Networking in this day and age is extremely important, and in some cases, it may be more important than the major listed on your degree, or your previous work experience. Through some of the most popular, modern day networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, users can establishes connections based on similar job experiences, interests, and professional relationships with coworkers. Upon searching through LinkedIn’s website, I discovered an article discussing the importance of networking in the connection sense, but also about networks in the visualization sense. Through LinkedIn’s new product titled, InMaps, users can envision their professional network through an intensive visualization.This interactive, visual representation of an individual’s network helps to understand the relationships one has with their connections. With this graphic, one is able to identify job opportunities, gather important insights, or leverage the visualization to seek helpful advice. The map is colored coded to help distinguish between different groups, companies and other affiliations. It also helps to separate out connections that are based from high school, college, or past job experiences.
What I thought was really unique about the visualization was seeing how one’s professional network was created over time. Unfortunately, upon attempting to create my own InMap, I discovered this tool was discontinued. However, the information and connections established on personal profiles can easily be copied over and put into another visualization application to create a similar graphic. Stat Silk is a site that creates a variety of interactive visualizations when sufficient data is input. One of the features from Stat Silk that I found particularly useful was the map function. This will be extremely useful for my group’s final project, which is based on geotagging Food Trucks in Los Angeles. It has interactive qualities which will be helpful in constructing a user-friendly site where consumers can click around a map of Los Angeles to see where specific food trucks are at the current time.
Although networks are important, they shouldn’t be applied to everything, according to Weingart’s article, Demystifying Networks. In a humanities sense, this complex interlocking system of relationships is uncertain, flexible, and not easily defined; however, they help assert a sense of organization. Through LinkedIn’s unique data visualization, InMap, professionals are capable of seeing how their connections establish a broad and diverse network over time, and help to organize them into different fields to make the research process more efficient.