Two scientific NING networks started cooperation

[Dr. András Paszternák]

Before some weeks I met on the  creators.ning.com with Vera Monteiro, editor of the high-school physics and chemistry network in Portugalia. After some mails we started a cooperation:

The International NanoScience Community, scientific social network of 5700 nanotechnology researchers and students started a new project with student and teacher social network Comunidade Web 2.0 de Física e Química. The Portugal physics and chemistry network with 730 members contact daily bases high-school students addicted to natural sciences.

Hope, this can be a good example for all network creators and can bring closer NING sites members addicted to different but connected topics.

Main goal of the project is to bring nanotech closer to high-school education and to integrate common interest of a local and a global social network.

The first step is to share our news in both networks:

http://www.nanopaprika.eu/fq-news

http://fqnosecundario.ning.com/page/nano-news

As I told in one interview in 2010: …“I think the future of these networks is in collaboration and integration,” he says, “The war of the research social networks has begun…only the best, most interesting, and most scientific will survive.”… (in David Bradley: Gen F Scientists
Materials Today, Volume 13, Issues 1-2, January-February 2010, Pages 54-55)

[RF]

Very good ideas. Also very good topics for networks, Science is a wonderful field which I continue to love each and every day, in school I always did best in Science. Great work and good luck.

[Dr. András Paszternák]

thanks

[Nor Cal Social Media]

This is great!! Thanks for sharing!

Most people do not realize this, but as an online social media consultant I am applying nanotechnology science very specifically to my network.

For several years I have been involved in research and development with an emerging field called Holonics which deals with the autonomy and cooperation between components in a system such that independent agents operating on local logic can behave cooperatively as an intelligent whole. This incorporates research from various fields such as biological systems, modern management, manufacturing systems, artificial intelligence or distributed computing, and of course nanotechnology. When you start talking about simple machines engineered at a microscopic level, it's hard to imagine they can behave intelligently or function to accomplish anything specifically useful, but this is precisely what makes nanotechnology at the forefront of science today.

So for those of you who have no clue, this is what it means when you hear commercials talking about building a smarter grid or a smarter planet. You'll be hearing a lot more about it in the upcoming years because it's proving to be key to sustainability models- nature providing solutions that work to integrate people, environment, and support agile organizations. One that I think is just about to pop up, for example, is Biomimicry 3.0.

Sometime in the mid to late 90's I read a book by Stuart Kauffman that got me started on this- about Self-Organizing and Complex Adaptive Systems.  Interestingly, I heard that he moved beyond genetic research into more of a natural science social emphasis. That's kind of what I've been doing applying the methodologies to social networking and why a lot of what I have to offer businesses as a consultant is unlike anything else out there. Generally, most people don't seem to have an appetite for the science underlying the work, so I generally don't mention it.

Hearing about the new cooperative relationship of your two networks is quite simply BIG news in my opinion! I can't stress it enough how very meaningful and significant your announcement is. Fellow Ning Creators ought to give you guys a hand in ovation- it's no small thing and your sharing this is not lost on me. It's also a perfect example...really perfect... of how autonomous networks can come together and leverage resources in cooperation to accomplish something greater than you could working independantly. It's the science of nanotechnology being applied right now on a social technology scale. Fantastic stuff!!!

Best,

Anthony

 

 

 

[Peter Matthews]

Dear András,

This a good example to see. Thanks.

With the Research Cooperative (http://researchcooperative.org), I have been trying to establish a model for integrating a social network focused on scientific communication with the mostly non-networked parties involved in scientific communication: individuals, language-service companies, publishers.

This is a struggle because despite the potential benefits of networking and cooperation, individual parties are also concerned about their ability to compete in the world.

Maybe what I am really trying to do is harmonize the cooperative and competitive forces within the world of scientific publishing, to get the best of both approaches to working and communicating.

Of course, social networks can be competitive too.

Personally, I hope other scientific networks will see their efforts as complementary with the Research Cooperative, and take a cooperative stance.

There is potentially great diversity in how online social networks can be used in all areas of doing and communicating science. It will be interesting to see how they begin to relate to each other over time. A key area for development will be in the area of navigation, within and between networks.

Many tools are available for searching and linking networks, but there is still no obvious ideal strategy for using the tools.

It would be nice for example to have a customizable meta-search tool that any network of collaborating networks could set up and share. Ning almost invented the idea of a network of networks. Search engine designers have designed meta-search services. Let's put the two ideas together!

[This discussion can also be continued over here in the 'social networks' discussion group at the Research Cooperative]

[Vera Marques da Cunha Monteiro]

Thks András! :)

Without your idea and vision I would never imagine such great possibilities. Good Luck for us and for all that are beginning new partnership and cooperation across networks!

As Peter said, lets wait for more agile and improved systems of integration and search across networks. However, this we have and can do now is already great! ;)

[Ceddy J]

There's 3 NING Networks That Are My Sister Networks. We Just All Decided Are Visions Were Aligned And Made It Happen. Most of members join all of them, because you get a different element from each.

There's My Site: DuskSpot.com (Social Network Which Mainly Attracts Those Who Work and/or Fans of The Music World and Modeling World.)

Sister Site 1: DimesDepot.com (Social Network Focused On Those Who Work In The Modeling World.)

Sister Site 2: SchmoozeLounge.com (Social Network Focused On College Students, Which Most Are of African Decent)

Sister 3: BlackConvo.com (Social Network That Focuses News Surrounding The Black Community and Also Encourages Thoughts From People's Personal Experiences.

[Peter Matthews]

There are quite a few Ning networks with connections to science. See this posting at The Research Cooperative:

http://researchcooperative.org/group/other-networks/forum/topics/ni...

What we might need for effective cross-networking is a shared brand or logo for a science network circle, and a system for creating, updating and maintaining a common set of links.

The simple way to do this might be to have a group of editors working on a shared base document in dedicated group for this purpose, inside one of the member networks (I could easily set up a group for this purpose inside the Research Cooperative).

The same content could be duplicated on all member networks, so it would not really matter if the core group vanished on the first network; the same group could be reinstated on another network with little cost.

[Nor Cal Social Media]

I propose TCI:

The Consilience Indice

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson - basically the idea that different branches of knowledge derive their seemingly distinct principles from the same natural laws, and that for the benefit of society we should work together to index where they intersect rather than adding unnecessary & wasteful complexity for the purpose of their own distinction.

Indice as used in Jean Piaget's The Mechanisms of Perception - "For example, if I perceive the intertwined branches...I cannot tell if branch a is infront of or behind branch b until, reaching their point of intersection, I see...This relation...then acquires the role of an index which allows me immediately to structure the overall pattern of the relative positions of the other parts of the branches. But this index is itself a part, or an aspect, of the totality of what is signified." (p.286 my copy)

For the logo, I submit an example that perhaps you might be able to find or make an equivalent therof in Japan, and that perhaps can be appreciated with regards to the epistemology & subsequent indicing of branches of knowledge. To indice or to index? Perhaps you are better positioned to answer that question. I'll leave it to your discretion. This kind of picture though, I personally think says it all.

Best,

Anthony

 

 

[Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa]

Glad to hear about this integration. I am a member of nanopaprica. And mine is a science based art network ( http://www.kkartlab.in ) where we deal with a lot of science and research too!