From Grenada to Digital Media: Kimron Corian Speaks

Join us as we journey into the inspiring saga of Kimron Corian, Ryerson University graduate and the proud winner of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean State 30 Under 30 award. This episode offers a glance into his brilliant journey, the arduous work behind his accolades, and his undying love for his homeland, Grenada. Walk with us down memory lane as Kimron relives his Grenadian childhood, his involvement in his university's incubators, and the birth of a project so close to his heart, “I am Grenadian”. Let's unfold together the story of an individual whose commitment and determination serve as a testament to his success.

Shifting gears, we dive head-first into the world of Kim's business, Kim Run-Korey and Digital, and the myriad services they offer for brands, organizations, and businesses. Listen as he deciphers the enigma surrounding AI and its implications on job displacement and reskilling. Let's talk about online negativity, and how Kim has tackled this inevitable aspect of the digital world with grace and empathy. Finally, discover how Kimron leverages digital media to propel his entrepreneurial ventures. Buckle up for a riveting discussion on entrepreneurship, AI, and the vast expanse of digital media with none other than Kimron Corian!

Transcript

Carlene Humphrey : 0:04

Hi, I'm Carlene and this is Nutmeg Nation. Thank you so much for tuning in to the show. We have our first guest of the season, kimron Corian. He's the graduate of Ryerson University, with a master's in digital media, which is so prevalent now, and also the gold medal recipient, winner of the organization of Eastern Caribbean State 30 under 30, which is amazing. So tell me about this award and what did you do to get this accolade? Absolutely.

Kirani James : 0:43

So thank you so much for inviting me on the podcast. It's a pleasure to be here, quite an honor. As you spoke about my Ryerson experience, getting the gold medal and so well, just to say that when I went to Ryerson it was called Ryerson University. It is now called Toronto Metropolitan University, so that's the new name of the school in Toronto and I did my masters in digital media. Like you stated, and throughout my journey, throughout my master's journey, I never just stuck to the academics of you know, like what we're doing in the classroom or maybe some of the projects that we do on the side. I took an interest in a lot of things that were happening outside of the classroom, so getting involved in some of the incubators at the university. Because Ryerson University, now Toronto Metropolitan, is how it is. It's broken down into like zones, so you have like a transmedia zone, a digital media zone, a legal legal innovation zone and so on and so forth, where startups can come in or students can go and incubate the startups or the startup ideas there. I was part of the transmedia zone, which is focused on like storytelling, and also the digital media zone which, because of the master of digital media, we were automatically based in the digital media zone. And yeah, so I was involved in that. I was involved in like all sorts of different things at university and one of my projects that I did was also incubated at university. It's a storytelling project called I am Grenadian. Right, and myself, my partner Trisha, we launched this project, got it incubated at Ryerson University as well, and the aim of that was to empower Grenadians at home and in the diaspora with engaging and accessible content and stories. So just doing all these things and on top of that, I did extremely well on the academic side. So on graduation day, I was awarded the one of the highest honors that the university offers, which is the Ryerson Gold Medal, and that has been like I mean, it was exciting. You know, I was truly happy for it and still today, like I'm like wow, when I look back, I can't believe that actually got that. And you also mentioned the OECS 30 under 30. So I am no longer 30. I am over 30 now. But yeah, a couple years ago the OECS launched the inaugural 30 under 30 program and I got it based on. So I was one of. I was one of 30 young people under 30 from the Eastern Caribbean that was recognized based on what I was doing in the field of digital marketing and also the project. I am Grenadian, so it really had a lot to do with the work that I was doing at the time, because I do have an entrepreneur. I'm working with brands, businesses, you know, helping them to connect, engage and build relationships online using the different types of digital media tools that are available to us, whether it's social media marketing, whether it's email marketing, whether it's paid media, whatever it is that we do at my agency. So I was under 30 at the time. I also recognized for the work that I was doing. That's kind of the awards in a nutshell.

