ITP Thesis Presentation: SokoSquare from lee-sean on Vimeo.

Download PDF of my SokoSquare thesis paper

And here is the back channel chat log from Chatterous:

maddparker@… sent an instant message at (05/05/10 13:19):
i have a friend who’s nickname is soko
tom.igoe@… sent an instant message at (05/05/10 13:19):
good.
tom.igoe@… sent an instant message at (05/05/10 13:19):
everyone should know about it, Gordie
Gordie posted from a guest at (05/05/10 13:20):
Lee-Sean leading the dapper award for the day
ruferto posted from a guest at (05/05/10 13:20):
like the white suit
maddparker@… sent an instant message at (05/05/10 13:20):
Pete Leonard!
maddparker@… sent an instant message at (05/05/10 13:20):
I could make so many Vassar CS jokes no one else would get…
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:20):
try us
maddparker@… sent an instant message at (05/05/10 13:21):
nah, maybe offline
clmensch@… sent an instant message at (05/05/10 13:21):
he just did
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:21):
lee-sean.presentation = smooth;
Xiaoyang Feng posted from a guest at (05/05/10 13:22):
Juri Imamura: http://itp.nyu.edu/thesis/spring2010_archives/Juri%20Imamura_ITP%20Thesis%202010_Large.mp4
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:22):
benjamins
Sarah Dahnke posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:22):
lee sean gets street in his presentation
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:22):
how often do you hear that in a master’s thesis presentation?
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:23):
amen
pl posted from a guest at (05/05/10 13:24):
slowly backing away.. enjoy presentations, and have fun.
Sarah Dahnke posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:24):
“conduit” is the word of the week
ckundo posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:24):
badgers
tom.igoe@… sent an instant message at (05/05/10 13:25):
I thought the word was “bear”
ckundo posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:26):
chicken & egg would be a contender
ckundo posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:26):
2 words tho
ckundo posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:26):
and a punctuation dealy
jorge posted from a guest at (05/05/10 13:26):
ampersand
ckundo posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:26):
bless you
jorge posted from a guest at (05/05/10 13:26):
thanks
andrewstyer@… sent an instant message at (05/05/10 13:26):
the lee-sean camera view (the upper-right thumbnail) is pretty awesome
tom.igoe@… sent an instant message at (05/05/10 13:27):
that’s awesome.
jorge posted from a guest at (05/05/10 13:27):
he traded that house for an ipad 3g
tom.igoe@… sent an instant message at (05/05/10 13:28):
I’d give three red paperclips for an apartment in Brooklyn
Sarah Dahnke posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:28):
did tom just hate on brooklyn?
tom.igoe@… sent an instant message at (05/05/10 13:28):
no, I live there. I love it there.
Marianne posted from a guest at (05/05/10 13:28):
No.
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:29):
www.soko.com is taken
Sarah Dahnke posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:29):
my rent in brooklyn is due
Sarah Dahnke posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:29):
maybe I can pay with paperclips
Sarah Dahnke posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:29):
or maybe leesean can find something for me to barter
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:29):
100,000 paper clips
jorge posted from a guest at (05/05/10 13:30):
roy: http://sokosquare.com/
paulparadiso posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:30):
Can you not pay them in dance?
Marianne posted from a guest at (05/05/10 13:30):
(Roy – I bet you can barter rustproofing if you want.)
Sarah Dahnke posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:31):
paul, I bet you could get me out of at least a month’s rent with your merce cunningham impression
tom.igoe@… sent an instant message at (05/05/10 13:31):
now that’s a specific impression!
paulparadiso posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:31):
deal
Sarah Dahnke posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:31):
tom, you should see it
Sarah Dahnke posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:32):
maybe paul could do it on the break
tom.igoe@… sent an instant message at (05/05/10 13:32):
I should.
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:32):
rustproofing?
Marianne posted from a guest at (05/05/10 13:32):
(did you read the link you sent?)
jorge posted from a guest at (05/05/10 13:32):
i do an impression of merce cunningham in the composition and choreography phase. mainly i just roll dice.
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:33):
now i did
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:33):
i prefer engines
Sarah Dahnke posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:33):
jorge, win
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:33):
clap, clap, clap
ckundo posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:34):
stern hiss
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:34):
oohhh, me
jorge posted from a guest at (05/05/10 13:35):
http://blog.sokosquare.com/ needs some updatin’
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:35):
will program for food
andrewstyer@… sent an instant message at (05/05/10 13:35):
what can i trade him for his jacket?
Sarah Dahnke posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:35):
if I programmed for food, I’d never eat again
paulparadiso posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:35):
a velcro jacket
mustafa bagdatli posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:35):
your weird thing with velcro
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:35):
if i danced for food, i’d get hit w/tomatoes
tymm posted from a guest at (05/05/10 13:36):
i gave up eating a long time ago.
ckundo posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:36):
tomatoes nom
ckundo posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:37):
I can decorate Peters house..with beer cans
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:37):
that’s a great idea
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:37):
clpa, clap
tehaynes posted from a guest at (05/05/10 13:37):
just have to throw it in there. the bell reminds of spelling bees
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:38):
delay( 120000 );
ckundo posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:38):
I spelled “cloud” wrong in a spelling bee
ckundo posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:38):
humiliating
ckundo posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:39):
I was 14
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:39):
i still can’t spell buroucraecey
ckundo posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:39):
beurocarcy
ckundo posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:39):
bureaocracy
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:40):
buracracy?
jelanijohn@… sent an instant message at (05/05/10 13:40):
barrackacy
Roy Vanegas posted from the web at (05/05/10 13:41):
that’s it!
jelanijohn@… sent an instant message at (05/05/10 13:42):
ok, 20 mins to get to school before next presenter
jelanijohn@… sent an instant message at (05/05/10 13:42):
gotta pwrwalk
Xiaoyang Feng posted from a guest at (05/05/10 13:55):
Lee-Sean huang: http://itp.nyu.edu/thesis/spring2010_archives/Lee-Sean%20Huang_ITP%20Thesis%202010_Large.mp4

