The Afro-Tech movement among the global black digerati is becoming more widespread and visions are materializing into real-world deliverables. One of the positive contributors to the global Afro-Tech growth is the adoption of continuous improvement and continuous integration practices instead of believing in binary success/failure outcomes. Over here in Afro-Tech Atlanta, our platforms are built on the foundation to be in constant improvement and innovation. Let’s cover how far the Afro-Tech movement is innovating and developing around the world with established frameworks, patterns and practices to drive future growth and expansion as value contributors to the global tech scene. I will cover my contributions from my team as part of the Afro-Tech ecosystem. Digital Lifestyle App Kossier provides unique addresses to conduct everyday transactions and interactions without the need to upload comprising data such as social security numbers, credit cards, etc. Kossier is a digital lifestyle application modeled after the successful Chinese counterparts such as WeChat and AliPay. What we admire in the current Chinese tech scene is the focus on mobile micro-transactions in everyday interactions from ordering food to renting a bike. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley is focused on attention engineering addiction, fake news distribution and clickbait to drive pay-per-click advertising business models. One feature of Kossier that is important is we now allow users to upload an image to their address profile as a “visual id” when presenting themselves to other people and entities. This feature will allow a richer UX for check-ins with businesses and other touchpoints. For example, an event ticket validator can see the picture of a Kossier user performing a check-in. A restaurant can see the face of the customer they are going to serve to ensure they do not deliver food to the wrong table. Kossier will greatly improve the interaction of small businesses with little cost as the digital lifestyle app will drive the micro-transactions, perform the check-in features and more without small businesses having to create their own applications. API Economy This is all the Afro-Tech need to code to reach Fooky.com API as a template. In this example, we are pulling a Kolin-Avers pay-per-access token to download/stream a media file to a consumer for one-time use. Expect rapid urban-based tech solutions as a result. Fooky.com API platform is designed to drive the urban economy and also make it easier for programmers to develop applications and services. I see a lot of headlines about people “raising money” to fund entrepreneurs — what is the money for? You don’t need much of money to support the growth of entrepreneurs, you need more platforms that make it easier to plug in processes to get the ball rolling. Fooky.com API has been enhanced with new services and will roll out to a limited set of users to get started before rolling out to the rest of the developer community who are looking to create urban solutions. Fooky.com API already drives the Kossier tokenization process for web site check-ins and we already have 3 blockchain variants that are accessible through our API. Fooky.com is now on a domain-based system where both physical domains and virtual domains can be created to establish macro and micro operations and workflow. Meaning, Fooky.com APIs can be used to support a city or support a retail chain operation and this scalability is going to be a major impact to Afro-Tech expansion. Media Distribution This is an example of a table vendor who can sell their e-book without any physical books at a trade show or event. They collect cash or credit card and provide a QR code which is a pay-per-access token link to download the e-book that is sold. This will enable the rapid proliferation of independent media publishers delivering fast turnaround on their works. Kolin-Avers is a media management and distribution service designed from the ground up to serve the needs of modern media demands. Kolin-Avers can store and distribute any media type from audio to video to documents and more to media providers. In addition, Kolin-Avers have a tokenization model that allow media providers to offer pay-per-access. This means that podcasters can sell their podcasts on a pay-per-stream access, book authors can sell downloads of their e-books and Main Street can deliver public videos on a jumbotron screen for public engagement. Another great feature is Kolin-Avers has QR code integration so this allow the creation of QR shopping walls for passive e-commerce displays. Another QR code solution would be to sell a podcast or an e-book with a QR code that links to a live token that would activate the download of a podcast file or PDF file of an e-book to purchase. Kolin-Avers will be a major driver of the creative community having more options to sell digital media especially on a cash-basis. Machine-Based Conversation Upcoming HustleSpace chatbot will actually converse with entrepreneurs through starting a physical or virtual business and begin creating supporting components (ledgers, marketing, lists, etc.) during the conversation. The Afro-Tech foray into chatbot technology is not new but has been growing faster as the conversation-as-a-service (CAAS) paradigm takes shape in 2018. For example, we are going to use chatbots to walk users through establishing a Kossier account in social media and instant messaging applications. For one of our business-based blogs, we are going to have a chatbot talk to an aspiring entrepreneur about what kind of business they want to startup and that chatbot will automatically setup the appropriate Fooky.com API pre-configured for them to have features such as reservations scheduler, prepaid ledgers, inventory ledgers and membership services. Chatbots are more disruptive than what most people realize in terms of offering services and features. For example, there is no need to create QR code scanners anymore, almost all chatbot technology just allow a person provide a picture for the chatbot to process and provide a response. So someone can just snap a picture of a QR code, provide it to the chatbot and the chatbot will understand the QR code and any directive to follow up as a conversation. In this example, if someone has a QR code on display while selling a product during a live streaming session, the QR code can instruct the chatbot to continue selling the product and process the order and shipping details. Moving Forward The Afro-Tech is currently in a continuous improvement iteration loop and we are constantly improving and adapting. Once we have this kind of momentum and culture of innovation, all we do is get better and better and become more experienced, skilled and develop more insight to creating solutions and value. There has been an ongoing campaign by Silicon Valley to hold down black people in tech but Silicon Valley will not hold back the Afro-Tech from our story and our narrative. The Afro-Tech is a global movement and we are where all the action is at from Asia to Europe to Africa and we are going to keep innovating, keep getting better and deliver real-world value based on our real world experience as we grow the global movement.
