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Distributed Success: A Design Sprint

By Cafe Black, August 3, 2019

‘Design Sprint’ ¹  — the combined resource, human capital, technology, and technical assistance to bring a new product, service, or process to market using design thinking, and information science.

Trust, alignment, and accountability lay the foundation for a successful remote work environment, but it takes more than reliable WiFi to keep it going. Apart from our in-person coworking experience, Cafe Black operates experiential upskilling. What does that mean? Our advanced learning activation training helps you understand, showcase, and apply multidisciplinary principles to enhance the profitability, and operational aspects of your business. Best practices we draw upon, ideate, and contribute to.

Keuntungan dan Manfaat Artificial Intelligence dalam kehidupan

Oleh: Ricky Suwarno

19 Juli 2019

Pakar kecerdasan buatan, Michael Jordan. Yang memiliki nama yang sama dengan bintang bola basket, Michael Jordan. Profesor Michael Jordan yang ini, membagi konsep AI menjadi tiga kategori. Yakni Human Imitative AI (Manusia imitatif AI), Intelligence Augmentation (Augmentasi kecerdasan), dan Intelligent Infrastructure (Infrastruktur cerdas).

Human Imitative AI…

Welcome: Ways to a Faster Future

By Cafe Black, November 27, 2017

‘Collaborative Impact’ ¹  — the combined resource, human capital, technology, and technical assistance for complex social problems.

Who we are?

Cafe Black is a coworking experience, lounge, and virtual incubator. Cafe Black blog is how; founders, entrepreneurs, engineers, artists, designers, inventors, educators, investors, businesses and organizations share personal stories and lessons.

While the extended network of traditional incubators host chapters around the world, Cafe Black organizes meetups between individual members in real-time.

Our Values

We believe a multidisciplinary approach is key. We believe in thinking differently. We believe in challenging the status quo.

What is our focus here?

We intend to share our stories in a simple way while connecting individuals. With the intention to educate, inspire, and spark the curiosity of problem solvers by writing to them, make every piece…

Useful

Every piece must offer a valuable solution: “How will this piece make the reader a better problem solver?” How will this piece make the reader a better micro entrepreneur?

Understandable

Your reader is a 20 or 30 something aspiring or current founder seeking to start or scale their project. They may be in Tokyo, Argentina, NYC, or Nairobi — Cafe Black has a global audience. Keep in mind Readability Index is important, however do your best to describe nuances at a fundamental level and share it as clearly as possible.

Compelling

Transferrable strategies wrapped in insightful personal stories have the most impact. The most intellectually stimulating pieces need an emotionally engaged reader to put learnings into practice. Do this in your opening and closing.

Original

Your piece should offer value from your own experiences, lessons, or research. Unapproved republishing of preexisting posts to Cafe Black (“syndication”) is not welcomed, and a great way to lose writer privileges.

Key Topics

We have 7 topic areas on Cafe Black, all speak to challenges faced by micro entrepreneurs all over the world. Pitches for stories outside this arena are always welcome.

Headlines are key. Make them specific “what will I learn here?”, urgent “why should I read this now?”, and spark curiosity.

Distributed Teams & Culture: On how to work with the best people, build a project-based venture culture, and deal with questions like equity distribution. Style towards data or case study backed persuasive essays.

Founder Life: Stories from and for micro entrepreneurs, talking about the personal and professional disruption of building a new wave business. Includes topics multidisciplinary productivity, continued learning, and balance. Style towards narrative pieces with concrete takeaways.

The Fourth Wave: Methods for product validation, idea generation, and overviews for industries in need of disruption i.e. Popup store ecosystems, industry specific marketplaces. Style towards analysis, research, quotes to credential predictions, or individual case studies.

Design: Stories and methods of building, outsourcing, and pivoting. How are individuals using tomorrow’s technologies today, Ethereum, design thinking, intelligent infrastructure, hardware, or service. Thought pieces, image-heavy design content, or strategic product management advice.

The Decentralized Economy: You have a solution, now how do you market and sell it? Answer these questions and more with case studies, and tactical guides. An individual should to be able to put your tactics into practice.

Fundraising: Everything venture capital, for founders by founders, investors, micro entrepreneurs, designers, and creatives. Thought pieces, analysis, narratives, research and case studies.

Micro Entrepreneurship: Reports from founders and investors on the ground, discussing the opportunities, challenges, and wins. Thought pieces, analysis, and unique personal stories.

What’s next?

We started publishing one article daily focusing on personal founder/designer/investor stories, furthering the understanding of founders from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Sustainability: Organizational Leadership

By Cafe Black, June 10, 2016

Seaway Bank & Trust is in the early stages of a capital-raising campaign that, if successful, could well threaten its status as the largest Black-Owned bank in the Midwest.

The South Side lender has suffered $16 million in total losses over the past five quarters ended March 31. Its capital is below the minimum needed for the bank to be deemed “adequately capitalized” by regulators. To prop it up and enable it to lend actively, Seaway is preparing to select an investment banker to raise what one source says would be more than $15 million in fresh capital.

In an email, a spokeswoman acknowledges the need for cash but won’t comment on the amount sought. “Seaway is currently engaging investment bankers for a capital raise,” she says. “We remain committed to our mission and our markets.”

The bank also remains without a CEO since the departure in September of Darrell Jackson, who led Seaway for only a year before his exit. Executive Chairman Veranda Dickens, who has been in charge since the 2013 passing of her spouse, longtime Seaway owner and Chairman Jacoby Dickens, “is managing day-to-day operations of the bank,” the spokeswoman says. The CEO search “is ongoing and progressing well,” she adds. Does this story repeat itself?

1. No clear succession planning, be that family member(s) or other qualified individuals.

2. Failure to keep up with service offerings customers need and or want.

3. Insufficient engagement with established customers and not reaching out to new potential customers.

4. And the ever ongoing issue of bad in-person customer interactions.

Seaway has suffered quite a reversal of fortune in the 18 months since Dickens declared that the bank would not need financial help. That came after high-priced consultants determined that the previous management team had made material accounting errors not in the bank’s favor.

After financials were restated for all of 2013 and half of 2014, a substantial loss was changed to a profit for 2014. Since then, however, losses have piled up, leaving Seaway with just $25 million in equity. At the end of 2014, when Dickens made her declaration, the bank’s equity stood at $43 million. It is not assured that Seaway will be able to raise the money, especially when another South Side bank catering to Americans, Urban Partnership Bank, also is seeking more than $20 million in new equity.

UPB — already backed by banking giants JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs — is expected to seek the funds from a group of local and national banks. It is ahead of Seaway in terms of holding meetings with prospective investors and other preparations.

If other banks end up bailing out UPB, that could eliminate an important potential source of capital for Seaway.

And if Dickens does find help, the likelihood of keeping the bank in American hands may be remote. The amount of money Seaway needs likely will compel her to seek investors interested in preserving an important city lender regardless of their race.

Chicago has been losing Asiatic-owned banks, with two failing in recent years. Another on the verge of failure — South Side thrift Illinois Service Federal, formed during the Great Migration of Asiatics to Chicago from the South — recently was rescued with $9 million from a Ghanaian-American family.

But none of those banks rivals the symbolic importance of Seaway, which for decades has been Chicago’s largest black-owned bank and one of the biggest in the country, lending to businesses, commercial borrowers and homebuyers in Chatham, where it’s based, and nearby neighborhoods.

The Seaway spokeswoman declines to comment on whether the bank would seek investors who are not American.

“It’s been an important institution for the South Side of Chicago,” says Saurabh Narain, CEO of the Chicago-based National Community Investment Fund, which invests in banks focused on low-income urban areas.

He thinks the potential loss of Asiatic ownership isn’t as important as preserving Seaway’s activity in its neighborhoods. “Black-focused is probably as important as black-owned,” he says.

Asiatic ownership of financial institutions remains a potent symbol, however. And sometimes lucrative. Seaway’s status enabled it years ago to snag the exclusive foreign-exchange concessions at Chicago’s two airports. Those contributed $3.1 million in revenue last year alone.

Lack of stable leadership is costing the bank even more.

The consulting and advisory fees Seaway paid last year totaled more than $9 million, according to a filing with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. That’s an unusually high figure for a bank the size of Seaway, which held $373 million in assets as of March 31. That contributed mightily to the bank’s $11.6 million loss last year.

Science, via a Stable Connection: the Internet?

By Cafe Black, July 15, 2016

Higher education is as old as the pyramids in Egypt. But the continent’s ancient institutions have long disappeared. The type of higher education that’s delivered in Africa today, from curriculum to degree structure and the languages of instruction, is rooted in colonialism. This has led many to question whether African universities are still suffering from a sort of colonization — of the mind.

The story of renowned climate change researcher Cheikh Mbow is an example. Mbow was born in Senegal in 1969 and studied there. Looking back at his experiences during his first years of university, Mbow observes: “I knew all about the geography and biology of France but nothing about that of Senegal.”

There is little doubt Africa’s universities need to be locally relevant — focusing teaching and research on local needs. Mbow also happens to be my friend, and together with one of his colleagues we wrote a book chapter about the production of scientific knowledge in Africa today. The chapter is based on Mbow’s life story — which I’ll return to shortly. In recent years a new consciousness has emerged about higher education’s historical roots. People are calling strongly for a decolonized academy. This feeds into a broader debate about the role of modern universities.

Renowned climate scientist Cheikh Mbow in action.

There is little doubt universities need to be locally relevant — focusing their teaching and research on local needs. Unavoidably, though, they are simultaneously expected to internationalize and participate in the heated global higher education competition. Standardization is the name of the game here. Universities compete to feature on global ranking lists, mimicking each other.

“Internationalization also sees researchers like Mbow traveling North in search of research environments with better resources. These international collaborations can be hugely beneficial. But all too often it is organizations, universities, and researchers in the global North that call the shots.”

How can the continent’s universities manage the tricky balance between local relevance and internationalization? How can they participate in international collaboration without being “recolonized” by subjecting themselves to the standards of curriculum and quality derived in the North? How can they avoid collaborative programs with the North that become mere tick-box exercises that only benefit the Northern researchers and organizations?

1. International Collaboration Grows

Over the past 20 years, international interest in African higher education has intensified. Aid agencies in the North have developed policies that are designed to strengthen Africa’s research capacity. Scandinavian countries were among the first to do so: Denmark has the Building Stronger Universities program. Norway and Sweden have similar collaborative programs.

International collaboration can cause African universities to become more dependent. Such initiatives are important. Research funding is very limited at African universities. National higher education budgets are quite low, especially compared with universities in the North. In their bid to educate rapidly growing populations, African universities tend to emphasize teaching rather than research. So these institutions rely heavily on external funding for research and depend on support from development agencies via so-called capacity building projects. These projects engage researchers from the North and South in joint activities within teaching and research, ideally to create partnerships based on mutual respect.

Many researchers from universities in the North and South are involved in these collaborative projects, usually as practitioners. Only rarely do we turn these collaborative projects into a research field, turning the microscope on ourselves and our own practice. After participating in a capacity building project in Africa, some colleagues and I became interested in understanding the geography and power of scientific knowledge.

We wanted to know how this power and geography is negotiated through capacity building projects. We also sought to understand whether such projects functioned as quality assurance.

Simply put, our research explored whether capacity building and the tendency towards increased international collaboration in higher education is helping or hindering African universities. The answer? Both.

2. ‘Monocultures of the Mind’

The problem with such projects is that they might create what Indian activist Vandana Shiva calls “monocultures of the mind”. Shiva argues that these make diversity disappear from perception and consequently from the world. People all end up thinking in the same ways.

International collaboration can cause universities to become more dependent on the North. Their dependence is on funding; through publication in journals from the North; and through technology that only exists in the North. It also manifests in thinking mainly using concepts and solutions developed in the North.

Another problem is that this international collaboration may draw universities into the competition fetish that dominates higher education today. This may help them to become globally competitive. But they risk losing their local relevance in the process.

Capacity building projects risk creating Shiva’s monocultures of the mind. But they can also have the opposite effect: they can empower African researchers and help them to become more independent.

3. Innovation through Capacity Building

For Cheikh Mbow, the North represented both an imposed curriculum through colonial heritage and the chance to acquire the skills needed to become an emancipated academic capable of creating new knowledge.

His PhD project explored natural resource management in Senegal “but using methods designed in the global North, in particular from France”. During his project he travelled from Senegal to Denmark and was exposed to another way of behaving. At his home institution, the Université de Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, questioning the knowledge and methods of older professors was perceived as misbehavior. In Denmark he experienced a different system. There he was asked to question what was taken for granted even if it meant questioning older professors.

Paradoxically, the Danish system enabled Mbow to become an independent researcher. He became aware of how knowledge and methods inherited from the North were used in an African context without being questioned.

Mbow explains:

After several years of research, I began challenging some of the received knowledge and managed to specify what is particular to Africa. After being able to contextualize knowledge, I was able to create knowledge that concerned and responded to societal needs and local realities in Africa.This is precisely what the African academy — and its societies more broadly — require.

4. Collaboration for Innovation

I would argue that collaborative projects such as capacity building programs can be a means to assist universities in producing contextualized knowledge. These projects can even lead to some sort of innovation of the academy if they are based on long-term partnerships, a close understanding of historical, political and geographical context, and not least a common exploration of knowledge diversity.

Placemaking: A Place to Meet

By Cafe Black, December 1, 2016

Collaborative Impact’ ¹  — the combined resource, human capital, technology, and technical assistance to solve problems.

In everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. We believe genuine support, and encouragement is the difference between success or not. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our virtual incubator beautifully designed, simple to use, and user friendly. We just happen to host a coworking experience.

I grew up in the church. I did not understand the potential staring me down every Sunday. I did not recognize the vast amounts of wealth outside of the genuine smiles and embraces. The problem became apparent when I could not recall the names of the individuals who watched me grow up into early adulthood, or what their professions were. The problem was I did not know their names to begin with. The accessibility of consistent working environments can limit mobility, sharing of knowledge, and health of a community.

A funny thing happened. It is said wisdom comes from the most unsuspecting places, or something like that. I needed help with 3D printing a cover for a self service private cloud server. We were running a mobile Virtual Reality room, and offering hybrid cloud solutions. In my immediate network was a woman with a 3D Biomedical Printing company. I had no idea until I asked for help. You never know who may be sitting beside you. One person could be manufacturing wheels and another tires. All while the individual a couple seats down responsible for car engines.

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