On the tech side, I have been researching various frameworks for developing the new version of SokoSquare moving forward.  Looked into CakePHP and CodeIgniter and looked at some how-to videos.  There’s also the Ruby on Rails option, but I think I’m over my head in this area.  Meeting with Elizabeth tonight to discuss, and need to loop Peter in too.  In the mean time, I need to finish mocking up the various user registration pages.

Also, found out at the Awesome Foundation trustee meeting on Monday night that someone else is working on a project very similar to SokoSquare, so meeting on Thursday night to follow up.

A quick update on the status of SokoSquare:  Catherine, Peter, and I went to a “how to pitch” workshop at Stern this Tuesday and got some practice presenting and feedback from other teams.  We have a dress rehearsal of the full pitch next Wednesday.

We will also be participating in an ITP pitch-off this Saturday, for which I prepared this new 1-pager on our project.  In short, we are getting lots of opportunities to practice and refine our presentation for different audiences.

In other news, the Drupal intro session at Purpose I was supposed to attend was canceled, so I’m going to look into other ways to get up to speed on the tech side of building the next SokoSquare prototype.  In the meantime, I will focus on developing the user interactions and the trust mechanisms (I got lots of good feedback from my thesis group on this on Wednesday).

Wednesday: Catherine and I had lunch with a professor/VC who gave us some very good feedback. But also raised some questions about our direction. Need to narrow down and make choices that I hadn’t thought of before. I had thesis class later that day. The best suggestions were to go ahead and start wireframes and mockups. And develop user scenarios. And the best advice of all: divorce the creative process of Soko as my ITP thesis from the “how will you make money” demands of the biz plan competition. The best advice I’ve heard this week.

Thursday: Feedback session on the biz plan draft at Stern. We scored an “excellent” on the exec summary, “good” in the other sections. We need to tweak the financials, but we have a roadmap. Got some excellent advice about using principles of game design to incentive users to participate in SokoSquare and as a way of visualizing and communicating social currency on the site, i.e. how can you trust someone. Lots of crazy ideas in my mind right now. Time to type them up, more soon.

