INFORMS New Social Media Analytics Subdivision Thanks to Dr. Les Servi of Mitre

Dr. Les Servi, who presently works at Mitre, and I go back to our Applied Math student days at Brown University and both of us have continued  to work in operations research and its many exciting applications over the years.

The UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter and I had the pleasure of hosting his talk and visit  in November at the Isenberg School of Management and, as I wrote on this blog, he was terrific! After his presentation, he mentioned that he had proposed, and it was approved by INFORMS, a new subdivision, the INFORMS Social Media Analytics Subdivision, with him as the Founding Chair.

The good news is that this division is now "live" and I received the message below from Dr. Servi to disseminate this good news. Of course, it is not just for students, and more info is in his message, which I am sending out for communications purposes, and since I was asked to.

Best of luck on this exciting new initiative!

INFORMS Student:

After many months of planning today begins a membership drive for a new INFORMS Social Media Analytics Subdivision.  Dues are $6/yr. More information about the subdivision (as well as instructions about joining)  can be found at https://www.informs.org/Community/Social-Media-Analytics/How-to-Join-the-Section.

Please join.

Every now and then there is a singular opportunity to get involved with something new and exciting at its creation and to shape it into something great. I believe becoming a founding member of this INFORMS subdivision is such an opportunity. INFORMS is uniquely positioned to be a central hub for Social Media Analytics as an organization which brings together over 10,000 members who are technical strong, who representing the best in the world in a number of diversity fields, and whose interests range from pursuing pure theory to pursuing the applied, with many doing both.
As a student this is a chance to join early to participate, help guide, and a eventually help lead this new subdivision.  Speaking personally, around 20 years ago I became a founding member of the Telecommunication Subdivision and it was a pleasure to have a front row seat watching it grow from nothing to part of the INFORMS establishment.

After the membership drive I will be organizing a social media analytics cluster of talks for the INFORMS national meeting cf http://meetings2.informs.org/sanfrancisco2014/index.html   There will be well over 2,000 people attending this conference.  People interested in presenting a talk should contact me.

The key to the success of this subdivision is great momentum in its first year.  With many members and a cluster of talks as many and as good as last fall's cluster we will be well on our way.

The new Social Media subdivision seeks to be a unclassified, international forum to bring together
-       Researchers from academia, industry and government to exchange new analytical methods and to discuss newly formed problems;
-       Educators at the graduate and undergraduate level to learn about evolving challenges and solutions being developed and bring them back to the classroom
-       Different domains of application of social media analysis (e.g., from assisting in natural disasters, perceiving of evolving sentiments, to impacting consumption of consumer goods), to identify potential for the cross-fertilization of ideas;
-       Vendors and potential buyers of new tools which analyze social media to encourage innovation;
-       Social media service providers (who might eventually permit the sharing of anonymized data for purposes) and researchers to promote the exploration of new algorithms.
Please join and encourage people in your network to join.

Les Servi
Founding Chair
INFORMS Social Media Analytics Subdivision