Hope everyone had a chance to recharge over the holiday weekend! Here’s a fresh set of nuggets about how networks shape your wellbeing, relationships and community to help you actively cultivate yours.
Wellbeing
Studies are starting to surface the impact of social isolation during the last 2 years on child development. The Pandemic has delayed social skills of young children, says Ofsted chief, noting that some children are having a harder time understanding facial expressions and others have delayed speech and language development. From the report itself:
“Although some children had mastered new skills during the first national lockdown, we found many had fallen behind in key areas of learning. For example, 44% of providers interviewed for our research found that children’s personal, social and emotional development had fallen behind. As a result, many providers put more emphasis than usual on care practices and personal development.”
Relationships
Most people barely give a second thought to the “People You May Know” feature on LinkedIn. However, it has a big impact on the people you find (e.g. potential employees, audiences for your content) and the people that find you (e.g. potential employers, new followers). The diversity and variety of those recommendations can have huge knock on effects at scale. If you want to geek out a little bit on how their recommendation system works, check out this post from the LinkedIn Engineering blog.
“The new system helped more members not only create edges (e.g., connecting to other members, following hashtags, subscribing newsletters), but also have conversations over these newly formed edges.”
Community
I just love this principle attributed to Elinor Ostrom, the first woman awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics:
‘Ostrom’s Law’ – that whatever works in practice can work in theory
She is most famous for her work on how communities can manage common resources. The miracle of the commons shares some examples of her research but also the challenges that she faced in shifting opinion. I’m struck by how similar her principles are to modern gaming community management:
Define clear group boundaries.
Match rules governing use of common goods to local needs and conditions.
Ensure that those affected by the rules can participate in modifying the rules.
Make sure the rule-making rights of community members are respected by outside authorities.
Develop a system, carried out by community members, for monitoring members’ behaviour.
Use graduated sanctions for rule violators.
Provide accessible, low-cost means for dispute resolution.
Build responsibility for governing the common resource in nested tiers from the lowest level up to the entire interconnected system.
The principles were quoted from this On the Commons post.
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About The Reliants Project
Reliant is my word for a person that someone depends on, an essential component of our social networks. With each edition, I’ll share useful nuggets about how networks shape your wellbeing, relationships, and community to help you actively cultivate yours. Whether you want to make better introductions, build better social products and services, or activate networks to make an impact in the world, let me help you reach your goals.
You can find more about The Reliants Project here.