The amazing event continues, The Central America Domestic Violence Hackathon entered day 2 in all seven countries; Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Washington D.C.

Bright, early, and ready to go in DC.., the entire MetroStar team made it back for a day full of hacking for a good cause. Team MetroStar: Jorge, Lee, Hector, Ross, Theresa and I, hit the ground running and so did the social conversation, as you can see on the Zoomph social mash up. (If you tweeted with #DVHackathon, you might see your face on there!)

If you read our last blog post, on Day 1, you would remember we chose to create an application for the House of Ruth; finding a way to use technology to connect service providers with employers, in order to help victims of domestic abuse find gainful employment.

After a few additional hours of coding, the teams were invited on stage to present their apps, websites and strategies.

Guess who was asked to present first? Yup, we were. Theresa and Jorge took the stage and we presented, Independence Project, a web based application database, allowing employers and service providers to collaborate and build a job bank for survivors of domestic violence. This solution provides access solely for service providers and employers, and maintains anonymity and safety of domestic violence survivors as all service providers and employers in the system are vetted.

Service providers are given the ability to search for job opportunities posted from employers, bookmark them, categorize and search, as well as reach out directly to the employer to learn more. Employers can register, post job listings, and connect with service providers who will in turn reach out to the victims themselves.

After our team presented we sat in on all the other team presentations such as Fuerza’s with their web app to combat coercive stalking through mobile devices and a check list to address stalking, as well as Tabula Rasa, who tackled the same issue we were facing,‘Spoon in the Knickers’ addressing the challenge of teenagers being taken and WDG addressing improving information Service Providers database with a Domestic Violence Database, amongst others.

After all the presentations, SecondMuse and The World Bank announced the winners as selected by the panel of judges.

And now the winners:

1. Fuerza

2. World Bank App

3. Tabula Rasa tied with The DV Database

Overall we had an amazing time and experience at the Central America Domestic Violence Hackathon, working with talented individuals from diverse backgrounds, collaborating over innovation technologies and solving issues presented by our subject matter experts. This was the first hackathon for a major of our teammates, including myself, and I think I can speak for our team, and say this will not be our last. We were completely honored to be involved with, from sponsoring the social media with our Zoomph social media mash up, to having the MetroStar team compete with a such talented and passionate community. We would like to extend a huge thank you to Nesian and SecondMuse for hosting this event at The World Bank.

The post The Central America Domestic Violence Hackathon – Day 2 appeared first on MetroStar Systems Blog.

We’re in Washington DC and here’s our recount of day 1.

Goal: Address the challenge of domestic violence by building technology solutions to assist agencies that work to support victims and advance efforts to bring perpetrators to justice.

The Challenge:

We were presented several issues by subject matter experts that described their problem, and their projected solution. We were able to listen to each one and pick an expert and help them solve their issue.

The issue we picked: Independence Project presented by Nicole Kaib in affiliation with The House of Ruth attempts to assist survivors of domestic abusive relationships, to gain independence with a gainful employment.

Other issues presented were extremely interesting, from developing protocols to protect survivors from surveillance (presented by Andrew Lehmann from the Tor project) to influencing cultural norms (presented by Erin Scheick (ABA) & Mariam Miller (World Bank) by assisting young males and coach them to better learning behavior or learning about forced marriage prevention, (Heather Heiman of the Tahirih Justice Center).

Our Process.

We sat down with Nicole and listened to her story, her challenges and most importantly, her goals.

After collaborating with her, we agreed to build a web-based platform that will connect employers, service providers, and victims of domestic violence to gainful employment. We immediately got to work and brought out the post-it notes, creating user stories, features and permissions.

Once we established what we were working with, we broke out wireframes, content and started a database to help connect service providers with employers for victims.

Picture a table covered with laptops, many caffeinated drinks, post-its and sketches with crumpled paper and headphones.

Fast-forward a couple hours later, and some caffeinated drinks, we have a prototype functioning website, with public facing content, and user login and search capabilities.

We had an incredible productive day 1, and are super excited for day 2. Make sure to follow along the event digitally with the Zoomph social mashup

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Social Media 101 Tips:

Business isn’t as usual; consumers have become empowered, and stronger than ever. Customers are on multiple social media platforms, increasingly vocal and being heard. If you proactively listen to what is being said about your brand, you will stay ahead of the curve, increase revenue, and make important connections with your target audiences.

Sometimes listening to your consumers can even get you out of trouble. Remember the GAP fiasco? Last October, Gap tried to change their classic logo; the problem is they changed it suddenly without any forewarning to their fans which resulted in complaints from fans across Facebook, Twitter and tech blogs. Gap quickly learned from the feedback and changed back to their old logo.

We are seeing brands listening to their fans increasingly more, even letting fans help or fully make decisions, for example PepsiCo Inc.’s Doritos brand had challenged their fans to create and vote on Super Bowl commercials.

At MetroStar Digital we listen to what is being said about our customers’ brands with our social media display and moderation systems, Zoomph. The analytics provided from Zoomph allows our New Media Producers to actively listen to Twitter and Facebook for key terms and hashtags that might benefit our clients like Saint Germain Catering, ASPR or AAFMAA. By monitoring what conversations are being had around these brands, we are able to better create digital marketing campaigns that appeal to their target audiences.

