KP’s Super Random Raffle Draw Happy Fun Time: how KP created a better raffle system.

Ever participated in a raffle where all you get is a lowly ticket and wait for someone to stick their hand in a box to draw your number. The suspense is killing me as they call out each number slowly. Once the winner jumps up happy they won the prize, the moment is over. Could this age old raffle system be improved? Here at KP we did just that.

How to build a better raffle system. Normal raffles are quite boring. You get a number and you wait for a chance to get that number drawn. In some cases, you get multiple numbers, thus increasing your chances of winning but it still comes down to that one time drawing. To improve on that process, we introduce a three step process that gets more exciting at each step.

After you gather all the entries, which can consist of names, numbers or any other representation of the persons in attendance, it is entered into a database and KP’s random raffle system generator assigns them into a matrix. In the matrix, entries are randomly assigned a letter and a number and then displayed on the screen with two prompts. When a letter is drawn and keyed into the system, the list shrinks down to either 40, 24, 20, or 12 entries. An appropriate die (D6, D10, D12, D20) is tossed and the number is entered which will give us two names. The two finalists are brought up on to stage and each given a chance to call heads or tails. After whatever antics that may arise as to who calls the coin flip, the winner is determined. That’s it! Simple, fun, and exciting! Takes the normal boring raffle of just drawing a lucky name to something exciting.

But…
It wasn’t that easy, for me that is…

With the power outage and disrupting the afternoon classes, my master class I was teaching ran over time. What was suppose to conclude at 5 rand to 5:45. The teachers really wanted to know more about social media and I had to teach. The contest officially concluded at 4:00 but entries still kept coming in. I had less than 45 minutes to:

1. Collect all Twitter, Facebook, and Wiki impressions.
2. Build an algorithm to extract names automatically.
3. Compile into a database.
4. Test the interface.
5. Setup during the awards reception and execute.

I had already lost half an hour and the awards reception had started without me. Here’s a detailed account of what I did for those who cared to know how I scrambled to build this in less than an hour.

The first step was to capture all impressions. I went online and cached all the twitter posts, saved into a text file. That took little time since I had high speed internet. I then wrote a little script that captured the usernames from each post and transferred it into a comma delimited append file. I had to monitor the script as it ran through the names for posting anomalies and error codes. I repeated the steps for facebook and had to tweak the script to account for the different posting styles and accommodate comments. Lastly, wiki was much easier since I can generate a report of who made edits and just parsed out my entries.

Some of you might ask, “why didn’t you write the code and test it out at home?” Well my answer is simple. I’m too cocky and thought I could whip it up on the spot. I had the process already keyed out in my head and it was just a matter taking what’s in my head and putting it in practice. I was overconfident and had my timetables set (except for the power failure) in my mind.

When I completed my task, rushed down to the reception with laptop in hand and set up with five minutes to spare.

The raffle went amazingly well. Everyone had fun, enjoyed the process. A newcomer to twitter with only a few posts actually made it on the final 20 board. When the list was brought down to the final two, Laura and Cameron were two perfect candidates. Laura had never tweeted before this conference and Cameron had only used it on occasion but when presented with this contest, they became twitter fanatics! They posted their experience throughout the conference, what they were doing, what classes they were taking, and expressed themselves through the digital web. It was an amazing experience to see these two and the 80 other participants use the online medium this way.

New connections were made, friendships formed and a history of their experience is forever captured online. Unfortunately, there had to be a winner. Cameron called heads and Laura agreed. Brooke, my lovely assistant from Talcott flipped the coin and it landed tails. The happy winner gets up and speaks about how she never used Twitter and that weekend she had contacted her students and asked if they would be willing to use this tool to communicate and collaborate. She got an overwhelming response.

That concludes our super raffle session. To see the video in action, see the below video link. It’s rather dark and I should have adjusted the exposure setting before heading up on stage. Oh well. The acceptance speech is amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE1kgdMYUlg

Tsunami videos uploaded 3/24-3/28

Here are a few new videos uploaded to you tube vetted by me. Some really crazy footage!