Carlene Humphrey : 4:17

Definitely. I mean a lot to talk about there, especially now with the way, ted, that technology is going. But I mean this show is about Grenada and you know your roots, so tell me, were you born in Grenada? Like, what was it like growing up in Grenada and what was your experience? Like that led you up to where you are now.

Kirani James : 4:37

Yeah, I was born and raised in Grenada, in St Andrew Paradise to be exact, and I believe that I had one of the best upbringings that a young boy could ask for. You know, I mean growing up. I did all the typical things you know expect a teenage boy, a young boy, to do, you know hang out with friends, go into the river, fishing, playing soccer in the park at the time progress park or maybe the park at Pearls, you know, playing basketball on the court with the guys, playing cricket in the road. And you know, like, going to get mangoes with the boys, whether or not the mangoes belong to us, but going to other people's land, you know, back then you know nobody, nobody really minds. So you're going to somebody land, pick up the mangoes. They don't mind that. I mean, what are the people? People might get upset, but you know it's young people growing up so you know the people don't mind that. I went to St Andrew Anglican Primary School in Grenville. I used to walk to one from school every day, unless I got a ride. So imagine that I walk from paradise to Grenville back then. Oh my goodness. But now it's like no, I do it willingly. So, for example, I mean I don't live in Grenville right now, but whenever I'm in Grenville I sometimes just walk to one from Grenville, just because whenever I'm in Grenville, like I'm driving or whatever, but like sometimes it's like, nah, I just, I just want to walk, like like this is it, I just want to walk. So I went to school in in Grenville and Andrew Anglican Primary. Then, after I passed comedy insurance, I went to St Andrew Anglican Secondary School at SAS, again over there, play football, took part in athletics and I mean I've made some great friends who, like, are some of my closest friends to this day. And it has been. It has been quite a journey. Like, from SAS I went to Tam Cici, spent one year and after that one year in Tam Cici I left because I got a scholarship to go to Mexico. I went to Mexico to do my undergraduate degree there, did a bachelor's degree in economics, came back, worked in the financial services sector for a bit, migrated to Canada, switched from economics and financial services to digital media and yeah, that's what I'm doing now.

Carlene Humphrey : 6:55

Wow, you are a Grenadian to the bone, so the country boy. You know what I mean Because for me, I grew up in Grenance and I left when I was a lot younger. So I guess a lot of people always ask you like what's your background? And everything like that. I left when I was so young, I left when I was six.

Kirani James : 7:10

So you definitely yeah, you don't have more roots in Grenada than I do for sure. I left when I was growing up and I left Grenada I mean outside of like traveling to like Trinidad and so on, so forth for like a week or two and come back. I actually left Grenada for the first time like for us to spend a long time outside when I went to Mexico, and that was like at age 18, good and 19. Right so, and I spent five years in Mexico, so yeah wow, you're a traveler.

Carlene Humphrey : 7:39

There we go. You know what, the one video I got to give you accolades for I watched it a couple of times is the one that you created on Grenada being one of the best places to travel in the world. I guess Time Magazine listed Grenada as that, and so the reason I even saw you is because of your I am Grenadian page. I mean, I was, I guess I've always followed it, since it's an exception, but I started noticing the podcast and I'm like wait a minute, he has a podcast. What's going on? You know behind the bars podcast, so you are very busy, and so the way that, as an entrepreneur, the way you make your money to live, is it through digital media. Are you helping other clients with their digital media presence? What is your main brand?

