How I See Things...

Binghamton SHPE - Fundraising for the Conference

2010-10-24T17:45:00.000-07:00

Hello Binghamton SHPE Alumni!

I hope that everyone is doing well! We have certainly come a long way since our Binghamton SHPE days. I have reached out to the Binghamton SHPE chapter, and I am pleased to share that the chapter continues to thrive.

The SHPE Conference this year will be held in Cincinnati, OH, and the Binghamton chapter is currently looking to send 17 students! The chapter will also be participating in the Academic Olympiad at the conference. This is a tremendous accomplishment, and clear sign of the excellent leadership of the chapter. The chapter will be chartering a bus in order to accommodate travel for all of the students. After numerous fundraising events and sponsorship from the Watson School, the cost for each attendee is $200 for registration, and $110 for transportation ($310 total out of pocket per student).

I am reaching out to you, in efforts to raise funds to reduce the cost for transportation and help get Binghamton SHPE to the conference! I have asked the chapter to provide us with student testimonials, sharing their story, and also what they are looking to accomplish at the conference.

You can read a letter from the current chapter President here.

Any funds raised will go towards the transportation fees for these 11 participating students in the fundraiser. Read about the students here.

I have already committed to donate $110, and I hope you would join me in continuing the legacy of our SHPE chapter. This fundraising push will conclude on October 30th.

If you have questions or would like donate, please contact me at Luis.Miranda@shpe-nyc.org and I can send you the details.

I hope that this can be the start and foundation of an alumni organization for our chapter,

-Luis
Binghamton University, 2004
SHPE-NYC Professional Chapter

Video Interview w/Latinos at IBM

2010-06-22T16:57:00.001-07:00

More upcoming NSHMBA professional development webinars!

2010-06-05T07:55:00.000-07:00

Wanted to share this NSHMBA event, as I think the topics are applicable to professionals across multiple industries and disciplines. Registration information is below!

For more information on NSHMBA, please visit http://nshmba.org.

Remember to register for the Free NSHMBA Professional Webinars for June!

Visualizing Your Success with Luis Martinez
Wednesday, June 9, 1-2pm Central

Business Strategy with Jorge Lopez
Wednesday, June 30, 1-2pm Central

If you missed the May Webinar, a replay of the program will be available to members at www.nshmba.org/professionalwebinarseries.

SHPE-NYC member participates in NSHMBA Social Media panel discussion - June 30th, 2010

2010-06-05T06:58:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to SHPE-NYC member Mauricio Godoy, who will be a panelist at the upcoming NSBHMA "Social Media's Night Out' panel discussion. The topic of the panel is "A Guide to Personal Branding". See the below flyer for additional details and steps to RSVP.

Mauricio also maintains a blog, Latinos At IBM, which is available at http://latinosatibm.tumblr.com/.

To learn more about NSHMBA, visit http://nshmba.org. There is also a discounted joint membership, which allows you to become both a NSHMBA and SHPE-NYC member! For more information on that, feel free to contact us at info@shpe-nyc.org.

SHPE-NYC event tonight! Wed May 19th

2010-05-19T05:07:00.001-07:00

SHPE-NYC and Goldman Sachs OTFS - Hispanic Latin Network will collaborate to bring you an evening of professional networking with keynote speaker Fernando Rosario. Fernando, an executive at Accenture and president of Exeqpath, will discuss "Current Demographics & Trends of Hispanics/Latinos in the Information Technology, Financial Services, and Government Sectors." To RSVP for this event please click here: http://shpe-nyc-gs-may19.eventbrite.com/.

Date: Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Time: 6pm - 8:30pm

Location:
30 Hudson Street, 21st Floor, Room J
Jersey City, New Jersey 07302

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

fyi - NSHMBA online Webinar: 6 Elements to Becoming A Better Executive

2010-05-16T21:07:00.000-07:00

I wanted to share this opportunity with any interested professionals. NSHMBA organizes terrific events, and I am excited to see their online Webinar series continue success and growth. Details below.

Professional Webinar Series

Professional Development at your fingertips!
Join NSHMBA for the first session of the series. Dwain Celistan and Darryl Mobley, creators of the Better Management University, are presenting on becoming a better executive. They are both leading executive coaches within Corporate America.
6 Elements to Becoming A Better Executive

Wednesday, May 19th, at 1pm CST, 2pm EST
Key Topics:
What your CEO wants you to know
Risk taking in your career
Keys to strategic planning

Register Today!
Share the Excitement and the Experience

Encourage friends, colleagues and Hispanic leaders to come discover what everyone is raving about!

