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Showing posts with label Ana Roca Castro. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ana Roca Castro. Show all posts

Monday, June 21, 2010

Holdin Out for a Hero Blog

This Sunday I had the great honor of being featured in Laura Tellado's Holdin Out for a Hero blog.  I am humbled and thankful to all of the amazing folks that I have met over the last decade online that have made this work possible.  Also, by way of clarification the founder of LATISM (Latinos in Social Media) was Ana Roca Castro.  She and Louis Pagan were really two of the most influential people to birth LATISM.  I came along as the third member of their team/board as they began the efforts to formalize the organization.  Together, the three of us recruited the other members of the now seven member strong LATISM board and subsequently I had the distinct privilege to step into the role of the organization's first ED.  Below is an excpert from Laura's post.

Day 295 Kety Esquivel (of LATISM)


Lately I’ve had the the frequent impulse to write about people who are moving others to do positive things on a large scale. I truly believe social media will play an even bigger role in the near future in getting people connected to one another, and it will be a new chapter in corporate and philanthropy books alike.
One woman who is doing her part in changing the way that people communicate and spread the word about important issues is Kety Esquivel...of Latinos in Social Media (LATISM).
A trailblazer Latina, Esquivel has founded, co-founded and sat on the board of numerous non-profits.
According to the official Web site, LATISM is the largest organization of social media professionals of Hispanic origin.” The brains behind the operation is Ms. Esquivel, who previously worked as the New Media Manager for the National Council of La Raza (NCLR).
Esquivel also co-founded the Institute of Progressive Christianity and the Sanctuary and, according to The Huffington Post (which she contributes to), she has “over fifteen years of experience in the non-profit, private and political sectors.”
Additionally, she founded CrossLeft.org, a Web site for progressive-minded Christians who want to speak out on some of our world’s most pressing issues.
I had only heard of the LATISM hashtag on Twitter, #latism. I learned of Kety and her fabulous work in moving Hispanics forward along with the changing technology when my friend, Christian HenrĂ­quez, interviewed her for his show, One Voice Radio. Since then, I’ve participated in a few LATISM “tweeting parties” online, and have become part of the bigger community Kety is fostering on the Web.

Read the rest of the post.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

BlogHer 2006 - 2010 and Latinas in Social Media

About four years ago I met Lisa Stone the originator of BlogHer, co-founder of BlogHer with Elisa Camahort Page and Jory Des Jardins at a retreat in Oaxaca, Mexico.  She was inspiring, beautiful and up to creating a very cool platform for women bloggers.

Over the course of the subsequent months, I became involved with BlogHer and met the other members of the founding team.  I participated in one of
BlogHer's panels in 2006 (more here,  herehere and here) and even became one of the BlogHer editors (I edited the Religion & Spirituality blog).

I have been amazed and delighted at the growth of BlogHer and the impact it has had in elevating the voices of women bloggers and technologists in the private, nonprofit and political sectors.  Four years later, there is a group of us that is hoping to do with Latinos in Social Media (Hashtag on twitter #Latism) what Lisa and her partners did with BlogHer; and we are hoping to learn from BlogHer and partner with them to find out how they did what they've done.  We have so much to learn from their success.  I started the conversation with Erin Kotecki Vest  (
@QueenofSpain) during Gov2.0LACamp earlier this year and we are supposed to continue the conversation post SXSW.

In addition to chatting with and learning from the members of the BlogHer team, the LATISM family is committed to being engaged and a part of the BlogHer community as well.

This year several Latinas in Social Media will be participating in a panel at BlogHer.  To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that there will be a panel comprised exclusively of Latinas at BlogHer.  The Latinas in Social Media panel will include a diverse group of Latinas with different blogging experiences.  Meet the phenomenal women involved:

Silvia Martinez:  
http://www.mamalatinatips.com

Melanie Edwards:  http://www.modernmami.com
Carolyn Gonzalez:  http://caroincarolina.blogspot.com
Monica Vila:  http://www.TheOnlineMom.com
Jeannette Kaplun:  
http://www.todobebe.com

Lisa Perez:  http://Newyorkchica.com 
Lexi  Esparza:  http://laprimerablog.com 
Migdalia Rivera:  http://latinaonamission.com 
Mariana Perez: http://ridingwithnohands.com
Denisse Icaza:  http://thecouponchica.webs.com
Ana Roca Castro:  http://premiersocialmedia.com

You can register for the BlogHer conference here.

I will close with a famous quotes by Eugene V. Debs, "When we are in partnership and have stopped clutching each other's throats, when we have stopped enslaving each other, we will stand together, hands clasped, and be friends. We will be comrades, we will be brothers, and we will begin the march to the grandest civilization the human race has ever known."

My only question now is what lies ahead after this panel in 2010?