NewsTaco

By Jesse Luna, NewsTaco

The holidays are here and this is a great opportunity to chronicle family festivities- everything from tamaladas, to holiday dinners, to post-election family squabbles, to impromptu football scrimmages. This is also a great time to proudly wave your geek flag and declare yourself the king or queen of geeks in your extended family.

Panoramic real-time sharing
One of the cool things about mobile technologies is the ability to share in almost real-time. We know about mobile photo sharing sites like Instragram and  social networks like Twitter,  Facebook and Pinterest. So don’t be surprised if your last bite at Thanksgiving or your massive glug of holiday wine ends up on someone’s social media timeline. If you want to be the head geek in the family, take out that smartphone and start snapping away at family festivities then share the photos online.

One of my favorite new instant sharing features is taking photos in panoramic mode. Apple’s iPhone 4s and 5 both have a built-in panoramic photo feature with the iOS 6 release (which came out in mid September of 2012).

To use the new panoramic photo feature, open up your iPhone camera then click on the “Options” button at the top of the screen and click on the “Panorama” button. You’ll see a kind of timeline with an arrow in the middle of the screen. Push the photo button and turn with the camera, trying to stay on the center white line as you record. This will record 180 degrees then stitch it all together automatically and save it to your photos. Then you can share it to your favorite photo sharing sites.

This is what the initial screen looks like (on the right):

If you think the built in iPhone panorama feature is geeky goodness, then you’ll totally geek out when you download the 360 Panorama app for iOS and Android. This application allows you to take a spectacular 360 degree view of your holiday event and you don’t even need 3D glasses to view it. This app is similar to the built-in iPhone app in how it works but the result are much more impressive, especially if you view the end product on the app’s website in stereographic view. A friend of mine, @Suebob on Twitter, uses the app to take shots of landmarks and events in nearby Ventura, California. This stereographic photo is a great example of how to share one of your holiday scenes. Click and drag the photo to see it in action.

Note: you may have to practice a few times before you get nice seamless shots.

Photo Slideshow
The holiday slideshow method has a slow turnaround time to create but is sure to get everyone’s attention. At your first holiday get together, take a ton of digital photos then mix them in with some from previous years. Take these photos and add them one at a time to a Power Point presentation. Add transition animations between each slide and make sure the slide is set to automatically transition after a certain number of seconds. Two or three seconds in between each slide is fine.

If you are going to step it up a bit then you can synchronize the slideshow timing with some inspiring music. Then, at your next family get together, you can either whip out your giant laptop or plug a compuer into your digitally-enabled TV and play the slideshow. This also works well for weddings and corporate presentations. If you do this for a wedding, make sure the bachelor/bachelorette party photos don’t get mixed in.

This Web article has technical details on how to set up a photo slideshow using Power Point.

Videos with a splash
If you want to wow your family with your geek skills with a more multimedia method, you can use the Animoto.com site to combine your photos and digital video in a jiffy. The free version of Animoto allows you to quickly mix several photos and a video then select a music track from its library of 600 songs. The free version only creates a 30 seconds video and it shows the Animoto logo at the end.

The nifty thing about Animoto is that it takes your photos and video and automagically sets  the transitions to the beat of your music selection. This gives it a professional look and feel and you can generate the video in no time. Unlike the photo slideshow method above, you can create this right after the family event and share it on your Twitter or Facebook or family email list. Of course, you can also play it at your next family get together.

This is an example of an Animoto video I created a while back after attending my first Latinos in Social Media (LATISM) event over two years ago. I created this the day after the event and am still good friends with many of the people I met there for the first time so it was kind of a family event.

Filmmaker in the making?
If you’re a geek and always thought of becoming a filmmaker or videographer, you may want to go all in and create a short video out of your family event. I did this a couple of years ago when family members got together at Casa de Luna to make tamales during the holiday season.

I love going back to look over this video because it reminds me of the fun we had that day and because it provides a snapshot of a Latino family tradition.

I used a Kodak Zi8 digital camera (but a decent cellphone video camera would do) to record family members going through the steps of making tamales. Different family members had different tips so I had them share those tips on camera. If they “messed up” a take, I’d have them restate the instructions with the idea that I would edit things. Everyone else involved in making the tamales kept working and having fun as I recorded.

The total video footage came out to over 20 minutes long so I used video editing software to crunch it down to 3 minutes then posted it to YouTube. I shared it online and with family members the next time they came over.

Here is the finished product:

I’m glad that the “How to Make Tamales” video is being viewed by thousands of people on YouTube because it shows a taste of the holidays and of family alegria.

How will you chronicle the holidays this year?

This article was first published in jesseluna.com.

[Photo by  philcampbell]

By Jesse Luna, NewsTaco

This election season, voters accessed candidate and proposition information in many more ways than in previous years.

We still received the stack of campaign literature in our mailboxes, were exposed to a barrage of ads on our TVs and received more than our fair share of after dinner phone calls asking for our support, money and time, but there were a few new “touches” added to this year’s election material mix, many on social media and mobile platforms.

Election information in Social media ads
We saw ads on our favorite social media networks like Facebook pushing for candidates and causes. It was difficult to avoid them even if we tried. I heard from one community organizer who said that some ads had already reached a “saturation point” and really didn’t need to run any longer. In other words, he was sick of seeing the ads even though he and his organization were actively campaigning for that issue.

Why advertise on Facebook? It also helps that Latinos almost out-index every other ethnic groups on Facebook and Facebook makes it easy with a somewhat new “filter by Latinos” ad feature. I’m still not sure what that “Latino” algorithm looks like, though, on new media sites in general. Facebook recently hit the one billion users per month mark.