Invite your friends to join the webinars. Ask them to REGISTER NOW.
Check the NSHMBA website for updates and an archive of past webinars!

SHPE magazine member photo tagging

2010-05-16T21:04:00.000-07:00

After checking out the online version of the SHPE magazine some months ago, I noticed there was plenty of photos from various events, and several from the previous National conference. Similar to the Facebook feature of 'tagging' yourself in a photo, it would help track the accomplishments and events of our members if we allow them to tag themselves in these pictures.. As time passes and our members continiue to grow and mature their SHPE careers, this tagging ability will allow them to grow their SHPE portfolio as they progress through their academic/professional/SHPE cateers.

Within our own SHPE-NYC organization, we use picasa and facebook for photo management, which both allow tagging of members...

The iPad

2010-05-13T19:29:00.000-07:00

I love this device! When someone does mention "its just a bigger iPod touch", from a hardware point of view, "it is". Of course, there are some major hardware leaps included, such as the battery life for the large display, storage, weight, and super responsive/snappy interface. Putting the hardware piece aside, the power and revolution this device drives is through the 'application' of it... through the 'apps'.

I WANT MORE iPAD APPS!! Where are the Facebook or LinkedIn iPad apps!? This devices really shines when it runs the iPad version of an application. The video quality is fantastic from Youtube and the MLB application.. I have YET to have an issue of not being able to accomplish something (or even really care) because there is no Flash support.. I do wonder, if it did support Flash, would people have anything to complain about for this device..?

For an upcoming SHPE-NYC event on May 19th (www.shpe-nyc.org), we will use the Eventbrite iPhone application (running in iPad) to sign members into the event. Using an iPhone for this event will work just as well, but I think attendees will get more of a kick out of seeing the iPad in action for this purpose..

SHPE and Latinos At IBM

2010-03-30T21:21:00.000-07:00

The SHPE-NYC chapter continues to have a growing and mutually beneficial relationship with the Latinos At IBM initiative. Since collaborating with Mauricio Godoy who spearheads this initiative, our chapter has been able to deliver two very high quality webcast events to our membership and network of Latino professionals. By leveraging our pre-existing methods of advertisement and syndication of content, we were able to inform our network quickly and easily about these webcasts.

I would encourage ALL SHPE professional chapters, especially those with a large number of IBM employees to support, advertise, and collaborate with the Latinos At IBM. These webcasts allow participants to hear inspiring messages, learn valuable technical information, and ask intelligent questions all without even leaving their desk!

For additional information regarding Latinos At IBM, you can visit http://latinosatibm.tumblr.com and http://www.facebook.com/latinosatibm.

SHPE-NYC SHPE/STEM/Hispanic Engineer Twitter Scan

2010-03-06T15:49:00.000-08:00

Our chapter has a small script that routinely scans Twitter for people who talk about "SHPE, science, technology, math, STEM, latino, hispanic, engineer", in addition to other relevant keywords and topics. The script then updates our SHPE-NYC twitter account to follow this user.

Naturally, the script initially did pick up some "noise/spam".. To help fight this, the process will now only follow the user if the account has at least 20 followers.. I figure that this is a sensible threshold to legitimately identify a valid twitter account as opposed to some automated bot or spam user.

The purpose of this process is to find users in the Twitter-sphere/universe that discuss topics that we are interested in... By following them automatically, we hope this would encourage that particular user to follow our own SHPE-NYC twitter account, learn more about SHPE-NYC initiatives, and possible re-tweet some of our posts on their behalf.

This process of following users was originally a manual process, that a board member was expected to do when they had some time.. Naturally, automating this process increases the frequency and chance of finding a relevant person to follow..

At this time last year, our SHPE-NYC twitter account had 66 followers. When the script was implemented in October 2009, we had under roughly 150 followers. As of today we have 283 followers and growing.

If there are other SHPE Professional chapters that are interested in the script, please reach out to our chapter.

-Luis

SHPE-NYC Phone Number - Google Voice

2009-10-24T12:20:00.000-07:00

Our chapter has recently acquired a Google Voice phone number. With this, other organizations, corporate representatives, interested and current members, have a way to contact our chapter leadership.

When the number is called, the call is forwarded to specific board members to field the call. If a voicemail is left, our chapter board receives an email notification, text message alert, as well as voice->text transcription of the message, allowing us to quickly and easily see the message.

I highly recommend all chapters consider something similar.

SHPE-NYC can be reached at (347)878-SHPE. See https://www.google.com/voice for details on requesting a Google Voice number.

Luis S. Miranda

SHPE-NYC Internal VP

www.shpe-nyc.org

HITEC/SHPE “Future CIO” Essay Contest

2009-09-27T08:13:00.000-07:00

HITEC/SHPE “Future CIO” Essay Contest

The Hispanic IT Executive Council (HITEC) and Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) are committed to increase the quantity and quality of Hispanic professionals working in executive levels of corporate America. The “Future Chief Information Officer (CIO)” Competition will challenge professionals to tell HITEC and SHPE about their vision and passion for Information Technology.

Winner will receive a paid HITEC Mentorship for one year by pairing up the winner with a Fortune 500 CIO level executive who is a member of HITEC
Essay submissions must be received by October 9th, 2009.
Additional information is available at http://www.shpe-nyc.org/hitec_shpe_cio_contest.docx
In order to be eligible, you must be a registered SHPE Member.
If you have any questions, you can contact us at info@shpe-nyc.org.

NILA 2009 FaceBook + LinkedIn

2009-08-09T07:44:00.000-07:00

SHPE NILA 2009 Fan Page : http://www.facebook.com/pages/NILA-2009/79920433126?ref=ts

FaceBook group for NILA Professionals (to stay in contact and share ideas/events): http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=113328919542

I hope that the new professional and student networks can keep in contact and still share ideas and progress throughout the year via FaceBook and/or LinkedIn!

Luis S. Miranda

SHPE-NYC Internal VP

www.shpe-nyc.org

NILA 2009 Presentation

2009-08-08T10:01:00.000-07:00

I will be placing the "Web Tools" presentation online at www.shpe-nyc.org/nila2009 by Monday August 10th. Until then, feel free to explore www.shpe-nyc.org to see the various ways we are using Web 2.0 technology to provide information to our members and website.

-Luis

What is the "SHPE Inner-Sphere" ?

2009-04-28T19:46:00.000-07:00

Just coined this phrase.. so our chapter has a generic email address that external people can use to contact us, provide feedback, or look to partner with our chapter. As these emails come in, its is then up to our chapter to appropriately filter this message to the correct eboard member, and have them handle the request...

Now this can scale out fine for a low number of eboard members, and also for a low frequency of incoming request.. But, how can we provide an 'at-a-glance' view of what all eboard members are currently working on? How can we improve the effectiveness and time of our SHPE Professional Chapter leaders?

Enter: "The SHPE Inner-Sphere".. Which provides eboard members with a dashboard view of the status, initiatives, successes, communication, and action items of all eboard members.

Proof of concept in the work now..

Luis S. Miranda

SHPE-NYC External VP

www.shpe-nyc.org

Sharing what are our SHPE Professional Chapters doing..

2009-04-19T11:30:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder what type of events or initiatives SHPE Professional Chapters are developing?

Well we now have a quick and easy way to find out! As of this year, all End of Year Reports are now property of SHPE, and can be shared at their discretion. So now, all information is potentially shareable, and our organization can 'grow stronger, together', as we get ideas from other chapters, collaborate on common initiatives, and keep us all 'in the loop'.

If you would like to share the events of your Professional chapter, and ultimately have the data aggregate up into the SHPE Sphere (http://shpesphere.blogspot.com), simply add the following email to your distribution list:

shpeProfessionalEvents@gmail.com

Note: The word 'shpe' somewhere in the body of the message. All messages are held for moderation before being posted/made public. All messages can be viewed at http://groups.google.com/group/shpe-professional-events. Start sharing your events today!

What is "SHPEware"?

2009-04-16T20:29:00.000-07:00

In order for a technology organization to thrive, it must fully embrace technology, and where lacking, implement its own new technology solutions... "SHPEware" is software that is specifically written and designed to make the SHPE organization, and its chapters operate more effectively.

A simple and common issue faced by all SHPE chapters:

Several...repeat, several cycles are spent on the "End of Year Report (EOYR)" by members of the SHPE chapter and usually the executive board. One major section of the report are the Continuous Feedback Forms (CFF's) for each event... How can we reduce the time spent on creating these CFF's, and reduce the chance writing one from scratch?

