Another one of my wacky culinary experiments. Some strong flavors to get your day started right. Scrambled eggs + fishy fish + curry = the breakfast of champions.

Videography and off-camera commentary by Kris Hartley.

I had some big design breakthroughs for my thesis this week. I want to take the online barter matching idea and make it open source and truly peer to peer, rather than concentrated in a central database. Users will be able to create their own “barter baskets” which list their preferences for what they want and what they have to barter. Be barter baskets will then be able to query their friends, friends of friends, etc. baskets looking for complementary matches. Sound crazy and vague? I’m working on it, but also cultivating mystery. More soon.

Latest documentation here (PDF).

Last week I attended a SCORE counseling session at Stern to discuss concerns about how SokoSquare is going along. Also met with SokoSquare team members Livia and Mayukh to discuss finalizing the marketing and financials section of the biz plan. Catherine and I met someone at an event who was interested in meeting with us to hear us pitch the project. Will follow up.

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

A few new cartoon T-shirt designs:

Saru & Shigeki by Hepnova
See other Monkey T-Shirts

Snarky Sad Panda by Hepnova
View other Panda T-Shirts

Assignment for week 1: Draft abstract and personal statement for my ITP thesis. [PDF]