Today's guest in Open School of Psychology - Ivan Delchev

by: Georgi Stankov

Today at Open School of Psychology we had a honorable guest - Mr +Ivan Delchev - co-founder and co-owner of Soft Consult Group. He is the head of the company's Quality Assurance department and a successful independent internet marketing consultant. 

Mr Delchev shared with OSP's students his company's experience and fundamental principles in management, leadership & co-leadership, staff recruitment and training, and the overall process of developing a new product from the initial discussion with the client, through the test and re-test procedures, to the final implementation. We also used Mr Delchev's competence and asked for his feedback on our very new Small world project.

Later we made an analysis of the interview with Ivan Delchev. The students discussed the psychological aspects of what we learned about the software development companies and their work. 

Photos in three steps:

We are very official... and stiff as trees :)
Ivan Delchev is the high man with white-grey shirt.

Here I show to students how to overcome the camera stress.

He-he... We rule!

We will upload the video from the interview with Mr Delchev in two weeks. Of course, we will inform you in time - this conversation is a worth watching!

Short report from OSP: recent deeds

by: Georgi Stankov

1st row: Seli, Yanko, and Krisi; 2nd row: Kito, Stoyo, Georgi, and Petya.

 Here is a very short report about what is going on with our Open School of Psychology.

As you already know, we started our first academic year three weeks ago with eight students. Fortunately, the group cohesion is growing. I have noticed that after three weeks of getting to know each other, now the members are more open, devoted and creative. On Sunday we were very productive. As result we built the foundation of our study of small world phenomenon via online social networks. By the way, the regular themes of the day were SWOT-analysis and smart-goals. I encouraged students to use these new tools while discussing and planning our team's next steps.

Two of our students were missing because of their SAT 1 in Plovdiv, but next week we will be together and hopefully we will work even more efficiently.

Moments from the discussion: the gents were enthusiastic and action-oriented, and the ladies were more skeptic and analytically-thinking-oriented. :)

Small world phenomenon revisited

by: Georgi Stankov

Stanley Milgram (1933 - 1984)

We are happy to present the new initiative of Open School Psychology, the psychological division of The Garden Association: Milgram's small world revisited. 

"Small world revisited" is a project, inspired by Stanley Milgram's classical social networks' experiment, known as "Small world phenomenon" or "Six degrees of separation". 

Milgram found out that between two distinct (both in physical also social terms) persons there are average six degrees of separation, e.g. John could reach Tom in six steps (1st - acquaintance, 2nd - acquaintance's acquaintance, 3rd - acquaintance of acquaintance's acquaintance, and so on). Our team of students, led by Georgi Stankov, will revisit and retest Milgram's experiment, by adapting it to today's conditions.

In the 1960s there was not internet, so Milgram made his experiment through the offline networks. The social scientists of the time did not think that in few decades there will be a powerful alternative for establishing and maintaining relationships, as well for exploration of the social bonds between people. But today the majority of people use the Internet to communicate quickly and easily, relationships became more informal, and as result locations or distances stopped having importance.  Now, in 2012, we try to research the online social networks and how they link people.