An example of proactively listening is when The U.S. Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) launched a challenge to the community to leverage open source data from Twitter to find trending diseases and illnesses in geographic areas. They asked us to assist them in promoting their Now Trending Challenge. We used Zoomph to listen to conversations regarding the challenge and find contestants and communities to target with customized messaging. We boosted engagement by contestants, answered questions from the community, and received promotional support from social media influencers in the medical field. Also, we targeted individuals with high Klout scores, with large amounts of followers, and asked them for assistance in promoting the challenge.

Simply put, if you don’t listen to your fans, it will come back to haunt you. Zoomph allows you to easily do this so you don’t end up with your own United Breaks Guitars YouTube video.

Thoughts, questions, or want to debate why paper should beat rock? Tweet me at @Zonozi

image credit: highersights via flickr

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They are just two of many products that entered the market with such buzz and hype, yet ultimately made a quick exit. The reality is it is inevitable that some products will fail; actually, the majority of new product launches will fail. Failure isn’t a bad thing, it’s often the precursor to success, but it isn’t that great either, so how do you dodge failure?

A great way you can dodge failure is by staying agile. A key characteristic to success is agility. Zoomph, our social media display and moderation product born out of MetroStar Systems’ Star labs was created out of demand from a product, originally named myStanly. Zoomph follows principles of agile product development. In this we stay agile to market factors by creating new features in small batch cycles, that way we avoid being cornered by market factors. Again, most of these situations will be out of your hands, so your best bet is adapting to goods and services met by the customers and produce in small batches; always be ready to pivot.

With many of projects at MetroStar Digital, we follow agile product development. Here are some factors to be aware of to help you shape the product. By monitoring these factors you can stay agile and improve your product through its life-cycle: market factors, product factors, and institutional factors.

Market factors of product fail:

• Actual market demand is lower
• Changes in environmental factors
• Changes in consumer taste
• Demand captured by competition
• Margins shrink with higher than anticipate costs

Product factors of product fail:

• Products not distinct enough to capture attention
• Features not attractive

Institutional factors of product fail:

• Poor Delivery (mismanagement, poor resources)
• No leadership (products can atrophy)

While you may have little control over market factors, you do have control over the way you respond to them. It is important to test, build and verify what you have learned by producing in small batches so your product and business is agile and ready to pivot if necessary. Zoomph illustrates values of agile product development. Zoomph continues to grow and succeed is our ability to push new features in small batches catered to demands of clients while having it out on the market.

Lastly, have a team you can rely on and a leader who knows how to manage a team under ever-changing factors and galvanize a team to react. Do not let product failure deter you from trying again. Business can be like a game of good chess, as long as you learn why you lost the game; you become a better player for your match. Good luck!

Thoughts, questions, or just want to talk about whatever happened to MC Hammer? Tweet me at @Zonozi

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In this day and age of constant overload – you need to be creative in order to stand out.  That’s not going to be easy and let’s face it certain individuals are just more creative than others, but just like any characteristic, it is developed and cultured over time and practice.

What I’m trying to say is you can be more creative if you want to. If you are not tapping into your potential, there are ways to manipulate your thought process accordingly. The formula for understanding the creative process can break down into three components. It takes a balance of all three to excel in creativity. These components are: expertise, motivation, and creative-thinking skills.

Expertise:

This is the amount of knowledge and experience: technical, intellectual, or procedural, one has in a particular field. Do you ask a chef for car advice? No, (at least, I hope not) I mean why would you right? My point is just because an individual understands one domain does not mean that mastery can be easily translated into other domains.

You need to be aware of what you excel in and use it to your advantage to create a specific niche for yourself. The better your understanding of a topic is, the more likely you are able to manipulate an image in creative and innovative way. This might be common sense, but it is an important factor to consider.

Motivation:

Motivational drive fluctuates within individuals through external and internal variables. Motivation will never be equal amongst individuals; but that doesn’t mean you can’t manipulate it right? One can significantly increase chances of motivational passion and drive by offering intrinsically motivated rewards – give them ownership in their product, creative freedom and it will drive more engagement then any bling bling could. For example,  Zoomph, our social media display and analytics software, is a product born out of MetroStar labs and functions as an internal startup. This internal startup culture allows our team to report directly to our CEO, Ali Manouchehri, giving us the independence and ownership needed to ensure the success of the project. The secret of Zoomph’s continuous success is that while our team was assembled by talent, it is driven by motivation.

Lack of motivation, will equate to lack in production. Do not work with or associate with people that are not motivated, they are anchors, and will drag you down with them. Worst case scenario you find yourself stuck in a situation with an unmotivated individual – find a way to align their interest with yours.

Creative-Thinking Skills:

This one is the wildcard and has the heaviest impact on creative flow – are you able to think outside the box? I mean it sounds pretty obvious right? How can you be creative if you can’t think creatively; but what does that even mean?

To think creatively it requires an imagination and flexibility of one’s thought process while looking for as many possible answers, as opposed to just one. Not a creative thinker? It’s okay you can change that with a little elbow grease.

Here are some ways to help increase your creativity. For starters, let your brain wander, make mistakes, think of anything possible, even the most outrageous-crazy ideas that are impossible will be critical in helping you brain storm. Know yourself, and put yourself in the right mind state to succeed. Some people thrive off pressure, while others shut down. Just find your state of zen and work your magic.

Take Away Point:

Creativity can be influenced by your environment and conditions practiced in your workplace. If managed correctly, you can manipulate your expertise: through experience and learning, motivation: by seeking goals and rewards, and creative-thinking skill set: through discipline and practice.

For more creativity tips, thoughts, questions, or just saw Jurassic Park for the first time and you’re dying to share that with somebody? Tweet me at @Zonozi

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