify the most influential
word-of-mouth people in, say, Ohio.  Then we could compare our
list to that of the Amway Republicans and the Smart mob Democrats–and
see which system has involved more of the key folks in communities. (We
could also, by the way, see how many of these folks are involved in the
blogosphere.)

No one has done this study yet, to my knowledge.  It seems to me that it is a valuable study just waiting to happen.

Thanks to Alex for sending this material along:

From: “Alex N. Steffen”
Date: Sat May 8, 2004  5:28:15  PM US/Eastern
To:  http://www.movementasnetwork.org/ Movement-as-
Network, the focal point of environmental debate on these issues; and
http://www.network-centricadvocacy.net/2004/04/
helping_nationa.html Network-Centric Advocacy’s take on them.

I also think ” title=”http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18605
” target=”_blank”>http://www.alternet.org/story.html?Story…
 ” title=”http://www.network-centricadvocacy.net/2004/04/helping_nationa.html
” target=”_blank”>http://www.network-centricadvocacy.net/2…
 ” title=”http://www.worldchanging.com
” target=”_blank”>http://www.worldchanging.com

“Another world is here.”
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