Poken
"Poken" is a word that you may have come across from time to time while reading dannychoo.com. Its an electronic business card and social networking tool that enables you to easily connect with people you meet and keep track of when you met them.
Poken Japan launched their service at Tokyo CGM Night early last year and since then became the standard tool for social media networking.
The Pokens are an electronic device powered by a button battery. When you meet somebody with another Poken, you place them near each other - they then glow green to confirm that your digital signatures have been exchanged.
You then remove the Poken cap and plug it into your computer via USB. After logging in at Poken.com, you will be able to see details of the people you recently met. Video clip below talks more about Poken.
Once logged in at Poken.com, you can see details of who you met and when. You can see social networks and other details of your new comrades and also wizz back n forth through the time line to see when you met them.
Poken is a great way to keep track of your comrades digitally rather than have a bunch of paper business cards just piling up in the corner.
And here are the Mirai-chan and Haruka-chan Pokens at last! Took many moons and samples to get to the final product!
The huge Japanese department store Parco will be selling the Mirai and Haruka-chan pokens exclusively until the end of February before then go on sale across Japan and worldwide.
The Suenaga Sister pack is available from Parco Online for 5,480 yen and includes two dannychoo.com lanyards.
Parco also have a Mirai-chan single pack for 2,780 yen and a Haruka-chan single pack also for 2,780 yen.
Free shipping for folks who live in Japan for all these items.
After Feb 28th, you should be able to get these at stores like Bic Camera, Amazon Japan and other online retailers that ship overseas - more details later.
And for those who just arrived and haven't the foggiest about who Mirai and Haruka are then check out the mascot page.
And here is the dannychoo.com lanyard modeled by our lovely Ryomo-chan. Mmmmmmm.
These were the first development samples. Hmmmmm. Not quite what I wanted.
These were the second development samples - lots of color which enabled us to accurately reproduce the looks of Mirai and Haruka. However, as you can see from the photo, the print quality is quite crap. The standard Pokens only have 3 colors which results in quite good print quality.
But coming up with designs using only 3 colors for the Mirai and Haruka Pokens was a challenge! Had to sacrifice a lot of detail to get these as they are.
All the Mirai and Haruka-chan Pokens will be pre-populated with my Poken profile. If you already picked one up and don't see my profile - it will be automatically appear when you log in one day ^^;
A personal business card is an essential tool for building your brand and career. Lets say you was an illustrator who likes drawing anime girlies and lets say you was pretty good at it. You was introduced one day to a producer at a top anime production company. She gives you her business card but you don't have one to give back...
Whats the purpose of a resume? Its a record of your abilities, achievements and is also a medium for you to convince others why they should hire or work with you.
Compare the following resume snippets.
I took an economics class. I also worked at Kinkos stationary part time.
compared with...
I took an economics course where I learned how to blah. I used my knowledge of blah and applied it to suggesting and implementing a new way of doing foo when I worked part time for Kinkos stationary. The new foo that I implemented saved 4 hours manual work of doing x and helped Kinkos cut costs.
Putting effort into your resume is key. The bottom half of my profile is basically a copy paste from my resume which helped me gain positions at Amazon and Microsoft. I've seen so many resumes as a hiring manager which have been thrown together without any effort which read like "I studied Computer Science and worked at Microsoft as an Engineer. I cant be bothered to write any more unless you are interested in hiring me."
A personal business card is also like a resume. It contains details which describe who you are and your responsibilities. Ideally it should have a means for people to look up more about what you do and what field you are in.
If you are making a personal business card, make sure it has a url to your online profile and also make sure that your profile url is http://not-a-long-hard-to-read-and-type-url-like-this.com/profile/mai-profile.html?page=1
The Poken steps in where you want to share more than just your url - you can register your website, Twitter, Facebook and other social networks that you may be using and gives people who you met an easy means to access your information and connect with you which very often leads to further relationship building which is essential for business and new opportunity.
Just found another video example of Poken being used.
Leaving you with Ryomo as I get on with cleaning up the office.
