Journey by Dmitri Dawkins

Free Idea: What is your HWT Street Hustle

// October 31st, 2011 // No Comments » // Technology

How many of you have heard the song Street Hustle by Specialist? If you haven’t I have embedded it below.

I like it because it captures the street hustle mentality in Jamaica. Which brings me to my idea. While waiting  by Pavilion Mall in Half Way Tree, Kingston, Jamaica yesterday I saw trends. I was intrigued at the diversity of people walking around and as usual thought to myself what would I sell to suit the different groups. So then came up with an idea for a website or fb app for people to input data (their personal preferences) and an algorithm would decide what they would sell based on what products they use and their personality.

Personality questions would decide how much risk a person is willing to take and if they are looking for a long term or short term hustle. The products they use determine what they would sell preferably, because why would you sell a product that you wouldn’t use or endorse?

So if you use a lot of phone cards and drink soda, the app should recommend you sell soda and phone cards in HWT. However if you believe in health foods and need a hustle you can sell callaloo, banana chips and bag juices. Alternatively if you want to get rich quick then it may suggest you run a “cash fi gold” scheme. I think it would be fun, hilarious and share friendly once the algorithm and interface is well designed. No two people should get the same result once you include a wide range of products. Don’t forget to include social media share buttons!

I get ideas all the time and most I don’t have time to develop. Ideally I would like to give away an idea once a week for others to develop. It should be a crime for a “good” idea to go to waste. Good idea of course is based on opinion. If you use it please let me know!

Slash Roots 2012

// October 28th, 2011 // No Comments » // Technology

Hey everyone,

just want to update you on progress of the 2012 Slash Roots Developers Conference. The organising team is in full swing preparing for next year’s conference. The conference will be much larger and will have simultaneous events in other countries. Will release some more information as soon as I can.

Did you attend the last conference? We are interested in your feedback and suggestions for the next one. Just leave a comment on the post below.

Thanks!

Using Social Media to Activate Communities

// April 13th, 2011 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing, Technology

Yesterday I presented at the Junior Chamber International St. Andrew general assembly. I spoke about Using Social Media to Activate Communities and Organisations. Unfortunately my talk wasn’t recorded, but please see my slides below with the main points, I suggest you view it on full screen:

Approaching Twitter Demographics

// March 30th, 2011 // 2 Comments » // Cool Stuff, Life, Social Media Marketing, Technology

Recently I was introduced to InMaps from Linked In. What it does is analyze your Linked In contacts and their contacts to show how your professional contacts are connected. It then colour codes them based on common links. Finally users who are more connected get bigger dots than others. See mine below:

This is pretty cool because now you can see how your contacts are connected. But how else can data visualisation help us?

Location:

I have been trying to track keywords and events based on location via social media tools for a long time. The issue with social sites like Twitter is that people don’t set their location correctly. For instance if a Twitter user enters Jamaica as their location then it assumes Jamaica, New York, USA, not the country. Also people use other terms like jamdown, jamrock, or just cities like Kingston or Montego Bay. When trying to find tweets from a specific area even if the person matches the keywords the location may be off.

So I first considered creating a list of Jamaican twitter users, however how will this be updated (migration etc.)? Then I thought of tracking interactions and then flagging users as Jamaican, but once again that would require alot of human interaction. Ideally I want something automated and dynamic. InMaps gave me a potential answer. Track interactions between users and then group them into subsets just like InMaps. Couple that with a metrics system, where a user with properly filled out Location or listed under multiple twitter lists with specific keywords or Klout has a higher metric than others. When users are associated with other users with higher metrics it helps to create focal points for the network.

Online communities are associated by content, relation (friends, family, groups, alumni) or location. By establishing the link between individuals online we can create a dynamic social mapping tool more accurate than what currently exists, even more accurate than what the user them-self knows. This would allow analysis of keywords by social-location-grouping or possibly by profession, education, and more.

What are your views?

Radiation Dose Chart

// March 21st, 2011 // No Comments » // Life, Technology

I really do love XKCD, they make the most awesome comics. This time they have made something to help everyone understand the radiation levels in Japan: