Dream and Hustle

Where Do We Go From Here? First, We launch the World’s Largest Invisible Pop-Up Store Campaign in Our Hoods.

To honor Martin Luther King Jr. unfinished task of establishing economic empowerment in our communities, this August in 2012 for the “Buy Black” month, we are going to launch the largest geo-location augmented reality e-commerce campaign within our hoods. Me and the 30 Rotten Dissidents already did the groundwork, but when I say “we” I mean me and you are going to do this and work on this together. Let’s get to work and this article is your briefing on the project.

Augmented Reality Overview

I covered this video before in a previous article about the invisible pop-up store that was done a while back using augmented reality and geo-location:

This is what we are going to do but instead of few locations, we are planning to geo-locate a shopping experience featuring our merchants to commercial zones in our high-density hoods throughout America. See, we don’t have to waste time dealing with local politicians, unions and crazy ordinance, these uppity gatekeepers and other stuff to get our businesses initially up and running in our community.

What we can do is create virtual stores that attract people in the hood to come to these commercial zones and find virtual deals and offers for sale and shop. If we get our people to travel to their own commercial centers in their own hoods across America, that is the most direct and real step towards creating a zone for economic development and economic self empowerment in these communities.

What Locations We Going to Cover

As you know, we are working on the Locations Wiki on this blog that will be covering areas from Hayward, California to Laurel, Maryland to Houston, Texas all the way up to Flint, Michigan. That is the data we will be using to determine where we will be locating these virtual shopping centers.

This is why it is important you cats help in creating the location wiki so we can understand our communities. I will be doing research from looking at old “empowerment zone” designations by the Housing and Urban development and other data points to find our communities nationwide, but you guys know what hood you came from and you need to step up and let us know and help with the Locations Wiki.

Participation

Here is the cool part – we want to set up virtual merchants made up of brothas and sistas who will be able to sell throughout these communities nationwide. If some sista sell handbags and her boutique based in Chicago, we want her handbags displayed in Houston, Phoenix, Denver, Dallas, Birmingham, and Jacksonville all over. We will be cross referencing merchants who are willing to participate and help them sell their products nationwide during this campaign.

We can dynamically display products for sale and offers throughout the day and if we have enough bandwidth, we can have brothas and sistas register and we can show in the same geo-location area high heels for the fashionistas and cufflinks for the metrosexuals in the same spot using their personal preference.

Plan of Execution

The plan is to first establish the basecamp here in Atlanta, Georgia. From here, we will work to create the augmented reality interface for mobile phones and devices. Once we got the prototype working, the next step is creating the web site to promote the event. Then we will run some prototypes and pilot testing here.

After that, the next step is to sign up merchants to offer something for sale. We are looking for merchants who already have operations setup and can deliver and have a track record of delivering, no amateur hour stuff. Then once we got all of that setup, the next goal is to get the augmented reality app on cats mobile device and we get ready to start shopping in our communities when we launch.

Our Goal

The goal is to take the first bold step to invite our people back into our commercial zones in our communities in our hoods, plain and simple. Second, we are going to show ourselves that I been trying to tell our people what yall don’t want to hear – African-Americans are the biggest consumers of technology and we have the biggest market for this kind of stuff.

Look at these other cats in the video above, that’s all they have for a market. But look at our people – we got Detroit, we got New York, we got DC, we got Los Angeles, we got Houston, we got Miami, we got and you know I can probably write a long list of what we got like St. Louis and Raleigh and Milwaukee, okay let me stop – see, we got the real market for this kind of stuff.

See, I don’t want to go negative on our positive efforts but you know there has been an attempt by Silicon Valley and major newspapers with tech writers suppressing and denying opportunities for African-American technology entrepreneurs and our potential for quite some time. If you read these tech bloggers and the tech section of these newspapers, they make it seem we are incapable of doing this kind of stuff and worthy of any VC investment. And there been some brothas and sistas out there trying to “go along to get along” with the discriminatory nature of Silicon Valley against African-American technology entrepreneurs but you know we ain’t having that anymore.

We going to do this technology initiative for us and by us. So when we launch this, you will see the realness and awesomeness of the African-American community being tech and mobile phone savvy and see we have a highly intelligent base of smart phone users and we will adopt real fast to this augmented reality shopping experience. Silicon Valley and tech media knew for years African-Americans were the biggest consumers of mobile tech and most savvy and we going to put it in their face and let them see we about it…

But I want to make one thing clear – we not doing this to impress Silicon Valley or impress some tech writer – we doing this to finish Martin Luther King Jr vision of economic empowerment for our community and lay down the framework for economic development of our communities for the next generation of brothas and sistas coming up behind us. Please don’t forget that why this is being done.

Let’s get started tomorrow..