Uptown

I recently accepted the challenge to raise funds to fight breast cancer as part of the 2008 Komen NYC Race for the Cure® on Sunday, September 14, 2008. One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime and the more we raise, the more the Greater New York City Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure can give to fund vital breast cancer education, screening and treatment programs in our own community and support national peer-reviewed research programs to find the cures.

Please join me in the fight by pledging in support of my participation in the Race or contributing generously to Komen Greater NYC. Your tax-deductible contribution will fund innovative outreach and awareness programs for medically underserved communities in greater New York City, in addition to national breast cancer research. You can make a donation online by simply clicking on the link at the bottom of this message. If you would prefer, you can also send your contribution to the address listed below.

Komen Greater NYC Race for the Cure
P.O. Box 9223, GPO
New York, NY 10087-9223

Whatever you can give will help! I truly appreciate your support and will keep you posted on my progress.

Thank you so much for your time and support in the fight against breast cancer! Every step counts!

Click here to visit my personal page:
http://www.komennyc.org/site/TR/Race/race2008-wide?px=1597643&pg=personal&fr_id=1150&et=4YOJa_poq0wLzTEdWfhKyQ..&s_tafId=30142

Click here to view the team page for Record Busters:
http://www.komennyc.org/site/TR/Race/race2008-wide?team_id=23650&pg=team&fr_id=1150&et=WVDA66Ok33IE1BaW8al7wA..&s_tafId=30142

In case you missed this, here it is:

"Study: Not Being An Asshole Boss May Boost Employee Morale

July 30, 2008 | Issue 44•31

WAUKEGAN, IL—In what is being called a breakthrough discovery in worker-administrator relations, a study released Monday in the Journal Of Occupational Science found that not being a total asshole supervisor may be linked to improved worker spirit. "In nearly every trial, we found staff morale runs considerably higher when bosses don't read workers' e-mail over their shoulders, complain about their superior salaries, or act in any way like giant, self- centered assholes," said Erica Gorochow, one of the study's researchers. "Similarly, we found that typical dick manager phrases like 'I don't disagree' can weaken worker disposition by as much as 63 percent." Although the study's findings have already sent shock waves through the business community, Gorochow warned that some of the results may have been compromised, as the bitch lead researcher was breathing down her neck the whole time."

(Crossposted at Complexity and Social Networks Blog)

Ines Mergel, David Lazer and I have a paper out in the International Journal of Learning and Change on voluntary engagement in knowledge sharing. Based on data from our study of forensic scientists in government crime labs, we investigated why individuals make the time and effort to answer questions directed at them. In a multi-level framework we identify several influencing factors at the individual, relational, group, and informational level. Here's the abstract:

Knowledge is essential for the functioning of every social system, especially for professionals in knowledge-intensive organisations. Since individuals do not possess all the work-related knowledge that they require, they turn to others in search for that knowledge. While prior research has mainly focused on antecedents and consequences of knowledge sharing and understanding why people do not share knowledge, less is known why people provide knowledge, and what conditions trigger voluntary engagement in knowledge sharing. Our article addresses this gap by proposing a multi-level framework for voluntary engagement in knowledge sharing: individual, relational, group, and informational. We provide illustrations from a particular knowledge-intensive community, DNA forensic scientists who work at public laboratories.

A pdf version is available from the Inderscience website.

(Crossposted at Complexity and Social Networks Blog)

This hardly comes as a surprise: Corporations are increasingly tapping into the social capital of networks such as Facebook and MySpace, as reported in this NY Times article by Laurie J. Flynn today. From a theoretical standpoint, it makes a lot of sense: The ties in these online social networks reflect several layers of homophily (friendship, common interests, membership in various groups, partially self-selected affiliation, etc.) in addition to what usually applies to even the best organizational communities of practice. Several companies are now integrating business intelligence applications with the social Web and the Internet. Such "interrelated pools of information" bring value to business, says Flynn, mainly by fostering communication among employees, but also by better identifying job candidates and target customers. Let's just hope that Facebook will react to this development and allow the creation of different profiles for the various personae we represent on the Internet.

The article appeared in a special section of the New York Times today called "Tech Innovation". The section is filled to the brim with exciting and innovative ideas - one of these coming from the ever resourceful Bernardo Huberman of HP Labs. Together with his team he developed the prediction markets tool "Brain" (Behaviorally Robust Aggregation of Information in Networks), which can be employed to predict the demand of a new service, such as Internet television. I loved Huberman's quote a propos his brainchild: "We want to reduce the wisdom of crowds to the wisdom of 12 or 13 people." Hopefully the right ones.

Sto notando una mia tendenza di auto censurare il racconto delle solite storielle quotidiane, chiaramente legata alla mia recente scoperta che questo blog viene letto da gente di cui proprio non me l'aspettavo...

Comunque sia, questa storia mi fa troppo ridere e quindi la racconto. Quando prendiamo la metropolitana con Ele spesso ci tocca aspettare a lungo (dal punto di vista di una bimba piccina) e quindi ci inventiamo vari giochi. Quello preferito di Ele e' di fissare i binari con gli occhi finche' vediamo un ratto. Ora ogni volta che scendiamo in metro, Ele chiede tutta agitata: "Dov'e' il ratto?" Ah i piccoli piaceri della vita newyorchese.