Crazy video of port being washed away.



This one is very interesting. You'll see a camera man in this shot. Next one you'll see him walking up slowly. This shows perspective of the famous video of town of Kesennuma being washed away from ground level. Related video here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijuwl1Zw7s0



More clips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ_5JbVnevc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFlN_jhS-KU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD2e5KPFJ20
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD_xgox67QI

More videos.

3/23/11 Original Tsunami Videos from the past 48 hours: mostly original uploads.

It's been two weeks since the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami devistated northern Japan and now that people who lived in the affected regions are now getting to areas with restored power and more importantly internet (besides the bare necessities such as food shelter and water) they have gone ahead and stated uploaded the videos they captures on their cell phones.

I'm not one who is a disaster hunter but this one hits rather close to home.  Makes me really appreciate the time I spent there just this past year.

I decided to put together a compilation of videos uploaded in the past 48 hours, not that you can't find them yourselvs but because I had to sift through 90% crap.  What constitutes as crap uploads are
1. people filming new programs and uploading them.
2. poeople putting the word tsunami or 津波 and exploiting popular search terms.
3. people who put up fake crap to promote their business or organization.

What I was looking for was original sources uploaded from the people who shot the videos (or in some cases, friends they knew).  I actually searched Japanese videos for the true source and found 95% of the videos in Japanese.  I spent nearly three hours scouring YouTube so I thought that I would not let all that work go for naught.  So here you are, original footage shot and uploaded by the ones who survived.

This first one was is the only one that was a capture from a news broadcast. You might have seen this one already but this is the first instance since the original broadcast where I've seen the video in it's entirety unedited. Other news sites cut out the end where you see the people standing on the rubble of a destroyed house.



This eye opening sequence was filmed at the shore where the guy realized the tsunami was coming and ran for higher ground just in time, all the while still filming.



This is a series of 9 videos taken from a sports promotion support store. The people sat by as their town gets flooded on the second floor. Be sure to watch all 9 videos showing the waters coming in and then finally receding. Here's their blog and story with pictures. http://blog.canpan.info/suport2007/



Video taken at top of mouth of river apartment. After realizing the it will hit his house, he runs in to save his dogs.



Part 1 of girl filming her town being flooded. She cries at the shock of seeing this.





Extremely dramatic crappy video of waves rushing in to town. Not original source but I couldn't' find it anywhere so this is the best I could do.



Video taken at a factory tour. Begins as water comes in, then with force causes trees to tobble against building. Later you see the entire industrial area underwater. This person has uploaded only one video.



These next three videos show waves coming in and washing a fishing port.







This one is only here because it shows how after the tsunami destroyed the port, ships out at sea came back safe and sound despite the debris and damage.



Waves crashing through tsunami wall from high up.



Another port town flooded. Very good long footage.



This last video was just of an area flooded and cars being washed away. If you look at the user, he's actually a stock car driver and has some very exciting in car videos from the past year of racing.

I hope you enjoyed these sorted out videos. I thought that my time wasted will be your time saved!

EDIT***
This is really cool. Follow this link. This person took it upon himself to go to a shelter and record video letters so that their friends and family can know they are safe!
http://www.youtube.com/user/yyokoyama504

My dumb luck working overtime to leave San Francisco before the storm: Serendipity strikes again

My dumb luck strikes again, serendipity is a good thing to me.  Yesterday we avoided being stuck at the airport overnight because of my dumb luck.  Normally I know my flight schedule backwards and forwards but for some reason I had thought we were flying out at 7 instead of 9:50.  I have two apps on my phone reminding me of departure times and e-mail reminders but for some reason I never bothered looking at it that day.  That is very strange behavior for Nai.  So we hop a cab at 4:15 and head to the airport.  Jon noted that it felt strange to be going when we are suppose to land after ten and Michi txt me wondering why we were going to the airport so early.  I just shrugged it off and halfway to the airport I finally checked my flight app.  I felt stupid for leaving so early.  We could have had lunch at the brewery next door and enjoyed some craft beers for three hours before leaving San Francisco!