Kirani James : 8:27

So I am Grenadian, so let's start there. Well, you know what? Let me go back a bit, because you mentioned that video and we'll come forward to the last question that you asked. So you mentioned that video. That video I did where Time's Magazine listed Grenada as one of the top destinations to visit. That video was done during my tenure as the communications manager at the Grenada Tourism Authority. So I worked as the communication manager at the Grenada Tourism Authority for a bit and I mean we did a lot of videos, we did a lot of campaigns and so on. That video was the last video I did before I resigned and moved back to Canada. So every year I sometimes just repost that video. I am Grenadian Again. We launched I am Grenadian a couple of years ago and over the years we've sort of fallen off a bit. But my business partner and I, trisha, we are currently preparing to relaunch I am Grenadian 2.0 at the end of this month. So there's gonna be some things coming where I am Grenadian is concerned. Super excited about that Now, as it relates to the main thing that I do in terms of business is well, my business is called. Well, the brand is Kim Run-Korey and Digital. The company is officially registered as Korean and Co, but I set a set of the registration so I can operate as Kim Run-Korey and Digital and ultimately what we do is work with brands, organizations, businesses on the digital media presence. So ultimately, we design and execute results oriented social media strategies and campaigns for organizations and brands to help them achieve the bottom line. Whatever that bottom line is whether it's you're trying to generate more revenue, whether you're trying to get more attention towards a cause as a nonprofit, whether you're trying to generate brand awareness because you're launching a new product or service, like whatever it is we design campaigns and strategies to help you achieve that. Additionally, we work with clients that have us on retainer just to work with their marketing people or their communication people on the digital strategy. So on a weekly basis, I will meet with some clients and we need to talk and break down some of the strategies, some of the things that they're working on. In many cases I may or may not have worked on the strategy for them or with them, but just having somebody like an advisor that you can run things by, discuss things with, you know you have an idea for a new campaign that you wanna launch and in many cases, they have the traditional side of things well documented or they have the traditional side of things sorted out, but the digital side is where people tend to have a little bit of problems. So, having that being that, I suppose you can call me that person or that voice that they can go to to get assistance with their digital, that somebody that they can run things by. The other piece of the business is training and workshops. So we host a lot of workshops and training as well. As a matter of fact, about a month ago, I was in Grenada hosting a social media and artificial intelligence masterclass. Went to Grenada, did that masterclass is something I've been doing for a bit. Additionally. When I came back, many people were saying to me we love this social media, but we also realized that AI is becoming a big thing. So can you do a workshop that strictly focus on AI? And about two weeks ago, I did an online workshop on generative AI, right? So training workshops that's the next piece of what we do as a business. So, yeah, that's kind of it on the shell, how we operate.

Carlene Humphrey : 12:03

Even though you're here in Toronto, you do go to Grenada and help other Grenadians learn about technology now. You know AI is making a serious presence. Right, I have a little story. So I was at Walmart the other day and they already have a Zamboni that's run by itself, so no one else is cleaning the floor. It's obviously AI operated, so I guess that's the way that things are going. A Walmart obviously has the money to invest in that. So what is your opinion on AI? Someone who studied digital media, do you think it's a great thing? Like you know, there's lots of mixed reactions when it comes to artificial intelligence. I mean, we've seen it in movies. I remember watching AI with Steven Spielberg years ago, so it's just like what do you think?