Ok, that was free-form and stream of consciousness, but I’m on a roll. Now back to work…

Latest documentation here (PDF).

SCORE meeting notes with Judith Katz:

We need to find out from potential users how much they are willing to pay for SokoSquare. Judith, the advisor, suggested that we do another round of Survey Monkey for this.

No need to deal with incorporation for the biz plan competition. She suggested S-corp or LLC if/when we get funding, but in our case, LLC might be better because for an S-corp, all members must be at least US permanent residents (sorry Catherine). LLC is ok for foreigners though.

We really need to hammer out the details of our marketing plan. And I need to be better off the cuff with this too, as it is the weakest part of my shpiel right now.

Judith loved the pop-up stores/gallery idea. And the “fun and community engagement” part of SokoSquare, so I will develop that aspect.

We should get some sort of faculty advisor at Stern, even if the prof’s name isn’t attached to the project officially. I am getting advice from a couple profs at ITP, but it would be good to have a Stern perspective as well.

I met with Elizabeth today to discuss the to-do list for building the prototype. Here’s what we came up with:

Lee-Sean to-do

All CSS and blog theme (March 1st)
Change header logo
Change menu font color
Add twitter and facebook widgets to header
Fix up email copy
Photoshop mockups for March 1 venture fair

Enter this list into issue tracker

Elizabeth Dev March 1
Migrate files !!!! – before this weekend
MySQL errors on welcome page (generally need to clean up page, maybe add a suggestions section of what to do next.)
tweak layout of text blocks in search results page
Fix up match search (current search is one matching on an individual basis) <- I would like to get Peter involved in the matching algorithm.
Stop allowing algorithm to match null fields
Specify user name in matching results

Delete suggestions as the have / want lists get filled out.

LONGER TERM – to be assigned
human readable URLs
Set up user control bar for easily acessing and editing haves, wants, and matches.
Include a user profile pic, general reference links option
Add “new users” and “featured users” bars on the bottom of the front page (Doesn’t make sense to worry about this until there is enough users to fill this space)
Enable user to “follow” other users
Integrate with Linked in, Twitter, and Facebook APIs
Allow descriptive explanations of haves and wants
Set up user submitted questions and matching answers section to help people better understand what values are important to them.
Enable one click alerts for questionable content.
Integrating a list of users opt in for notifications (sourced)

Add functionality to rate users
Add functionality to visualize users social graphs
Add functionality to allow users to create embeddable SokoSquare widgets for their own blogs/sites
Create mobile version of the site. iPhone/Android app?
Add geo-coding functionality to allow users to act hyperlocally (possibly integrate with mobile version)
Transition to Drupal or Ruby on Rails? – do research
Create API or standardized machine-readable XML convention for expressing user into to allow for third party mash-ups of data

CONTENT
Generate a FAQ page with how tos and justifications (how to edit your profile, how to contact a user, why you should fill out your profile, who has access to what information, clarify what kind of emails to expect from us so that users know if phishing occures)
Get some sample user pictures to spice up the pages (organize a photoshoot with props?
Fix up email copy
Add a confirmation page or word filter to cut back on spam bots.
Beef up the “about us” section with blurbs on the creators

Here are a few more milestone/deadlines:
February 17 – Draft of SokoSquare business plan due for Stern contest
End of February – Draft Revisions Due
March 1 – Stern Venture Showcase, finish to-do list for prototype by then, and have a pitch deck first draft
March 31/April 1 – Stern Strategy Feedback Session & Pitch-off Practice – have pitch deck completed and practiced
April 16 – Semi-Final Pitch Off
April 30 – Final Pitch off and award ceremony

Here are a couple “brotastic” pics from birthday party last night at XR Bar.  Photos courtesy of Catherine White, who co-hosted the party, and whose real birthday is in January.

In other news, the SokoSquare team has made it on to the Semi-Finals of the 2009-2010 NYU Stern Business Plan Competition.  A wonderful birthday present indeed.