By using the SHPE-NYC Event Manager Application, our chapter already uses software at all events for electronic sign-in and networking events. The application should be improved to automatically generate particular sections of the CFF:

Name of Event
Date
Location
Purpose
Participant numbers and names
Feedback from participants

Having 1 or 2 members include a paragraph describing the event after it concluded, and while still fresh in their memory, will help shape the 'Description of Activity' part of the CFF. The Calendar section of the report can be generated from this data as well.

So when it comes time to create the EOYR, the majority of the CFF data is already provided and ready to go. At this point, the CFF is open for edits and enrichment. This leaves more time for the board members to focus on chapter initiatives and efforts, and reduces the time required to publish a comprehensive EOYR.

This is just one small example of what "SHPEware" can accomplish... I'd like to share more thoughts on this, including how SHPEware can promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields within the elementary school levels... but for now will leave you with two other ideas that have been mentioned and tossed around in conversation with my peers:

Imagine attending a SHPE conference, and upon check in a text message is sent to your phone with not just the conference agenda for that day, but also a suggest an agenda/itinerary for you based on your skills and interests.
Give 'active feedback' during a SHPE conference by sending a txt message to 'the conference', or a twitter message, or even just an email... perhaps this active feedback will lead to an even more interesting keynote address at the banquet!

As this SHPEware becomes ready for prime time, we will be looking to expand and share it with our SHPE peers.

Luis S. Miranda

SHPE-NYC External VP

www.shpe-nyc.org

The SHPE-NYC Connection - Facebook App (RC 4) deployed...

2009-04-11T13:56:00.000-07:00

Release Candidate 4 of the SHPE-NYC Connection Facebook App has been deployed today.

http://apps.facebook.com/shpenycqa/

This release includes two new exciting features:

o Recommends relevant employment opportunities found in SHPE-NYC-Jobs
o Recommends relevant community opportunities found in SHPE-NYC-Community

The application is still in early-adopter/QA phase, so if you encounter errors, please feel free to escalate them to me via email (link at the bottom of the app page).

The application currently only works for SHPE-NYC Paid Professional Members. We are looking to clearly define and implement the complete feature set before expanding the use of this application on a Regional, and ideally National level... There will also be different features for Student vs. Professional members.. (i.e: A Student member will receive recommendations for internships and scholarthips).

Stay tuned for additional updates.

Luis S. Miranda

www.shpe-nyc.org

The SHPE Sphere - Take 1.

2009-03-28T12:04:00.001-07:00

http://shpesphere.blogspot.com/

Put this together using rss/google/blogger. It can be considered a 'mashup' type of site.

-Luis

What is the 'SHPE Sphere'...

2009-03-28T11:17:00.001-07:00

As our organization, SHPE, which is in its 1.0 state is moving to 'SHPE 2.0', we are seeing an online community form where members (students and professionals) can quickly share ideas and opportunities. The SHPE 1.0 model, a very 'read only' system, is now becoming 'SHPE 2.0', a read/write system where members can actively provide feedback to the organization, and help SHPE remain a competitive organization in the information/technology age we are now in.

So where can we go to see the state of SHPE, and see what our student chapters are thinking, events they are organizing/attending, or simply what our SHPE members are doing. Enter the 'SHPE Sphere'. A simple, live view and dashboard representing the state of SHPE.

ALL CONTENT IS PULLED LIVE. There are no hard links. All the data feeds you see is done with keyword searches. For example, we perform a search for 'shpe' in twitter, picasa, youtube,blogger, and aggregate the results up into the sphere. If you want your events to be displayed, be sure to include the word 'shpe' when 'writing to the internet'.

To implement this quickly and easily, we will create a blog page (via blogger), that will

1. Aggregate all SHPE related twitter feeds

2. Display all SHPE related images available on picasa, all videos found on YouTube.

3. Encourage wall posts, discussions, comments, MEMBER FEEDBACK! SHPE 2.0 is a read/write organization.

4. More feeds added as they are found/supported!

Visit the sphere today! http://shpesphere.blogspot.com/

Luis S. Miranda

SHPE-NYC External VP

www.shpe-nyc.org

Idea for flexible communication to SHPE Chapters members

2009-03-25T11:54:00.001-07:00

Thought this would be a neat feature.. This was brainstormed about a month ago while in Austin, TX. As oneSHPE is being upgraded to the new 'openSHPE', this may be a nice feature.