Online memes
This election we saw a flurry of image memes on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and more. Every time we saw a photo or tweet, we had the opportunity to shareit. At SEIU 721, we created a set of memes featuring our members holding “Yes on 30″ and “No on 32″ signs. We posted dozens of these photos and our members and community allies helped circulate them across the Web with Like, Shares, and Retweets.

This screenshot of the SEIU 721 Facebook page shows the “No on 32″ meme that we created on the right and a snapshot of the “No on 32″ mobile phone application that was created by the LA Labor Federation. The mobile app allows the user to put tape over one’s mouth in the photo to convey the concept that Proposition 32 would silence the voice of working people. (Yes, that is labor leader Dolores Huerta in the photo on the left.)

Parodies and Satirical Characters
As if we didn’t have enough real life political characters to follow, we also had the opportunity to follow spoof accounts like @MexicanMitt on Twitter. The @MexicanMitt account was so influential that Twitter temporarily shut it down during the Republican National Convention.

Another satirical piece was the “Mitt Romney Style” video by CollegeHumor.com which went viral.

Mobile Outreach
Just as Latinos out-index most groups on Facebook, we also use mobile phones more than other groups. According to a 2012 Nielsen study, “Overall, Hispanics are 28 percent more likely to own a smartphone than non-Hispanic Whites…”  In fact, for many Latinos, smartphones are a key part of personal access to the Internet.

In this election, mobile outreach included mobile ads on apps and social media sites and it also including texting. A texting service was provided by different campaigns to provide periodic updates, to alert people to new events and actions,  and for the final Get Out the Vote push on election day.

MomsRising.com had its own texting subscription set up. This is an example of how MomsRising.com engaged subscribers during the Republican National Convention.

This iPhone screenshot below shows some of the texting interactions received in the final day.  (Um, I accidentally texted to the SEIU 721 account instead of my wife when I typed in “pizza?”) I used the “find your polling place” feature and texted “VOTED721″ to the account once I did vote.

For this election cycle, most texting campaigns were tests for future campaigns.

As someone who was involved as a volunteer in the offline as well as online aspects of the campaign, I look forward to digging through the data to see what really worked and what needs to be improved. New opportunities to connect with all voters will arise with new technologies. Latino voters will continue to benefit from greater and easier access to political information.

If you felt you were engaged in this previous election cycle, what technology methods helped you connect with your candidates or causes?

Related articles

• Latino Voters in the 2012 Election
• White House Using Technology to Reach Latinos

Every year I endeavor to advance the capabilities of a strategic sector of undergraduate students by providing leadership training, exposure to new Latino-based research findings and a multidimensional model for civic engagement. The majority of my pupils are derived from recent alumni of the National Hispanic Institute, but I tend to focus my attention on the emerging vanguard of this generation: young Latinas and Latinos from the U.S. and Mexico who are actively exploring opportunities to grow their collective capacities to serve regional and international Latino enclaves.

However, only lately have I attempted to mentor this sector of students to apply their critical investigative abilities with new media.

A couple of weeks ago, it occurred to me at the New Mexico State University Latino Leadership Summit that there is a tremendous desire among Latino undergraduate and graduate students to learn how to apply their embryonic skills with online social networking tools. As with their credentialed Latina and Latino counterparts, they have been under-prepared by each level of their academic training to pursue their own self-determined pathways as young innovators and entrepreneurs. Based on my experience, in order to create your own platform for consulting it is paramount that you learn by doing. In other words, leave the temple and wander the earth so that you may apply your training to benefit the world around you.

With this in mind, I worked with NewsTaco to arrange for two of my mentees, Zach and Arthur, to cover the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Texas this past weekend. [Above the pair interview Texas State Rep. and congressional candidate Joaquín Castro.] The idea was for them to highlight the coverage of each panel of experts for a range of Latino audiences, including Spanish-language readers which did not seem to be prioritized by the creators of this weekend-long event. Given that nearly half of the subject matter of this conference revolved around Latino populations, border dynamics and transnational relations with Mexico, this was the ideal environment to determine whether these two 20th century Latino men could handle both the rigor and responsibility that this complex event would provide.

From our drive together to the festival on Saturday morning until I departed after debriefing with my colleagues Sunday evening, I observed these two young men conduct interviews in English and Spanish, provide a live Twitter feed across seven panel discussions and network with experts, elected officials, politicos, journalists and even our treasured Texas demographer, Dr. Steve Murdock. They impressed me and so many others with their confidence and focus, and they provided more accurate coverage, at least from my point view, than the other news entities that were in attendance. Additionally, they took the initiative that the Texas Tribune had not — they drew on their cultural strengths and seamlessly flowed between English and Spanish during their interviews with panelists and other conference attendees.

By the second day, they were known as “those two dudes from NewsTaco” and people were seeking them out. More than one person told me over the weekend that they were following panels that they could not attend through Zach and Arthur’s tweets. Furthermore, the massive social capital that Zach and Arthur have accumulated through their undergraduate friends and sprawling international NHI alumni networks were also being informed about their issues as a generation born after 1990. Again, these two young men amplified the reach of the Texas Tribune Festival to a body of readers that were not being prioritized — currently enrolled Latino undergraduate students across North America.

No one knew they were only 21, in fact, they were being mistaken for everything but currently enrolled undergraduate students from Texas State and Saint Edwards Universities. NewsTaco and I can only take credit for encouraging them to attend, to look sharp and to ask direct questions during their interviews, but as you will discover in their coverage, Zach and Arthur performed superbly. As a result of their dedication to covering the festival, they are now better prepared through their NewsTaco exposure than what would have ever been achieved within their classroom training.

Follow their example, apply your leadership training and skills with new media so that a greater range of Latino audiences can discover your unique perspective and authentic recommendations for our transnational Latino community.