Social network of the namesakes: the Jim Killeen story

by: Georgi Stankov

How many people in the world have the same name like you? I asked myself to this two years ago when few people from another country contacted me, believing that I am the author of the "The Universal Law", a weird semi-scientific theory. I told them it is not me, and everything finished... but still something had puzzled me. "Surely there others like me, but how many we are?", I said to myself.

Fortunately, there is a guy who didn't restrict himself only to questions. He is a LA-based film director, and his name is Jim Killeen. By using Google, he found out that many people in the world have shared his name. And then, in 2006, the journey begun! in He traveled around the world to meet his namesakes. And since he was a filmmaker, eventually he made a film. In his surprisingly entertaining documentary Google Me Mr Killeen presents six men also named Jim Killeen - from an Irish Catholic priest to a sexual swinger from Colorado. 

Think about it - isn't it strange that in the broad world there might be a person with different background, occupation, fate and lifestyles, but who is sharing with you some common identity - the name. For me, yes, it is strange but it's nice. 

And now imagine that this is a social network of namesakes. Cool, huh?

More information about Jim and his film:

• Jim Killeen: The Man Who Found Himself by Monica Hesse, in Washington Post, on August 13, 2007 
• Finding Yourself and Your First Film, on Google by Jim Killeen himself, in Huffington Post, on 09/08/09

The Chronicle: Team meeting # 2 (November 11th, 2012)

Today we interviewed our guest +Ivan Delchev about management, business, and marketing, and their relationship to psychology. Mr. Delchev is the co-founder and co-owner of Soft Consult Group, where he runs the Quality Assurance department. Mr. Delchev helped us by sharing his experience and bringing fresh ideas into our research. 

The group discussed certain ideas: 

• possible rewards for the participants in our experiment (for instance: as least degrees to the end recipient, and so on)
• the video’s optimal length and content (1:30)
• possible ways of popularizing it through more social networks and media (other than Facebook)
• getting recondition trough a number of organizations. 

We also considered the idea of getting sponsors to finance our project. Those ideas are still being worked out and refined, and we are still searching for other possible ways of expanding and improving our project.

I feel we've made significant progress today, by shedding light on ideas we've missed in our previous meeting. I certainly look forward to the next one! :) 

Three photos from the meeting: 

On the first photo we are too stiff... like trees :)
Ivan Delchev is the high man with white-grey shirt.

+Georgi Stankov shows how to express emotions :)

Well.. that's it.

The Chronicle: Team meeting # 1 (November 4th, 2012)

by: Georgi Stankov

At the moment we have discussed these topics:

Goal: our study aims to explore the degrees of separation via online social networks.

Methodology: Still many things are unclear, but there is a certain progress:

• We will use Facebook as a primary environment for the experiment. 
• Participants should exclude other participants as their 1st degree (with other words, Yanko can't give the message to Selime, Kito, or anybody from the group). 
• Each participant should share the link with only one person, which we define as "close enough to ask him/her for a favor." We think of a certain level of non-formal relationship - people should talk to each other on a first name, and so on. 
• We'll use media - video and message -to reach next degrees.

Comparison: we could compare a national and international level of interaction. For instance: how many degrees are needed to reach a person from Bulgaria (e.g. Tutrakan), and how many degrees are needed to reach a person abroad (e.g. Italy or Singapore). 

We made SWOT analysis and set smart-goals to see better the situation with its positives and negatives, and also to imagine if we are able to manage it.  

Next tasks: 

• On 18th of November we have to discuss projects about PowerPoint presentation, video and text, explaining the experiment. Persons in charge: +Petya Indjova, +Kito Kitev, +Stoyo Stoev. 
• On 18th of November we have to discuss participants' profile and methodology issues. Persons in charge: +Selime Salim, +Kristina Lazarova, +Yanko Zaprianov. 

Pre-test: Also we decided that we could make a pre-test  in order to assess how our methodology works. This means that we will make a small experiment only with the members of the group, so we'll see the (probable) weaknesses of our experiment and we'll correct them before the real experiment!  

Yes, guys! I really believe that great things lie ahead!

First words, Six degrees...

by: Georgi Stankov

Stanley Milgram
(1933 - 1984)

On 28th of October 2012 we were having a class at Open School of Psychology. We were discussing social roles, social atom, social networks, and sociogram as a tool to make a graphic representation of social links that a person has.

I taught about the "small world phenomenon" - the famous social networks' experiment of Stanley Milgram. He found out that between two distinct - not only physically, but also socially - persons there are average six steps, or six degrees of separation. For instance, Bill could reach Tim in six steps (1'st - acquaintance, 2nd - acquaintance's acquaintance, 3rd - acquaintance of acquaintance's acquaintance, and so on). Then I suggested to the group members that we could revisit and retest Milgram's experiment, by using today's online social networks.

And the story began...