E-Boards always want a quick and easy way to communicate with all of their chapter members, and they may not want to use the oneSHPE email interface. Instead, they like to create email messages using their own client (i.e.: outlook, notes, gmail).. So create an email address, someChapterName-allmembers@shpe.org, which will accept an email, and then send it out to all members of that specific chapter that oneSHPE database contains.

What this opens up:

As new members of a chapter join a SHPE chapter, they are guaranteed to receive email communication day 1.
Gives SHPE National an opportunity to follow what local chapters are doing, recognize trends, and develop programs to support these trends.
Hook into FaceBook, Twitter, and Blogger automatically, by posting information of events on these platforms.
Aggregate emails/communication of events together on a dashboard, so that we can see what is happening in the 'SHPE Sphere' !!! (Ok, thats actually pretty cool! going to write something up on this now!)

How will this be moderated?

As emails arrive into someChapterName-allmembers@shpe.org, they will only be sent out to all members of a chapter if sent from a designated E-Board member. The system knows who is on the E-Board of a chapter, and will perform moderation this way.

Luis S. Miranda

SHPE-NYC External VP

www.shpe-nyc.org

SHPE-NYC Entrepreneurship Event Follow-up: How To Write a Business Plan

2009-03-14T16:21:00.000-07:00

Attended the SHPE-NYC event today, which dealt with 'How To Write a Business Plan'... This event took place at the New York City Public Library...This event was the first in SHPE-NYC's new investment and interest in providing its members entrepreneurship type events..

The event provided first steps and general overview of how to approach writing a business plan, and the various resources available to everyone to help increase the quality and effectiveness of process.

I wanted to share some of the online resources available to everyone:

New York City Small Business Solutions: http://www.nyc.gov/sbs
New York City Business Solutions: http://www.nyc.gov/html/sbs/nycbiz/html/home/home.shtml
Business Plan Template/Steps: http://www.nyc.gov/html/sbs/nycbiz/downloads/pdf/business_plan.pdf
Sample Business Plans and Research Help: http://www.nypl.org/smallbiz
Sample Business Plan Financial: http://www.sba.gov/smallbusinessplanner/start/financestartup/

Luis Miranda

SHPE-NYC External VP

www.shpe-nyc.org

Initial SHPE-NYC Facebook App Launched

2009-02-16T06:35:00.001-08:00

The initial version of the SHPE-NYC Facebook Application is now available for you to use and try out! Goals for this applcation include:

Keeping users and interested members informed regarding upcoming events and the progress SHPE-NYC is making towards its goals.
Sharing and increasing SHPE-NYC presence on Facebook.
Attract new members that have not heard about SHPE-NYC before.
Apply users profile data to give them targetted and relevant information, such as re-connecting them with SHPE members at their Undergraduate Chapter or discovering large commonalaties between SHPE-NYC members we did not know existed before!

Give it a try at: http://apps.facebook.com/shpenyc/

This application has plenty of growth potential, and we are excited to see additional features added.

-Luis

What SHPE should invest in... Services, Services, Services

2009-01-31T20:46:00.000-08:00

One of the major goals for SHPE on a National level is aggressive membership growth.. One way to accomplish growth is to promote and encourage new SHPE student and professional chapters. As we can all agree, creating a new chapter is a terrific accomplishment.. and requires proper diligence and committed leaders to grow and sustain an effective chapter. Over time, the leadership can graduate, burn out, or dissolve, leading to a struggling or inactive chapter. The energy and effort to create 10 new chapters in one year, can be negated/minimized by 5 other chapters struggling or losing members during the same time period..

So what can SHPE do to

Strengthen already existing chapter memberships
Attract new members to join local chapters
Attract members to join who do not have a local SHPE chapter available, a.k.a "members-at-large"

I believe that in addition to creating new chapters, there needs to be an investment by SHPE in member services...Regardless of whether a student is a member of a local SHPE chapter or not, all SHPE members can be considered 'members-at-large', so lets focus on the this audience, tackling the issue from two angles, "National Services" and "Local Services"... this can provide the 1-2 punch that we need to help SHPE compete in 2009, and achieve our membership goals.

National Services - Every SHPE chapter has a different pool of resources available to them, which is influenced by geography, population, and corporate presence in the area.. National Services can neutralize these factors, by providing a common/baseline set of membership benefits that all SHPE members can take advantage of.. Since these services need to reach all members, leveraging technology will make these services scalable, measurable, and effective.

