Don’t forget to vote on May 21.

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Ariel Coro, Founder of the Tecnifícate conference

Ariel Coro, the founder of the conference and founder of the Spanish language technology site Tu Tecnología, was the host of the conference which focused on technology, entrepreneurship, education, and using technology to help with the job search process.

Sonia Farace and Ana Reyes from Sony spoke on social media for families and for professional development. To get a sense of the tech savviness of the crowd, Farace asked how many people were familiar with and had used Skype and nearly every hand went up. When it came to whether folks had heard of Infographic Resumes, only a couple of hands went up though.

I have been a speaker at two previous Tecnifícate conferences, sharing information on using social media for social good and to support business start-ups. As in the first conference I attended, over a third of the participants identified themselves as being small business owners.

This is pretty huge.

I remember watching a video of serial entrepreneur Loic Le Meur at a Stanford Business School event. Loic looked shocked when only a third of the business school audience raised their hands when asked if they had started up their own business or planned on doing so. Entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone. This wasn’t the case at the Tecnificate conference.

At the conference, I ran into Diego Cardenas who has several cool products and businesses in play. One of his products is a battery charger for Kindle devices that serves as a Kindle cover and iPhone charger. It allows your Kindle to run for 20 hours straight. Diego also has an iPhone app which allows people who speak different languages to do text translation on the fly. That means that I can use his app, Sendboo, to send a text in English to a friend or colleague who speaks a different language, like Portuguese, and the friend will see the text in Portuguese on his iPhone. The app works in 30 different languages.

Here’s Diego with a very quick view of his product:

Later on in the afternoon, young leaders from the Leadership and Technology Institute spoke about how they are helping with technology education for youths. Then Ricardo Arcia from Teravision Technologies spoke on lessons learned from an early startup. “Fail cheaply” was one important message.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to stay for all of Ariel Coro’s keynote address but I did hear him reinforce the importance of education, especially technology education. The Tecnifícate conference and his work on building the Tu Tecnología site is clear evidence that Ariel Coro is doing what he can to help boost Latinos in technology.

For those who missed the conference, you’ll have another chance as the Tecnifícate conference is headed up to Santa Barbara on May 25. Hope to see you there!

“Telecommunications Security and Privacy Act. Invasion of privacy is more like it. – You read the Post? ‘This bill is not the first step towards the surveillance society. It is the surveillance society.’”

Where the “Telecommunications Security and Privacy Act” is a cinematic construct, CISPA is not. The CISPA bill, which will is expected to be argued in the next couple of days, allows for more collaboration between the Pentagon and private companies who manage tons of customer data. This means that if this bill is signed into law, the federal government can go to a private company like Google and ask them for information over recent cyberattacks that Google may have fended off. This information could help the government shore up its own security and be prepared for future attacks.

Of course, CISPA covers more than just this type of cybersecurity. The government can knock on a private company’s door if it is investigating and prosecuting cybersecurity crimes, protecting others from danger of death or bodily harm, if it is protecting minors from exploitation from child pornography or similar risks such as human trafficking or kidnapping or if there is a threat to national security. You can read the text of the CISPA bill here (PDF).

Yes, this is extremely broad.

Other Issues with CISPA
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also looks at the issue of whether or not personally identifiable information (PII) should be included as part of this cyberattack intelligence. Many securities experts say PII should not need to be transmitted but Congress members are trying to include it. The ACLU is also questioning the attempt to immunize private companies from sharing this data.

The Fight
Anonymous is calling for a one-day Internet blackout on Monday, April 22, 2013 to raise awareness of CISPA and to send a message to private companies that are supporting CISPA.

There is a STOP CISPA petition on Change.org which already has over 160,000 signatures.

Will you be joining the blackout on April 22?

Photo Credit:Aquila on Flickr – license

It’s been awesome!

I already gave you all my top 10 learning points from the National Media Reform Conference so I’ll quickly review my highlights from the Dems Convention.

