Growing My Social Capital

Person One:

1)      Domain Expert: Dr. John Shea

2)      Dr. John M. Shea is an Associate Professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Florida.

3)      I simply looked up the UF staff directory and found that Dr. Shea was well versed in the area of application development. After that I just sent him an email of my idea napkin.

4)      It was a nice email explaining how application development works.

5)      Having Dr. Shea gives me a good name, and experience.

Person Two: 

1)      Narayan Ghiotti is the co-founder and creative director of Kinwa; a mobile design and development studio based in Gainesville, Florida. Narayan Ghiotti of Kinwa, Inc., was among the four finalists selected for the Cade Museum Prize, a contest that challenges Florida start-up companies to create the world’s next game-changing invention.

2)      I am putting them as a supplier.

3)      Mr. Ghiotti was mentioned in seminar with Dr. John Shea so that’s how I found out about him. Then I researched about his company Kinwa and simply emailed them with my idea napkin.

4)      The exchange between us was more on my idea being a great one, but realizing that the possibility of it actually being able to be done at this time slim. He mentioned how the voice recognition is already in use now with things like Syri and Cortana, but to have an app recognize a song from the human voice would be rather difficult.

5)      He acts as a valuable asset towards the creative side of the app, and how it could be used in business. He also adds experience and advice.

Person Three:

1)      David Muir is the Co-founder and Mobile Engineer at Kinwa, which is located in Gainesville, Florida. He was also one of the four finalists selected for the Cade Museum Prize.

2)      I am putting him as the market expert.

3)      I found out about David Muir because he is co-founder with Mr. Ghiotti, so he is mentioned in all the work about Kinwa. I just emailed Kinwa like before and asked for Mr. Muir. I sent him my idea napkin as well.

4)      He told me more about logistics and the design of the app, how it would function, that sort of thing. Some points about what the public would do was brought up as well. It was difficult to put any of these three men as marketing experts so I did the best I could.

5)      Once again he is an experienced, successful, intelligent person in my field and so having him as an asset is exceptionally valuable.

Reflection: I have never networked like this before, so really I have no comparison. All I can say is that it was a bit intimidating to put yourself out there and show your idea to professionals. The feedback I received helped a lot, and put me back into perspective of things. What was neat about getting in contact with these people though is now I have some confidence if I ever were to have to do this for something in real life that I would like to create.