Looking for the Black Dog
The Flyer
Basic description
My end goal is to establish a dog owners’ network in ITP. My idea is to pass several flyers to find the owners who have dogs of specific color (in this case …black) around ITP area. When the flyers are passing among people in ITP, we can establish a small network between people who have dogs.
Rules:
1. If you have or had a black dog, please write down your name and breed of dog at the end circle.
2. If not, write down your name and breed of your dog and then pass the flyer to your friend who you think might have (had) a black dog.
Characteristics
Basically, we can run a lot of similar networks with ipods, bicycles , cars….. It works like a user group. I choose dogs because I thought dog owners usually have more interesting experiences with dogs.
The dog owners’ network runs on the friend network in ITP. Dog owners in ITP are the basic nodes in this network. The protocols are the rules that all the people have to be friends and also dog lovers/owners. I will start the first several routes and each node will find its next node and maybe build parallel relationships between nodes. The basic content is the flyer that people pass through which will include dog information like breed, names and color. The topology will be basically a star shape but each node might also develop relationships between other nodes.
Stack
Each dog owner will check if he has a black dog and pass the flyer to his/her friend who might have (had) a black dog. Primarily, this data will be sent over through, but in certain topologies, it might be flow in a small group. Primarily, the transmission is sent directly from user to user over real-space. The basic function of this network is to reach people who have black dogs, and then building a dog owners’ community.
Prediction with my network
Predictions
My end goal is to establish a dog owners’ community in ITP. The network will start from me and spread in several routes. When I setup the rules, I do have some concerns regarding of color and detail requirements because these rules might change the result greatly. The strip has only 6 slots because I don’t want to have one strip goes to long and then block other flyers to develop. The longest will be a chain of six people. The shortest one will be one node that I directly find the owners of black dogs. I was worried about that I couldn’t find any existing owner of a black dog because I already know there aren’t too many people having dogs right now in ITP. Part of the reason is that we are all students. There are a lot of international students and we don’t’ really have the time or the space at our apartment. So I decided that it counts if the person had a dog in the past to make sure the network can run smoother and last longer.
The first network when launched should be in several chains, but it should become more complicated after a while. In my understanding, the network will develop into chains but each node will develop small peer to peer network because it is within same area. It should run fairly quick. In my prediction, it should take about an hour for running the whole network.
My prediction is that the network should start with a star shape network, and then grow toward the peer to peer network.
Result and discussion
I started the network in the afternoon, and did it again later in the night. The start point was hard for me because I don’t have a dog and I have no idea who has a dog right now. I decided just ask random people, and start the network. It worked quite well after that. In general, it worked but it is much more complicated than I expected. There are some good feedback and conversation.
Most of the ITP people don’t have dogs right now, but a lot of people had one or several before. In general, it’s easy to find people who had dogs, but harder to find people who have a dog right now.
Contrast
The whole network runs pretty fast. Within half an hour, I already did 5 routes. The routes differ greatly. Some dog owners already have an idea who has a dog, especially those people who has a dog right now. The dog owners’ network already exists. Because of this, some of the routes are very short. Also, I was lucky that I met several people have or had black dogs in the beginning. I found 3 people out of 8 flyers that had a black dog.
On the other hand, people who don’t have a dog right now have fewer clues about who might have a black dog. In this situation, the network usually took some time to develop. Sometimes it ran out of the name space in my flyer (2 out of 8).
Location
It worked pretty well in some areas like lounge. The density of the nodes is very good for running a small friends’ network. People do have some good conversations with other dog owners and were all eager to see who have dogs now. Some people who are not dog owners also enjoy the talk. The network spread pretty fast and efficient. On the other hands, the network didn’t run too well in labs. This is because people are usually busy there. People also have to run to others places because they
Some dog owners are really passionate about their dogs and willing to share a lot of information. It also extends the complexities of the network. On the contrary, people are not too interested especially when they don’t own nor had a dog.
If I would do it again…
In some cases I met during the process, people easily think of some others friends or family outside ITP because they already have a dog owners’ community. I think that it would be interesting to run the network outside ITP, but it would be very different in topology and harder to create a close community.
Another idea is to change the subject of the network like ipod. Another reason is that ITP is not a great place for talking about dogs. If it is about new technology or gadgets, I think it will get more people interested in.
Result of my network