Tourist
This is only my fourth trip into Sacramento (the other three were all same-day visits) so we drove in a day early to have a chance to recuperate and to check out the sights. One of my Twitter friends who used to live in Sacramento suggested I check out Old Sacramento and specifically a shop called Evangeline’s. It was a cool shop and I bought a handful of zombie buttons which I shared with my family, much to their glee.

Delegate
I was very fortunate to have been appointed a delegate by State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson. This is my first trip to the Democratic Convention and I have worked on many Democratic political campaigns in Denver and in California. I’ve knocked on doors and made many phone calls for great candidates over the years. I’m glad Senator Jackson reached out and connected and helped bring more diversity into the Dems Convention and the state Democratic system.

Caucuses
The caucuses are like giant family gatherings. Many people know each other and there’s an occasional “food fight” of ideas and positions. I participated in the Veterans, Labor, and Environmental caucuses, especially to support Ventura County representatives Shawn Terris and RL Miller. I’m glad to report that RL Miller is now the Chair of the Environmental Caucus.

Here’s a snapshot of the packed Environmental Caucus meeting.

Red to Blue Luncheon
This luncheon celebrated new members of Congress who turned their voting districts from red to blue. I’m proud to have helped turn my district from red to blue by helping to elect Julia Brownley, the first Democrat to win Congress in Ventura County in 70 years! With redistricting, the district had the chance to go blue but it took a lot of outreach to new communities, especially the Latino community. My colleague Danny Carrillo attended as an appointed delegate of State Assembly member Das Williams and another colleague Laura Espinosa is an elected delegate. They are pictured below with Congress woman Julia Brownley.

Another highlight of the luncheon was getting to hear the stories of Congress members Raul Ruiz who grew up in adverse conditions and still earned three degrees from Harvard and of Congress member Mark Takano who became the first openly gay member of Congress in California and did so in conservative Riverside County.

Daraka!
One of the biggest highlights was being there to vote for Daraka Larimore-Hall for Secretary of the State Democratic Party and then victory!

Tourist Part Two Sometimes magical thing happen while exploring a new town. I was on my way to one of the many Convention parties when a huge group of bicyclists rode by.

Friends
The last but not least highlight was being able to reconnect with old friends like former colleague Carla Castilla and make some new acquaintances who could become friends. I also had a chance to finally meet Adriel Hampton who I have been following on Twitter for many years. We ended up sitting at the same table at the Emerge California Tweet Off event. Birds of a feather…

Ten things I learned:

One – There are tons of small independent media outlets that want to connect with you. As a blogger and communicator, I’m always looking for ways to connect with big media outlets but there are radio stations and print papers that are dying to connect with advocates.

Two – There are probably many small independent media outlets already in your community. Keep your eyes open and connect with the people running the news station or online magazine and build a relationship with them.

Three – Media consolidation is a huge global problem. It is easy to underestimate the power Big Media has to influence the way we think about important issues. Would the US have gone into the second war in Iraq had mainstream media really dug deep into whether there really were WMDs in Iraq? I think not.

Four – I had never heard the phrase “cultural organizing” so it was good to see how groups like CultureSt/ke are connecting art and action.

Five – I finally saw a 3D printer. It’s an amazing idea which will lead to big things in many areas. It’s also small enough to be portable so you can create things on the fly. Independent media meets independent manufacturing.

Six – I met a lot of cool people and learned from them all including my roommate at the event Peter Schurmann from New America Media. Unfortunately he learned that I snore like the testing lab at a buzz saw factory.

Seven – Prisons charge inmates crazy rates ($20/minute) to talk to their loved ones over the phone.

Eight – This is related to #5 – Favianna Rodriguez is pretty awesome. She is an artist and co-founded the petition site Presente.org and CultureSt/ke. She was also one of the first 100 people I followed on Twitter over 5 years ago.

Nine – Organizations like Democracy Now and FreePress.net are doing amazing things to support free independent media across the country. *Disclosure: My trip was partially funded by a generous grant from Media Democracy Fund via The Media Consortium group.

Ten – Storytelling is super important. Not just the story but who is telling it and why.

A big thank you to Victor Landa and NewsTaco.com for connecting me with The Media Consortium and its Executive Director Jo Ellen Green Kaiser who is also awesome.