We could have stopped and grab lunch on the way or turned back but on the cab ride there, I looked up to see if there was a US Air lounge to hang out in for the next four hours.  It would be fine to be stuck at an airport with lounge access with free food, wine and beer.  I found a list where it had indicated there was one, only to later find out I had inadvertently found false information.  With false information in hand, we happily get to the airport resigned to sitting for four hours in the airport lounge. 

On check in, we find that we couldn’t check our bags in because we exceeded the 4 hour check-in limit.  Crap, but this is where serendipity strikes.  Staring blankly at the terminal saying no bags prior to four hours the Southwest attendant looks at us and says, “your flight is delayed by an hour due to the storm” (later it was delayed by almost three), then she proceeds to ask us “you’re here so early, how would you like to get on an earlier flight going through LAX, you will lose your A position but you will get in a couple hours ahead of your normally scheduled flight.”  We looked at each other and said YES!  So there we were, only an hour till our next flight, avoiding the coming storm and ended up getting home at 9 instead of 1 AM or even a delay overnight. 

Sometimes luck has the weirdest ways of manifesting.  Thank goodness for dumb luck!

FENI Day 3: My first and worst teaching experience ever!

Eager
Hopeful
Trepidatious
Nervous
Excited

These were just a few of the words that described my feelings on the third day of FENI. That afternoon I was to teach a 3 hour master class to 13 culinary arts educators how to get socially connected to the world through social networking tools. For the prior two days I’ve had teachers who signed up for my class come up to me expressing how excited they are to see what they will learn. Half of them were in my 2 hour workshop the first night and after getting a taste of what social media can do for them in their classroom, they were eager for more. I had some high expectations to fill. Am I ready?

At FENI, master classes are serious business. These teachers travel from all over the country and some from as far as South Africa to come and attend three classes during a two day period. They pay good money to be here but beyond that, they pay in time devoted to this conference. This isn’t like a local conference where you get up that morning, put on your chef’s coat and go to class for three hours and then go home. Here you spend many days in conference and many more hours traveling to get here. These teachers are committed to excellence!

The idea for me to teach a master class came shortly after I experienced a class gone wrong. In 2009 I took a class at FENI titled “Developing Online Lesson Plans & Curricula” taught by a computer teacher at the Le Cordon Bleu school of Las Vegas. It was one of the worst classes I ever took and I said to myself I could do far better with what I know even though I wasn’t a teacher by trade. All the participants took no value from this class. In 2010 I approached FENI about bringing technology into education and teaching a master class. They accepted my proposal.

In preparation, I wanted to create a workshop that has immense value. I want it to be hands on and not just me lecturing about what they should be doing. That is ineffective, and lends no value to the subject. As a computer guru, the biggest challenge I had was to take all the technical knowledge and information in my brain and translate it into something non digital natives can comprehend. I’ve always been able to bridge the gap from nerd to real world Las Vegas so I had confidence in pulling this one off.

I had so much prepared. In the computer lab I was going to take them through the social network, learn about why it will be important to their lives and why it’s relevant to students. I had planned to get each person to sign up to twitter and setup a group to start communicating to each other during the class. I was to have each person set up their own wiki and start collaborating on a class project. We were to use facebook to setup communication groups, set up events, and make announcements. I had so much planned.

On the day of the class, Chicago was experiencing one of their regular rainy days. It was pouring rain with no end in sight. I pull together all my equipment; laptop, netbook, projector, iPad, mobile internet device, camcorder, camera, pocket flip camera, and headed over to Washburn Culinary Institute’s computer lab.

I get there at 12:30, setup and ate lunch. At 1:45, 15 minutes prior to the start of class, I had two educators enter the room. After a few minutes of priming them for the class, the power suddenly goes off for the entire building. “Oh no, this can’t be happening,” ran through my head. I had planned for every possible problem from lack of computers to lack of internet but no power? How was I suppose to teach a computer class with no power? We sat there hoping it was a temporary power failure.

