What makes people powerful? Is it the level of resources they wield? The amount of knowledge they possess? Or, perhaps, is it their ability to get lots of different types of people to come to a party they are throwing?

In this interview with Valdis Krebs, founder and chief scientist at orgnet.com. you will learn about the power of informal networks and personal relationships in shaping our world. Through a quick introduction to network analysis, Valdis shares powerful ideas that can help us understand society as well as our ability to change it.

As Gilda explains in the DIT video below, these ideas can lead to serious breakthroughs in everything from neighborhood organizing to global movement building.
 

Valdis, how did you become a social network analyst?
I actually started in human resources, as a systems person. From there I got into technology and began to notice how new technologies were changing society. They were shifting both what and who were important. And as society grew more complex, I saw that we increasingly needed technology to analyze society.
 
The software I developed was originally created for IT project management. Only later did it take on its current use. After working for a series of large corporations, I started my own business in 1995.

What keeps you excited about doing this work?
I really like taking on new and different applications for the work. For example, one day I received a call from a CDC epidemiologist. He thought that the TB data he had could be visualized through my network analysis method. So we worked together to see if that was true. Ultimately, his data was presented at a major public health conference and the room loved it.

Calls like that are the best, where someone says “I’ve got this situation and wonder if your method can help.” This is how I originally met Gilda, aka Dr. Pop. She wanted to map organizations and nonprofits working on housing in LA. Eventually one of her staff members, Andrea, got into the conversation and the original focus changed to understanding how LA slumlords were working. By analyzing slumlords’ connections and networks, Gilda and Andrea got a new research approaches to fuel their organizing.

This points to what I see as the secret of innovation –– taking something that’s known technology in one area, and applying it to another area where it is currently unknown.
 
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Gene Sharp’s slim volume, From Dictatorship to Democracy, outlines why and how non-violent struggle is the warfare of the 21st century, and builds a template for thinking and acting strategically to remove dictators and build democracy.

The book has been a powerful influence within movements that have toppled dictatorships over the past two decades.

Sharp, is the founder and senior scholar of the Albert Einstein Institution.  He wrote the book (which you can download for free above)  in the 90s for the democracy movement in Burma.  It was first published there with the help of the Committee for the Restoration of Democracy in Burma.

If you had any doubts about the fact that social change is largely about the battle of ideas, at that time, Burma’s military dictatorship did not.  They renounced the book and people were condemned  to seven-year prison sentences for simply having it in their possession.

The book was translated into Indonesian by Indonesians. It was translated into Serbian by Serbians and became a major touchstone for Otpor, the Serbian student movement organization that led the nonviolent revolution that brought down Milosovec.

That struggle and Otpor’s actions and strategies were studied by the Egyptian student movement.  Online.  On youtube.  Then Otpor leaders came to Egypt to meet with them. And Egyptian student leaders went to Serbia to receive training in non-violent strategy and action from the Serbian students.

And in the process, the book was translated into Egyptian and became a resource for actions that are now known as Arab Spring.

A more much longer volume on non-violent struggle and strategy by Sharp is Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential, which briefly describes over 20 nonviolent struggles of the 20th century, including the Russian Revolution of 1905, Montgomery bus boycotts of the 1950s, School boycotts in South Africa in the 1980s, and the removal of Milosevic in Serbia at the end of the century.

Sharp methodically assesses these events as a foundation for his argument and methodology of strategic thinking, planning, and action to create a more deeply democratic world.

Last Saturday, some 3,000 thousand people gathered around Saint Paul’s cathedral in London to “Occupy the London Stock Exchange” (or LSX). Two days later, the camp is still up, as several hundred people sleep in tents each night and many more gather in the day to decide actions. Yesterday the Cannon of St Paul’s gave the occupiers his blessing to allow them to stay, after the police tried to force them out. I interviewed two of my friends and fellow activists, Mark Boothroyd and Jeremy Dewar, the day after the event.

From GlobalWomenstrike.net

Tell me about the atmosphere. What kinds of people were there? Was it a very mixed crowd? Or were most of the people the regulars we’ve seen over the past year out in the streets?

Mark: The crowd was overwhelmingly young, most in their late teens or twenties. There were older people there in large numbers, but it was a very youthful action. There was not a noticeable union presence, no banners or flags, although I noticed some trade unionists from London who are active in the anti-cuts movement.

There was a contingent from Anonymous with Guy Fawkes masks and several banners. There were lots of homemade banners and signs which people had brought, and as I arrived I saw people making more with bits of cardboard and marker pens, drawing inspiration from what was happening to come up with new slogans and ideas.

The protest was very international with people from all over the world attending. I met activists from Spain, America, Slovakia, Poland and many other countries. Some of the Spanish activists became active around the M15 movement earlier this year and had formed the Real Democracy movement here in the UK, which occupied outside the Spanish embassy for several weeks in solidarity with the protests in Spain. Others were various activists from around the world who lived in London and wanted to take part in the protests in solidarity with all the others protesting around the world.

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We have been fighting to get something started in Britain, we’ve been looking to the Arabs (in a remarkable and much appreciated change in point of view), to Tahrir Square and beyond. We’ve also been chanting “London, Cairo, Wisconsin! We will fight! We will win!” We’ve looked to Greece, to Madison, and now to Occupy Wall Street for inspiration. No one here knows quite what it is that could spark the wave of reaction and protest, but most of us are sure that’s what we need just to save what our parents and grandparents won from utter destruction, much less improve it.

The Tory conference took place just over a week ago in Manchester. So, I embarked on my first-ever coach journey full of my fellow activists, and however much we disagree about almost everything, I do appreciate the Right to Work folks for arranging a 10 quid ticket up and back. We left at 7 am from Leshisham and and it was a good 5 hours up to Manchester. Awesome. We then marched as we always marched.. Manchester was a beautiful and fascinating city, their firemen were goodlooking, their people turned out in masse as far as I can tell.

Sadly, although the Guardian reported 30 to 35,000 people at the march, I must confess it never felt that there were so many. It is the problem of a march without hills, where you can never be above or below and look upon the great stretch of people who are there on the streets with you. What was most visible was the police presence. I have never seen these mobile CCTV units, nor the metal police ‘cordon’ protecting the art museum from the evil protestors. The snipers training conspicuously large guns on us as we stood at the only place you could actually see the conference centre and yelled for a bit. No one was up for much of anything else, but that was hardly surprising.

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Recently I did a presentation to the staff of the Western Center on Law and Poverty about the search for the narrative.  The idea being that attorneys and support staff, including the folks who raise the money for the organization, could benefit from a discussion about the basics of why and how to tell your good work in stories.  I did ask the gathered who among them wrote outside the context of their work and was pleasantly surprised at the answers.  The people in the room included three ex-reporters, including one for the L.A. Times who’d done an expose about the terrible conditions in some retirement homes.  There was also a woman who with her husband had won money on TV game shows and together they’d written a how-to book on such.

Goes to show you everybody has a story.  That like in fiction where you talk about a character’s backstory, those elements that determine who they are when we come on them in the tale, in real life there are events that have lead us to where we are today as well.  Stories have layers.  There have been studies by neuroscientists attesting to humans being hardwired for stories.  From cave paintings, histories and deeds recounted around the camp fire to hand lettered illuminated manuscripts, storytelling has always been part of us.  Maybe our brains seek order in an otherwise chaotic existence.

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