Harnessing Dynamic Personal Social Network Applications

Introduction
In the past years, the capabilities of our mobiles phones have improved significantly. Modern, top end phones contain a host of sensing cabalities: accelerometer, proximity sensor, GPS, camera, microphone, etc. (Miluzzo, 2008) By using some of the technological features inherent in mobile phones, these devices can now sense where they are physically and in relation to other such devices. (Mulder, 2005)

Furthermore, these devices can have applications loaded onto them that enable the knowing and sharing of contextual information. These applications are known as Dynamic Personal Social Network Applications (DPSNA’s), defined by Ingrid Mulder and Henri ter Hofte from the Telematica Institute as applications that sense, mediate, visualize and in some cases interpret dynamic personal social network information as part of their service provided to end-users. (I. Mulder, 2004)
Social networking seems to be what these applications are good at and they could be prevalent in areas where a lot of social networking occurs. One such place is conferences, networking being attendees second most popular reason for attending after maintaining knowledge. (Odden, 2008)

To what extent can Conferences utilize Dynamic Personal Social Network Applications?

Why Conferences?
As mentioned before, networking forms a big motivation in attending conferences. Attendees wear badges around their neck, they want to be identifiable and sharing social network information is commonplace. However, conferences are crowded and on a typical 3 day conference, you would probably have spoken with tens of other attendees. This does not even begin to cover the amount of people attending and neither does it guarantee that the people spoken with are interesting or relevant to your social network at all. Then there is also the problem with remembering who you talked to and why.

The new Palm Pre, an example of a phone capable of running DPSNA’s.

Harnessing Dynamic Personal Social Network Applications
To understand how we can use these applications, we should take a quick look at the technical details surrounding them. Firstly, they are capable of sensing their location geographically and more importantly: their relation to other devices. Different technologies exist to achieve this: BlueAware for example, a technology running in the background of Bluetooth capable devices that enables such a device to be aware of other Bluetooth devices within a range of 10 – 100 meters. (Eagle, 2004) (Bluetooth, 2008)
Due to the size of conferences, this technology is sufficient in locating potential new contacts. Transmitting data amongst devices can happen via aforementioned Bluetooth technology or radio frequency identification technology. (RFID)(AIM, 2001)

If we refer back to the definition of DPSNA’s, we can see that these applications are smart. Through their sensing and mediating capabilities they are able to establish new connections. They are also capable interpreting current social network information e.g. they know who we already know and perhaps who the people that we don’t already know are connected with.

DPSNA’s can be divided into 3 categories: Future, past and present orientation. (I. Mulder, 2004) With the capabilities of DPSNA’s and a conference setting in mind, we can apply these three categories and give a few examples of each such application, whilst further clarifying these categories:

Future Orientation
Here we are using the application to identify potential future contacts. DPSNA’s can also make it easier detecting common ground, an important aspect of establishing new connections. (Clark, 1996) Imagine being able to see a potential new contacts professional history or even shared past colleagues. It makes it much easier to get in touch when these things are already known. The Lovegety, a very short range Japanese device built to let strangers get in touch falls under this category. (L. E. Holmquist, 1999)

Present Orientation
This refers to using the application in a setting where you are already in physical contact e.g. talking but would like to connect digitally. This forms the digital equivalent of exchanging business cards. However, here we can skip past the analogue world and go directly to our social network. This functionality exists already in the form of Pokens, RFID enabled devices capable of sharing social network information and a mobile service called Hallo my name is E, enabling the digital sharing of social networks via your mobile phone. (Poken, Unknown) (Hallo my Name is E, Unknown)

Past Orientation
Now we refer back to our encounters throughout the conference, refreshing the memory as to whom, when and where we spoke. Applications of this type exist in the form of geotagging devices for locating where pictures has been taken and mobile devices that notice when members of a particular social network you are part of have been in the vicinity. (ATP, 2007) (aka-aki networks GmbH, Unknown)

Conclusion
We have seen that conferences are ideal places to use DPSNA’s in order to enrich social networking, in all three types of application orientations. Conferences, where attendees are already wearing identifiers, suggesting that getting to know one another is a natural phenomenon could be a good setting in which to apply DPSNA’s.

Sources

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