The fire department arrives 10 minutes later, it turns out that a woman was stuck in the elevator. They had to pull her out from the second floor and it actually turns out to be someone heading up to my class! We all got corralled into the dining room and tried to conduct class in a crowded noisy environment.

Make the best of any given situation… The class must go on. With that I plodded ahead and started discussing the concepts of social networking. I had a laptop with an hour of battery life so I was able to demonstrate Twitter, Wikis and Facebook. We all sat there, 13 of us, huddled around the table making the best of the moment. Despite the problems, they were all very eager to learn and we did make the best of a bad situation.

The busses came early to rescue us, so the class migrated back to the hotel. On the way there, I taught someone how to twitter using my iPad. This 50 year old chef had never done anything like that before and was excited to finally enter the digital age. We relocated to a conference room at the hotel where I set up my projector, screen and continued the class. Unfortunately I had lost a number of participants during this non digital transition to the new location, but six remained so we spent the next hour teaching social media tools. They all stayed past our scheduled class time by half an hour.

We could have stayed there for two more hours but there was the awards ceremony to attend and I had to prepare my super KP raffle engine for tonight’s drawing! That is another story I’m reserving for another blog post. Boy was that a fun hour of compiling 400 entries!

Was that the worst teaching experience ever? I would have to say no. Despite losing power and having my entire plans go to waste, I was still able to salvage the time and make it beneficial to the participants. I could only wish that things would have went better but now I know, under fire, the class can still go on. I only hope that I get another chance to do this again. I really wanted to teach. Really wanted to...

How the iPad 2 is geared for education not Android tablets

With the announcement of the iPad 2 today, I can clearly see why education has embraced this piece of technology and I fear that Android may be missing the boat. Apple has added one key component that will help education embrace this product today.

Photo Courtesy of Engadget

I’ve been traveling with the iPad since day one, and I’m no Apple fanboy being a hard core PC programmer, but since the first moment of using this “magical” device, it has changed the way I think of data. I swear I’ve sold 500 over the year just from using it during education conferences. But Apple didn’t need my help at all, because the product speaks for itself.

Fine, people are going to argue that Apple has a closed ecosystem and too tight of controls and data should be free to flow, blabla bla. I still think that way but what they created was their own ecosystem that works and is universally accepted. 15 million sold in the first 9 months says it all.

What the first iPad has done for me is changed the way I interface with content. Before we sat in front of a keyboard and mouse and worked with data, clicking, typing, viewing from a distance. It was cold and impersonal. What the iPad has done is make it a more organic experience. No other device has done that. I’ve owned palms, windows mobiles, tablet PC’s, everything that I thought would create that truly organic experience but fell short because I was still a slave to the interface. It’s transformative and opens your eyes in a whole new way, even for a data junkie like me.

One key part that Apple added to this device is the ability to display the screen to an output device such as a projector or HD TV. That was one critical piece that makes it a great presentation tool. Now teachers can open up any app and show what they are seeing on the screen to the class. There are thousands of apps that are excellent for education and this new tool opens up the audience that can effectively use it. The details are still sketchy on if this display option works with existing iPads, so I’m keeping my eyes and ears out for that confirmation!

I’ve already seen wonderful applications in education with this amazing device, but what will Android do? So far I’ve seen no evidence of upward mobility for the current batch of popular Android devices. It’s not because Honeycomb is not a superior tablet OS, or the devices don’t perform, it is because they are slaves to the carrier. Take for example the Motorola Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy Tab. These are great tablet devices but they require you to sign up with their carrier to gain a discount and in the case of the Xoom, you have to activate at lease one month of service. They do not offer the option to get a WiFi only model and only say it will come in the future. I can never see public education institutions picking these devices up with this necessary feature and expense they will never use. I think Android tablets makers are shooting themselves in the foot by not opening their devices up to non carrier use.

The current crop of Android devices are not ready for the main stream. With little app support and the promise of future upgrades, they are devices for the anti-Appleites or the super geeks. Apple has once again bested Android makers. I truly hope that someone will wise up and produce the next gen tablet I can drool over.

Apple with help transform education, it’s up to the others to play catch-up now.