Kirani James : 12:54

Like I said, there's a lot of like, mixed reviews about AI. There are AI deniers or AI people who are being, you know, negative. That's really the AI there People who are focusing on the positive of AI. Here's the thing about AI AI is nothing new. As a matter of fact, artificial intelligence as a discipline was introduced in 1956 at the Dathomod conference. All right, so that's I mean, it's been a minute. What we're seeing today is a resurgence of AI that is brought about as a result of an increase in storage capacity, computing power, big data availability so there's more data available now. So some of these things were unavailable years ago, so there was no, the AI wasn't as prevalent as it is now, and we also see an increasing startup investment in AI research and also AI powered tools. So AI is nothing new. First of all, the second thing to note is that artificial intelligence is another technological revolution that we are experiencing. It's like we've done in the past. So we have seen technological revolutions in the past where there's a new technology that came in, disrupted the status quo, displace some jobs, creating new ones, and then we moved on to think about when farmers were walking the lands and they were fucking, and so we had an introduction on the tractors right. Many people got angry because it's like oh, people are going to lose their jobs because the tractors are not coming into the land and do whatever. However, with the efficiencies that came about as a result of that, we had new jobs created elsewhere and these people who used to work in land now had jobs in other areas of the industries. Now, as it relates to artificial intelligence the need at one of the biggest, I would say, changes that we've seen in a minute from a technological standpoint and there will be some displacement of jobs as a result of AI. But more than just job displacement, we are also going to see jobs being created in other areas as a result of AI. So our focus needs to be on reskilling. Number one, to ensure that we don't get left behind. Number two, we should be embracing AI. So there is no point in being scared of AI, or there is no point in complaining about AI is going to come in and take over a job. You're going to do whatever, because the truth about it is it's here. So we can be emotional about how we want things to be, or we can react to how things are and get to the program, and the people that are scared of AI or who do not want to engage with AI are the ones that are going to get left behind in this new world that we are embracing. What AI is concerned, what AI is going to do, artificial intelligence will supercharge us as individuals. It will make us more efficient, it will make us more productive, and a lot of the mundane tasks, a lot of the tasks that we have to do, the manual tasks that we have to do over and over it will step in and really make those things more efficient and better, so that we can get more time to be a little bit more creative, more strategic and, at the end of the day, the next thing to remember about AI is the fact that artificial intelligence is not human intelligence. Right, it's a simulation of human intelligence, but it's not human intelligence, so it's still need. Let me give an example. Let's look at chat GPT. Chat GPT is one of the more popular generated AI platforms that we have now and really and truly without the human input, then chat GPT doesn't work. It's just a tool and we need the creative input from a person to enter like a prompt. First of all, that prompt need to be very specific, it need to be very detailed in order to get the output that you want. And even when chat GPT give you an output, then you still need, as a human, to go in and check and show that what you're getting is in fact good information, because many times chat GPT can give you erroneous information and again, like we say, when you're looking at entering prompts, garbage in, garbage out. So, at the end of the day, artificial intelligence is pretty much just a tool and it's really how we use it to make our lives better. That's my thoughts on AI.

Carlene Humphrey : 17:16

How important do you think it is to either get on the bandwagon with artificial intelligence, like in terms of learning, what do you think listeners should be learning if they are people who are in the IT field? Because I feel, with technology especially, you always have to upgrade your skills, but if that's something that you're not good at, like I mean, what are the ways you think people should learn about this in order to make their future better?

Kirani James : 17:46

So here's the thing about AI Like you don't have to be an AI expert to use AI or to get involved with AI. You don't have to be an IT professional. I'm not an IT professional. I don't have any kind of background in technological development. I cannot create AI. I'm not a software engineer. So you don't have to be any of that. You don't have to be a technology person in order to make use of AI. So there are the people that actually can create the technologies. Right, what are there? We're talking about software engineers, mathematicians, data analysts and so on and so forth. You have those people. However, if you don't have any skills in those areas, that's okay. You can just teach yourself really how to utilize and make use of those tools and those platforms that exist. So let's look at something as basic as a prompt engineering. That's a new career that's emerging as a result of artificial intelligence. That is called prompt engineering and, despite the fact that there's engineering in the name, what it really is is about how to write the correct prompt to enter into an artificial intelligence so that it can give you the output that you really need. You don't need an engineering degree, you don't need an IT degree or anything to be able to do any of that. So I don't believe that there is anybody that can't make use of AI. I think everybody can make use of AI. If you can use Facebook, then you can use chat GPT right, because chat is literally just just typing something into a chat bar and it giving you a response. So I believe anybody and everybody can make use of any of the AI tools. Now what we have to do is we have to be, I will say, inquisitive enough to check them out, investigate them. So many people, without even trying any of the AI tools, they will talk about it and say, well, it's this, it's that, it's bad, it's whatever, and they haven't even tried it out themselves. So it's kind of tough for you to be to ensure that something that you haven't even tried yourself. So that's what I was to tell the people like just go ahead and try it out, try out charge beauty, try out my journey. There's a bunch of different artificial intelligence tools that are all they just type it in Google AI tools and you will come up with a bunch, and there's two. There's AI tools for a lot of different things. If you want to create content, there's tools for that If you want to and there's a bunch of different tools for that, for example, a podcast like this will benefit from some of the content creation tools that that exists. For instance, if you want to look at a tool like cast magic a cast magic is a tool that I use for my podcast All I have to do is load what is the audio or the YouTube link or whatever, and it will literally summarize everything that the episode was about, right Me notes I can put in my YouTube description. It will generate questions like a bunch of different stuff that it really makes my life much easier as a podcast. So I would say that people need to just try tools based on their chosen profession and just look at okay, how is my profession going to be impacted, going to be changed, going to be disrupted as a result of AI, and what I need to do to ensure that I don't get left behind? And most of the time, what you need to do is either reskill or learn to use the tool themselves to make your job more efficient, because not every job you can use AI for, especially in the creative space, because of them. We have to be the ones to be creative and strategic and tell AI what to do.

