Greetings! Thank you all for agreeing to attend the meeting. I am looking forward to seeing you in New Haven and to our conversation. As promised, there is nothing formal to prepare beforehand, but I would ask that you give some thought to two questions before the meeting (or on your way to the meeting). 
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER 
  1. What are the most salient issues for the study of social networks and gun violence? What do we know? What don't we know? And, most importantly, what would we want to know?
  2. If you could design your "ideal" study, what would it look like and what types of data would you collect? 
MEETING OBJECTIVES & OUTCOMES
The meeting's main objective is to generate some basic parameters and ideas for an original research design aimed at advancing our knowledge of gun violence and social networks. The meeting will consist of a lot of brainstorming and at least one breakout session. All of the information and ideas will be recorded during the meeting, so participants will not need to produce any formal deliverables. However, we should walk away in a direction that leads to the next step for a more formalized research design.