Rick Kuwahara and I met up with Mr. @Hawaii, Ryan Ozawa yesterday in Chinatown. Ryan is the archetypal early adopter and he's got the brand and voice to prove it.
Ryan and Burt Lum have a weekly broadcast on Hawaii Public Radio called Bytemarks cafe, which they've been doing for nearly nine years now. Getting airtime on Bytemarks is a proven way in Hawaii to announce and publicize things like a product launch, a new business venture, an app release, and so on.
Ryan and Burt also have a weekly segment called Geek Beat on Hawaii News Now. We were mentioned on their segment about a year ago (see 1 minute 20 seconds):
Ryan recently encountered fame when Trump supporters took to Twitter to bash @hawaii after a federal judge in Hawaii placed a temporary restraining order on the president's proposed travel ban. Thinking ahead, Ryan cornered the @hawaii handle years ago. For better or worse, he went viral for a few days.
SEE ALSO: Quit tweeting your travel ban anger to @hawaii [CNN]
Another hat worth mentioning is his day job as Communications Director at Hawaii Information Service, a local real estate tech company. They're national caliber and up to some great stuff this year.
Lastly, Ryan is co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer for Smart Yields, an Ag startup in Honolulu.
Smart Yields helps small to medium-sized farmers grow more with less by providing access to intelligence through record-keeping and data-monitoring. Founder Vincent Kimura was named “Ag Entrepreneur of the Year” at the 16th annual Hawaii Venture Capital Association (HVCA) awards gala earlier this year.