As of today, I’ve lived in Seattle officially for 1 year and 1 week. Though I don’t feel particularly settled right this second, that has much more to do with my recent move than any unhappiness in the city. I’ve really been enjoying myself here: found a great job, taken advantage of the surroundings, bought a condo, and have met tons of people.

On that front, a co-worker and I were talking recently about how we meet people and network, and he suggested I should graph my connections in Seattle. After a quick download, I made this:

That’s me in yellow, and most everyone I know in town. People who don’t live here but have connected me to friends in Seattle are shaded in gray; activites (like swing dancing) and organizations (like a frisbee team) are in boxes. There are 230+ nodes on the graph! I haven’t tried to link this to Palm Desktop or include any meta-information (like contact info or any notes about a person), but yEd seems to have some provisions for that kind of thing.

The graph doesn’t necessarily help figure out how I should network in the future – some very fruitful connections go through people I don’t know well at all, some people I would have thought to be well-networked haven’t been, and vice versa. But, it is fascinating that each line is a story (or several), and it’s a nice way to remember it all. I’m gonna try keeping this up-to-date – it’s a fun experiment.