Students can already upload their resume to the oneSHPE database, but in addition to this provide them with ongoing and relevant feedback..

Provide context based feedback and suggestions.. (i.e: "oneSHPE has determined that you are a third year computer science major without any internships.. here is a list of available internships in your area".. or "oneSHPE has determined your GPA, experience, and degree of study meet the requirements of this scholarship, apply now!").
Share the number of times the resume has been viewed
Send reminders to update content (i.e: after each semester, or graduation)
Members will have this feeling that the "oneSHPE system is actively helping me"

Option to participate in mock interviews
Offer company info sessions via web seminars, aka "Webinars".
Share and video stream interviews with various technologists in the industry.. Have a set of canned answers, and also give students a chance to write in questions beforehand.. share this video on YouTube..
Continue providing pod casts
Continue with the excellent "SHPE Conference".. and to help prep students even more, host a virtual 'SHPE Conference Preview" on FaceBook or Second Life, so that participants will have more knowledge on the conference events, corporate sponsors, or special events available to them when they arrive. Use this as a platform to host a 'pre-conference competition' as well.

Local Services - These services are provided and maintained by local chapters, and in reality this consists of all events and benefits that all local chapters provide today. They can be either in-person workshops, events, or variations of the National Services.. Local Services gives the SHPE chapter leadership the opportunity to be creative and build stronger chapters.

Just to be clear, I have plenty of passion for this organization, and only want to see it succeed.. I have been a "student of SHPE" during my undergraduate studies, and am now a professional member and advocate.. My thoughts, opinions, and ideas are only suggestions to help improve what we have today.

Luis S. Miranda

SHPE-NYC External VP

www.shpe-nyc.org

My Top 5 iPhone Apps... and how they fit into my life.

2009-01-23T15:50:00.001-08:00

Below is a list of the 5 apps that I find myself using more often than not..

1) Yelp - I have always found the user reviews useful, and the fact that with a few steps i can read reviews, call the place, and even get the directions right into google maps on the phone helps when trying to find a place to eat or 'get your lounge on'. I use this app at various times of the day, either for lunch, dinner, or an after work meetup with my friends. Check out some of my reviews at http://lsmiranda.yelp.com. A free app.

2) MyCard - I wanted to be able to easily share my business care, both the real printed out copy and some electronic format. It supports an infrared beam to another iPhone with the app (never met anyone with the app yet), but what I usually do is use the 'email my card' capability.. Very helpful for when I attend networking events. The app cost $1.

3) Twittertrend - I use this app to see what the rest of the Twitter world, or 'twittersphere' is doing that day... From a quick view of the page generated, you can get a nice overview of 'whats hot' that day, and maybe learn some current events.. also a quick way to find a quick conversation point or fact.. another free app.

4) Flixster- I like the fact that it shows the Rotten Tomatoes rating when you look for movies.. I commonly use this app on the weekend to see if theres anything worth seeing. The standard support for 'theaters near me, directions, etc' is included as well. This app is free.

5) Twitteriffic - This has become my iPhone Twitter app of choice, because it has support for updating your location based on gps, and lets you take pictures and it automatically inserts a url linking to the picture... There is a free and paid version (I still use the free version).

Some honorable mentions...

Facebook and LinkedIn - helpful for reading your facebook email during the day, and accepting friend requests.

Shozu - I like this app because it helps link all of the Web 2.0 apps together.. such as Twitter, Facebook, Picasa, Blogger.. all from one app, and simultaneously if you wish too!

Big key mail - Helps me write any emails from my iPhone since the keyboard is shows in landscape format.. its a big help.

Webex - I have not yet tried this from the phone, but I have used webEx technology on my desktop, and the fact that I can view live presentations from my iPhone is very exciting to me..

Some of the Twitter feeds I follow...

2009-01-09T20:16:00.000-08:00

Thought I would share some of the top twitter feeds that I am subscribed to that catch my attention more often than not...You can view all of my Twitter information by visiting www.twitter.com/lsmiranda.

http://twitter.com/problogger

Blogger, Author, Social Media Participant. Get a peek behind the scenes with my Tweets. Check out TwiTip.com for Twitter Tips. I find a good amout of the advice from this blogger to be relevant in both the blogging and twitter world..Publish Post

http://twitter.com/NewYorkTechJobs

IT jobs in the greater New York area. A great resource for technology related positions within the New York area.. In these economic and financial times, the more information we can share about job opportunities to our friends and family members the better.

http://www.twitter.com/shpenyc

Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers - NYC Chapter: Promoting professional development, leadership, and community outreach within the New York City area. This is an organization that I am part of, and have a strong passion for. This organization provides services to local New York City professionals, and also helps improve the quality and opportunities available to local undergraduate students in the Technology and Engineering fields. Visit us at www.shpe-nyc.org for more info.

http://twitter.com/digg_technews

Popular technology stories from Digg.com. I like to follow the new technology stories that are submitted to Digg.com, and this feed helps get me the information on the go.