My Facebook timeline

Human Rights Campaign, an organization devoted to supporting lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender rights, is encouraging others to use its logo and share its photos on social media sites to spread the word about the Supreme Court proceedings. My Facebook timeline has a sea of red logos.

Local activist Lucas Zucker made this comment on his Facebook profile, “You know your organization has successful branding when people are changing their Facebook profile pictures to your logo. HRC, you win.”

Of course this isn’t the first time a campaign has used logos on avatars to promote a cause.  During the election in Iran, tens of thousands of Twitter users changed their avatars to a green tint and you can find thousands of different symbols on avatars throughout social media with political, sports, and many other types of avatar “flair.”

If you support marriage equality and want to share that on your Facebook page or Twitter stream, you can visit the Human Rights Campaign Facebook page and grab a red avatar in solidarity.

This is the second Craftcation: Indie Business and DIY Conference here in Ventura and it is composed of crafting classes, crafting business training, local tours and socializing with crafty kindred spirits. The conference goes on throughout the weekend. Many of the attendees are professional crafters with their own product lines, crafting stores, books, TV shows and much more.

Kathy Cano-Murillo (aka “Crafty Chica”), last night’s keynote speaker and a friend, is a former newspaper writer, accomplished novelist, has her own crafting product line, has been on TV and was recently featured in a New York Times article on crafting. She shared a touching story about her beloved dog Cha Cha who passed away and how she was a great teacher in many ways because of her joy of life.

“Jump into the arms of what you love,” she told the crowd of over 200 crafters. Crafty Chica also urged the attendees to embrace their crafty sides and to shine and “shake their snow globes every day.”

Part of finding what you love also includes connecting with one’s tribe and many of the crafters are connected on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. There was an active group of Twitterers using the #Craftcation and #Makers2013 hashtags last night, even sharing Vine videos of the action.

Delilah Snell and Nicole Stevenson produced this year’s Craftcation conference and hopefully they’ll bring it back to Ventura next year as well.

Photo credit: @belenesq on Flickr

It wasn’t too hard to become addicted. I’ve tried many video services before: YouTube, 12seconds, Qwik, and others that came and went even faster. Vine is right for its time. What makes it different?

I still remember when I first heard about YouTube. I was teaching an IT class at Cal State Channel Islands in 2006. One of the professors told me about this cool new video company. The rapid growth of the site didn’t register at first. Other companies had ventured into video, but nothing caught on because video was too resource-intensive and messing with formats was a huge pain in the keester. YouTube was able to grow because it figured out how to overcome those two barriers and made online video ubiquitous.

As I became more immersed in social media, I searched for a service with a quicker turnaround time that could be easily shared. (Even now, creating a YouTube video can be a big production.) When the now-defunct* 12seconds.tv site launched I jumped on it and had fun watching other people post, participating in memes and even starting an iTunes podcast. But most of the videos looked the same, a person sitting in front of their computer, because using the built-in camera was the most common way to record a video. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it was restrictive and that limited the site’s growth.

Now, we are able to use our iPhones to shoot a Vine video and post it immediately to Vine, Twitter, and Facebook. That is a huge game-changer.
Because Vine videos are recorded linearly, without allowing for outside video resources, it is very much a “lifestreaming” application. If you check out Vines on our Vinormous viewer page in the morning you will see folks making coffee or going for morning walks or throwing spitballs in class. If you check Vines at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night you will get videos of people at the clubs or in their dorm rooms.

However, the amazing combination of a new medium and vast creativity has kept Vine fresh and preparing for its big moment. Brands have found it and are experimenting, marketers are still scoping it out, and comedians are flocking to it like moths to a wool sweater.

I won’t predict where this will all go, but I’ll keep blogging about the ride.

*12seconds.tv was founded in January of 2008 and closed its doors in late 2010.

Originally posted on Vinormous.com.

The same is true on online relationships and in the process of vetting new connections and networks. Everyone gets invites to join this or that and if you don’t have a previous relationship or personally know the person IRL (in real life) then you might be suspicious of the attempt to connect.

