Web 2.0, Social Media, Advocacy and Being Latino: My Panel at the LISTA 3rd Annual Tech Latino Legislative Briefing

This afternoon from 1-3pm I will be presenting a Workshop at LISTA's third Annual Tech Latino Legislative Briefing.  My fellow panelists include Lance Rios, President and CEO of Being Latino and Raul Danny Vargas, President and CEO of VarCom.  The topic of our panel is Web 2.0, Social Media, Advocacy and Being Latino.  More on the panel below:

The Latino culture is all about family, friends, and close communities. Latinos that make the United States their home as well as those who are second or third generation Latinos maintain that strong sense of socialization.While the media sings the praises of Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites, LISTA is concerned with what web 2.0 tools can do for people in the non-profit community in order to develop a strategy for their outreach, advocacy and recruitment of volunteers.LISTA has always set up partnership of like-minded organizations who share our preoccupation.

See the full agenda.

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 Henríquez, 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.

My Interview on Women in Social Media with Ananda Leeke

Yesterday, I had the honor and priviledge to be interviewed by Ananda Leeke from Sisterhood, the Blog Radio for her series on Women in Social Media.  Unfortunately, my Sprint Overdrive device started acting up and the reception from AARP (where I had gone for a Digital Capital Week event) was spotty at best.  However, Ananda did a great job of sheperding me through a phenomenal interview.  I plan on posting the transcript from our talk in the coming days.  Check out the interview.

My Q&A with Nilki Benitez from Condor Book Tours

My interview with Nilki Benitez from Condor Book Tours is now live!  Check it out.  Here's a preview.

You have so many incredible projects going on--how do you keep yourself on track, organized and coherent so that your energy is well-directed and productive?  

Thank you Nilki!  I try to contribute my grain of sand.  I was raised by a phenomenal mother who did it all.  By trade she was a school teacher.  When she came to this country she worked her way up from the mail room to the purchasing department in a Fortune 100 company; and then when she came home each night she took care of her two daughters and her very traditional though ideologically progressive Latino man.  Folks always wondered where she got all the energy to do everything she did.  I guess I'm lucky in that I've taken after her in that way.  What keeps me on track, organized and coherent so that my energy is well-directed and productive is keeping my eye on the prize and not sweating the small stuff.  Whenever I find myself going off track, I just remember why I do the work I do and then it all seems to fall into place, almost magically.   I recently came across the following quote by Thomas Jefferson and it rings pretty true to me, "I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."  I work hard and try and work smart. 

Read the rest of the interview here.

How to Grow and Mobilize Your Social Media Followers: My Bridge Conference Presentation

I've been invited to do a presentation at the Bridge conference next month.  The presentation title is, "How to Grow and Mobilize Your Social Media Followers."  I am sitting on a panel with three other great women.  It promises to be a fantastic event. 

Today I was in the middle of organizing my slides for our upcoming discussion when it dawned on me... I should go out into the social media universe and ask my friends, followers and readers for their advice.  What are your thoughts?  

What do you find particularly useful when working on growing and mobilizing your Social Media followers?  What have you seen others do that you think has been the most effective/helpful?  What are some of the worst examples that you have seen?  What about the best examples?  Thanks in advance for any thoughts that you care to share!  

Further details on our Bridge conference session below.  I hope that you will join us!  Looking forward to seeing you there!

Presentation Title:          How to Grow and Mobilize Your Social Media Followers

Presentation Description:

So, you’re tweeting and have fans.  But you wish you had larger growth or engagement on your social media sites. Are there tools, techniques, or strategies you should be employing? This panel of online marketing experts will share what’s working for their organizations and audiences. And you’ll hear valuable findings from a new study – Nonprofit Social Media Benchmarks Study – that will help you create your own social media benchmarks and strategy. 

Attendee will learn:

1.  Best practices for what to do and NOT to do to grow your social media base

2.  How to engage corporations and other organizations to help you

3.  How to target Latinos and other special audiences in the social media world

Speakers Name/Title:   Amy Ganderson, Digital Marketing Manager, The Nature Conservancy

Email: aganderson@tnc.org

Speakers Name/Title:   Kety Esquivel, Executive Director and CEO, Latinos in Social Media

Email: kety.esquivel@gmail.com

Speakers Name/Title:    Arielle Holland, Consultant, M+R Strategic Services

Email: aholland@mrss.com

Speakers Name/Title:  Catherine Algeri, Senior Account Executive, InfoGroup Nonprofit (Moderator)

Email:  Catherine.Algeri@tdmc.com


Tuesday, July 27, 2:00-3:15 (75 minutes)

Cochabamba PWCCC - Latinos and the Environment

This blog post was written by Angela Adrar, Lane Rios and myself (Kety Esquivel).