Upcoming

http://twitter.com/SalesHQ - The Premiere Community For Sales Pros

http://twitter.com/myhispanicne t - My Hispanic Network connects Hispanic and Latino Professionals online

More to come... Happy 2009!

-Luis

www.twitter.com/lsmiranda

Some other ideas for SHPE-NYC moving forward into 2009

2008-12-19T15:38:00.000-08:00

As discussed at the National Hispanic Sales Network (www.nhsn.org) holiday event this week, Alfredo suggested that I blog some of my ideas moving forward, so that we can have them as reference, and open them up for further discussion. Thank you Alfredo and Elvia for hearing me out and making this great suggestion!

Some other ideas for SHPE-NYC moving forward into 2009...

Add a 'Members Profile' section to our website. As corporate representatives visit our website to learn more about our organization, we need to properly showcase our membership, since our members are our greatest asset. This section can be very simple, with members providing simple data such as name, company, role, links to other resources, and even a link to a resume.

Continue to grow our online presence by partnering with other online organizations, such as Hispanic Professionals Networking Community (www.gomhn.com), and perhaps a presence on www.meetup.com. Our groups on FaceBook and LinkedIn have been a big help already.

Promote and invest more energy in entrepreneurship initiatives in 2009.. this warrants a completely separate blog entry..

Encourage our members to write for the SHPE-NYC official blog.. lets let our members showcase their writing talents, or even just share their opinions on local events related to technology or our industry.. If we had 1-2 entries submitted a month by a group of SHPE-NYC members, this will help keep them engaged in the chapter, and gives them a platform to get their name out there more too!

Another channel for students to contact SHPE - Instant Messaging

2008-12-19T15:29:00.000-08:00

So today I turned on AIM, for the first time in almost a year im guessing... sent my mom some IM's, and had some laughs..

One thing that SHPE, and any organization, can struggle with is getting its members information in a timely manner, and try its best to get the information to the target audience effectively..

Targetting SHPE student members, I still believe that applications like Facebook and AIM/IM/Chat are the best ways to contact students. I would propose a SHPE AIM bot, that can be used for two purposes

Students can make suggestions/feedback to SHPE

Students can send an IM to the SHPE bot, and this will in turn create an email/notification to the SHPE board/regional representatives, with the suggestion.

We can inform students of upcoming conferences, activities (i.e: voting), or important news

The bot can send its members this information via a targetted IM blast.

Stay tuned..

301 not so "useless" facts

2007-04-24T19:05:00.000-07:00

List of 301 "useless" facts (but i actually find many of them kinda neat, may come in handy one day). I am listing some of the shockers below:

http://www.singlegrain.com/blog/301-useless-facts/

3. The “57″ on the Heinz ketchup bottle represents the number of pickle types the company once had.

22. 40% of McDonald’s profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.

29. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents every day.

64. IBM’s motto is “Think”. Apple later made their motto “Think different”.

82. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

105. China has more English speakers than the United States.

147. “101 Dalmatians” and “Peter Pan” are the only Disney animations in which both of a character’s parents are present and don’t die during the movie.

254. People say “bless you” when you sneeze because your heart stops for a millisecond.

279. The “if” and “then” parts of conditional (”if P then Q”) statement are called the protasis (P) and apodosis (Q).

301. The past-tense of the English word “dare” is “durst”.

Tips for an interview

2007-02-16T09:55:00.000-08:00

I read through these tips, and i was nodding my head for almost all of them.. If anything i would look at the end section for 'things NOT to do', can't hurt to give that a once over...

http://oedb.org/library/starting-a-career/88-surefire-job-interview-tips

How big is Manhattan?

2007-02-13T17:24:00.000-08:00

It has come up in conversation from time to time.. so now you can sound smart:

The island is 20 mi² (51.8 km²) of land measuring 13 miles (21 km) long and 2.3 miles (3.7 km) across at its widest point.