20A – Growing Your Social Capital

Quick rant first before I write my interviews. Asking us to interview these people is excessive. If someone is a "market expert" they are probably a very busy person who does not have time to be interviewed for a class like this. I tried to meetup with many people only to be declined/ignored/have a meeting scheduled for after this assignment was due.
1. The first social contact I made is with Micah. Micah is the CEO of a tech incubator. They assist tech startups in by giving them a place to work and providing them with advice and connections. I am counting him as a domain expert, even though he does not know much about VR he is familiar with the tech startup scene. I know Micah because my dad is a part owner of the groundswell, and I have facilitated contact between himself and computer science club leaders at UF. I contacted him over email and then we talked on the phone. This person did not do a favor for me but rather I did a favor for them. I assisted in organizing a large group of UF students to attend a conference he is hosting. Including this person in my network is very valuable since they have lots of experience and connections in the tech startup area.

2. The second social contract I made was. Finding a market expert was extremely difficult and I didn't know where to start. I was not able to schedule a meeting with any VR tourism companies so I ended up settling for a hotel manager. Denny manages a large number of hotels across the US. This is not exactly my market but it is tourism so I will pursue it. I contacted Denny by getting his email address from his son who is a longtime friend of mine. I asked him about appealing to tourists, what are they looking for. Along with the process of having a hotel advertise your service to the guests for you and various other marketing tactics. I hope that I can transition Dennys knowledge of the US tourism market to the European one.

3. The third social contract I made was Owen. Owen is a tech recruiter who specializes in helping smaller companies find talent for highly technical projects. I am saying this person is my supplier since they can supply a team of talented individuals to build this product. A better supplier would be someone who actually builds VR devices but that is all done by major companies where I could not secure a meeting. I found Owen because I had heard his name mentioned before so I asked a person I knew had been recruited by him for his email. In our exchange I introduced myself and asked him to walk me through the steps he takes to discover and recruit talent. The favor he did me was taking the time to explain this process. Including this person in my social contract will help me take advantage of an opportunity because I will need programmers to assist in developing my project.

Reflect - First please refer to my starting rant if any instructor actually reads these posts. Honestly I do not see this experience changing the way I behave at net working events at all.