Carlene Humphrey : 21:15

It is helpful, you know, especially with time there's only so much time in the day and whatever something else. Like you said, summarizing the show and like making note for people who can't hear AI is great If you have the words on the screen so that the listener can understand what's being said. So obviously it just helps with time management. Anything that can help us do things more efficiently in life is always great, but I think it's one of those things, like you said, I didn't even realize like you just taught me something new that you know this conversation about AI has been around since 1956, like you mentioned prior, so there's so much to talk about. So, and it's amazing, I know like time is of the essence. But one more thing you are a podcaster as well, and your podcast is dropping bars podcast, and I saw it on your page. I am granadian, so what made you decide to create this podcast?

Kirani James : 22:15

Yeah, so dropping bars, dropping bars with Kim around Korea, and it can be found on YouTube, spotify, apple podcast anyway, and the reason why I wanted to podcast was to meet cool people.

Carlene Humphrey : 22:29

I love that whole idea there because I mean, I've met some cool people and I think you're cool too, you're very educated, you know you're talking about, and I'm so happy you were able to make the time to come on the show because when I started off with non magnation, I did a lot of research and there's a lot of negative things. People say I spoke to someone else because, you know, granada is a small island. The population is only 112,000. And a lot of people always have things to say about Granada. You know to me, oh, it's so small and with other Caribbean podcast, like you know, jamaica is a bigger island and I was saying we turned it out in Tobago and so it was kind of discouraging when I started off, so you kind of reignited the flame for me because I'm like, wait a minute, I have a little bit of competition now, you know.

Kirani James : 23:17

so so here's what I think about some of the negativity that you might get online and people may be talking, smack about different things that what we're doing Right. The way I see it is if you could take time off your day, like your day, take your time to come to sit down and like, write me a negative comment, or to lamb base, make it a size, something that I'm doing, that I'm doing, that I'm in the field, I'm the one doing the podcast or creating the videos or doing whatever. You don't do anything, and then you could create that some, some sort of negative comment and so forth. But then I have empathy for you because it has to be that your life is that miserable that you decide that your whole purpose is to just put other people down, people that you don't even know. Well, I could only deploy empathy towards you, so I don't let any of that get to me if I'm being honest.

Carlene Humphrey : 24:10

Yeah, definitely, no, no, I don't do what I got to do. We all do what we got to do, so thank you, you know what I mean, camron, I will definitely have you back on the show to talk more about technology, because I feel like you have more to share. You are someone that's definitely know what you're talking about and, with the background, especially in digital media, it's so important now than ever before. I think the pandemic 2020 kind of made us realize that we have to have a plan B, we have to create other ideas, we have to do other things and it's amazing what you're doing. So, if anyone wants to follow you on social media, where are you?

Kirani James : 24:47

at Camron Korean everywhere. K I M R O N C O R I O N All platforms YouTube, facebook, tiktok, twitter threads now Instagram, wherever, linkedin, camron Korean.

Carlene Humphrey : 25:02

Thank you so much, Camron. It was great to have you on the show. I'm Carleen and this is Notmagnation.