Connecting with this new person or group might turn out well, like a blind date arranged by your favorite aunt. Or, it could be a nightmare like a blind date you go on that one guy’s famous list.

This is what I did, do or have done before joining groups that became invaluable to me, really changed my life or are just fun.

A few years back, by being open to a new group of social media savvy folks from across the country, I was able to connect with this Latinos in Social Media (LATISM) group. Since then, I’ve made a lot of friends and eventually helped produce one of the first social media for social good conferences.

It took some time to trust the new LATISM group though. Eventually I met enough people, had enough live one-on-one conversations with LATISM supporter and I was sold.

I’ve been a part of several other networks on Twitter and they often raise dust before people understand what they are. When I was actively working with hundreds other to help save the life of Eric De La Cruz, a young man who needed a heart transplant, there was much scrutiny of supporters bearing the #ERIC branded Twitter avatars which I still wear today. “Who was this #Eric person, why are people asking for contributions and whoa, why are Trent Reznor, Alyssa Milano, Tony Hawk, and Dave Navarro supporting this campaign?” people would ask. Some took these questions further and dug deeper, often looking to find something wrong.

The creation of a new online network is a delicate thing. There has to be transparency but the forming network can’t spend all of its time trying to appease doubters. During the #ERIC campaign, skeptics were silenced when Eric’s sister, Veronica De La Cruz, started tweeting photos from the hospital.

So what should you do if you are trying to start an online group or network?
In real estate people talk about “Location, Location, Location.” In social media it’s “Transparency, Transparency, Transparency.”

Transparency (1) – Let people easily know who you are. Introduce yourself and your organization. The LATISM network spread quickly, first with the use of the #LATISM hashtag then by spreading the story of the creation of the group which was tied to founding member Ana Roca Castro (@AnaRC).

Transparency (2) – Let people know what you want. Have a Web site that explains your mission and intentions. For the campaign to save Eric De La Cruz’s life, we created a website that had background information and photos of Veronica and Eric when they were children to help people connect with what was going on. The site also had a way to take online donations.

Transparency (3) – Let people know who you really are. If there are holes in your story the Internet will find out and use it against you. The Internet is a big tattletale – photos, forum messages, public records, the Library of Congress!!! This is especially true if you are going to be doing any kind of fundraising or gathering of personal data.

And remember, bloggers like to dig.

Conclusion
Be authentic and build relationships. Also, don’t be a jerk and blow people off when earnest questions are being asked. As Dr. Seuss says, “There is no one youer than you.” But you need to do work to show people who you are.

Photo Credit:
Erlend Aasland on Flickr – License

My father was born in the U.S. but when his parent’s stay in the U.S. was no longer welcome, all of them were sent packing back to Mexico as part of a mass expatriation. This happened in the 1930′s and the larger cycle of bringing in temporary workers then sending them back has occurred many times, ripping families apart and leading to injustices.

It’s time to come up with a sensible policy that includes a clear path to citizenship. The “Keeping Families Together” bus tour is riding across California, visiting the office of elected officials and having a series of rallies to push for comprehensive reform that is humane and includes a path to citizenship. The three-day tour starts on Monday, March 4 and goes to Wednesday, March 6th and will be filled with families impacted by today’s unjust immigration policies.

Download the Keeping Families Together bus tour flyer. (PDF)

The Southern California leg of the tour will start in Los Angeles with a rally near Senator Dianne Feinstein’s office. If you want to be a part of this history-making tour, please download the flyer, share it, and join the tour at one of the stops.

The Keeping Families Together bus tour is being organized by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), SEIU Local 721 (disclosure: I work for SEIU Local 721), and over a dozen other community and labor organizations.

Help promote the bus tour
If you tweet about the bus tour, please use the “#KFTbustour” and “#CIR” hashtags. If we stand together, we can make a difference and work for an immigration policy that is just and includes a clear path to citizenship, not a maze that breaks up families.

I created an Immigration Reform Twitter list with organizations on this bus tour and those who tweet about comprehensive immigration reform. Subscribe to the list or feel free to create your own list.