April 01, 2008
Fave 5, 10, 20 how about 150?
In the US the cellular carriers are trying to convert us all in groups. “My BFF Jill”, and Fave 5 call groups are being touted like we are all knowing insiders in social network newspeak. But are these network suggestions of friends list artificial? What is the right number to consider in developing a network of peers and friends.
Antropologically speaking it seems to be 150 other people.
Dwight Irving has been trying to get my attention to these issues of social networking. He has introduced me to a community of Robin IM Dunbar fans. In particular I have been reading an article that asks the premise why would your body give 20% of its energy to support 2% of its mass. Or stated my specifically, why do we have brains?
The interesting analysis “we have brains because of our need to be social”. Now I am not going to take you down into social networks. But I am going to take us into the discussion of call patterns.
In theory what this says is that people function best in groups of less than 150. So in theory we should see a pattern in the way we call that hits a limit at 150.
It strikes me that this should reveal itself in a number of ways.
1) Call centers. If anyone has call center experience with a group that is greater than 150, I would love to understand how its organized. And if you see problems that you would not expect to see if you were running a group below that number.
In theory call support should be harder to maintain.
2) Billing Records. Our overall bill patterns should show repetition in numbering that relates to professional and personal social networks.
My own take is that women’s phone records should show greater spans of reaching the 150 mark then men because they manage more social items such as children’s schedules etc.
3) Sales. If I am reading this right now matter how many cold calls a person does they should in theory top out on quantitiy and start to exhibit quality numbers somewhere below 150.
I am sure there are other ways to interpret this and my own take is that it says something about the way we work as well.
If you keep a journal of your work like most of us do, you rapidly see that your conversations probably keep an inner core. Regardless of weather the people are on the inside or the outside of the company.
So now that I wrote this, let me ask do you think you have a limit to your ability to function above that number or not?
Background
http://www.commonsenseadvice.com/human_cortex_dunbar.html
http://www.liv.ac.uk/evolpsyc/Evol_Anthrop_6.pdf
Posted by carl at 09:28 AM | Comments (0)
January 14, 2008
A Call to Action: Making IP Phones “Just Work”
Your home phones and your cell phones are very easy to diagnose. They either “just work” or they don’t. But when it comes to IP Phones the configuration can be anything but easy. How come it’s so hard to get an IP phone connected to the network? What issues need to be addressed? We will start with implementation issues.
The implementation of standards has been subjective. Standards compliance can be claimed, while still pushing for proprietary implementations. Interoperability tests have been done in a manner that lets compliance be proven in private and leaving the public uncertain as to what is available for use when connecting to network operators. Worse of all network operators have supported plain POTS interconnection, while leaving compliant IP phones beyond the scope of their network configuration.
This webinar is a call to action in the autodiscovery and configuration of IP phones. The assumption is that as a base the use of protocols (such as DIAMETER and TR-162) should enable autodiscovery independent of proprietary information. As a result the device should be configurable with a service provider or proxy server. Interested parties are invited to join the call and work with the rest of the industry to deliver on this vision for IP phones to just work. Our first Birds of a Feather meeting will be March 18th at Spring VON.
This Webinar will be held January 30th at 10:00 AM EST
Posted by carl at 03:07 PM | Comments (0)
December 25, 2007
Shameless plugging of the NING thing.
In a previous post, I shared my thoughts on what a date with Facebook would be like. (see http://carlscorner.pulver.com/archives/2007/10/the_newsletter.html )
So after dinner with Facebook, I decide we would just be friends. However, Facebook looked at the check and wrote some notes about me in a book. I don’t know if the information will be shared, but I decided to never invite Facebook into my house.
My understanding is other people who took facebook out have complained enough that Facebook no longer does this, but G-d only knows what other tactless acts are possbile.
Here is my commitment to you if you join me at pulvermediacommunity.net. Pulvermedia will use it for only industry specific self promotion. The benefit to you is that you will not be bothered by a lot of periphereal stuff, but will a good place to keep in touch and see the latest presentations.
Posted by carl at 05:59 PM | Comments (1)