"As a Colombiana naturalized in the US, going to Cochabamba for the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, makes sense on two main fronts. One is the environmental/climate justice front and the other, is to show solidarity to my fellow Latinos and support initiatives held in the countries of the South."
-- Angela Adrar (Environmental Communicator)

"On behalf of everyone at Being Latino, I am more than ecstatic to join this movement. Our aim at Being Latino is to educate, inspire and connect with other people across the global spectrum and with this opportunity we'll have the opportunity to do all 3!"
--Lance Rios (Founder, Being Latino)

"I am inspired not only by the following line in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's proposal for a Declaration of Rights of Mother Earth, "...the 21st century has to become the century of the Rights of Mother Earth and all natural beings," but also by the opportunity of what I can contribute as a US born Latina of indigenous ancestry."
--Kety Esquivel (Latinos in Social Media)

In the US, there is a general misconception that rights of Mother Earth are to be protected elsewhere; in Africa or Asia, where people are struggling with extreme floods and droughts and where environmental degradation is interfering with the basic human rights to food and shelter. However, the historical equation for environmental injustice in the US is just as significant.

According to a Sierra Club National Survey, 66% of Latino(a)s in the United States, work and live close to toxic sites, add to that, the African Americans and Asians that live in highly polluted urban neighborhoods, the farmer migrants that are exposed to pesticides when picking US food and the Indigenous peoples that are having their lands mined and degraded and we have a big hot mess that makes the US majority generally and environmentally disadvantaged.

Eco-Hermanas (Eco-Sisters), a program of La Trenza Leadership has designated 12 Inter-generational, Indigenous, migrant, Afro-descendant and Latino leaders to represent these "dignified yet vulnerable voices" across the US at Cochabamba.

This group includes outstanding women and men that include Penny Williams, the radio host for the Talking Feather, a radio and blog show that honors indigenous knowledge, issues and culture. Ophelia Rivas from the O'Odham Nation and 2010 "Woman on the Border", award Winner. Roberto Borrero, from the United Confederation of Taino People and a Senior Program Director for the American Museum of Natural History. The youngest member of the group is 21 year old Latino, Ian Viteri, from the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, an extraordinary environmentalist and role model for urban youth in Chicago. Diana Lopez from the SouthWest Workers Union in Texas is representing worker environmental rights.

Lance Rios from Being Latino, Kety Esquivel from Latism, Angelica Salazar an innovative online community organizer, and Angela Adrar from La Trenza Leadership will be sending along with the other inspirational leaders from the group regular social media updates from Cochabamba. We will be distributing a press release with our blog URLs, and media outlet information, so that you may see that we, the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural of the United States do have a voice, that we support any initiative that will invite the People to speak, and that we can speak for ourselves. The link to the Press Release will be added once it is available.

Our hope is to work in solidarity with all of the folks who are going to Cochabamba for this conference and produce something that will move us forward in the conversation on Climate Change in an inclusive way that has never before been seen in the Climate Movement. In an effort to begin to organize ourselves, we have created two Google Groups - one for the attendees of the conference and the other for people who want to support our work there and beyond.

If you are interested in joining either of these groups please contact Kety at @KetyE on twitter or by email at Kety.Esquivel@gmail.com.

Thank you and we look forward to continuing the conversation with you from Cochabamba, Bolivia!

Join Me for Three Sessions at SXSW 2010

In a few hours I am heading to one of the biggest technology conferences of the year - SXSW Interactive.  I was invited to speak at the conference last year and after my presentation was truly overwhelmed with the number of panels offered in the remaining days I spent in Austin, Texas.  So this year, I am prepared.  I anticipate drinking a lot of water, sleeping as much as I can (as I crash at one of my good friends homes) and squeezing in as many panels and quality time with thought leaders in the interactive field as humanly possible.  Are you going to be there?  If so, let's meet up!  If you are on twitter, tweet me.  My handle is @KetyE.

I am speaking/participating in three sessions this year.  The first is a panel organized by Jeffrey Bowman (a partner at Ogilvy & Mather's Consulting Practice) which is happening at the Blacks in Technology Meetup at the Carver Museum http://bit.ly/9gcu6E.  It is open to both badge holders and locals without badges alike.  My fellow panelists include musician and 'new media pioneer' Ryan Leslie; the founder of the digital strategic consulting firm Everywhere James Andrews; and blogger and social media maven Nichelle Stephens.  

The second session is happening at the conference itself.  It is a part of the Interactive Future 15 Greater Good Series.  The topic, "Is Technology the Great Equalizer?" http://bit.ly/bvFiYI.  Its on Sunday, March 14 at 3:30 PM in room 9ABC at the convention center.  This session is only for participants of SXSW (only open to folks with SXSWi badges). 

The third session is happening at the first ever Latinos in Technology Meetup at SXSW which I have organized with the help of Julie Diaz-Asper, Marisa Treviño, Deanne Cuellar, Maribel Lackey, Manuel Delgado, Fernando Labastida, Rob Garcia, Romeo and Armando Arayo.  It is also on Sunday at 6pm.  It is a panel at the Carver Museum http://bit.ly/9ffSbO which will be followed by a salsa social/networking event. Both badge holders and locals without badges are welcome. Dancing is not required, but encouraged.  RSVP here: http://bit.ly/9ffSbO.

If you are in Austin, Texas on these days, I hope to see you at one if not all three of these events!