Last week’s showcase at the Center for Research and Transformative Entrepreneurship (CREATE), a venture accelerator program at The Idea Center at Miami Dade College, suggested a microcosm of entrepreneurial South Florida. The presentations by the student entrepreneurs included ideas ranging from the eminently practical to the poetic. They featured apps for learning languages, finding what […]
Article · July 15, 2015 by Fernando González
At a time every smartphone offers fast access to an immeasurable pool of information, many question the need for physical libraries. But public libraries are far more than free providers of information, which alone is an essential service for communities and democracy, argues author John Palfrey in his new book Bibliotech: Why Libraries Matter More […]
Article · June 10, 2015 by Fernando González
It took minutes for Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat and the evening’s moderator Carla Hill to turn the final session in the YoungArts Salon Series Tuesday into a living room conversation. As she thanked Hill, “my friend and talk show hostess-in-training,” Danticat began to reminisce about a party at Hill’s house shortly after moving to Miami […]
Article · May 28, 2015 by Fernando González
Vanessa Pino helps a cook prepare icing for pastries. Courtesy Cuba Study Group. Let others consider the national and global political implications of the thawing relations between the United States and Cuba. Ruben Valladares looks at the small paper tray for french fries as he’s having lunch at a Pollo Tropical and wonders aloud how […]
Article · May 22, 2015 by Fernando González
eMerge 2015 (above). Photo by Michael Bolden. eMerge Americas 2015 presented technology and business with a Miami flair last week. There was serious business transacted from Downtown Miami to the Miami Beach Convention Center May 1-5. There were discussions about eGovernment, including data security and governance in a new technological environment; the Women, Innovation and […]
Article · May 11, 2015 by Fernando González
An image of the Romeo & Juliet performance on the YoungArts campus. Photo by Michael Bolden. As much a block party on a mild May evening in Miami as a reinterpretation of classic Shakespeare, the performance of “Romeo & Juliet Outside the Box” on the plaza of the YoungArts’ Biscayne Boulevard campus Friday delivered what […]
Article · May 11, 2015 by Fernando González
The Langston Hughes Outside the Box performance on the YoungArts campus. Photo by Michael D. Bolden. William Shakespeare speaks to our human condition in ways that transcend place and language. But in “Romeo & Juliet Outside the Box,” created specifically for the plaza on the YoungArts Biscayne Boulevard campus, playwright, actor and director Tarell Alvin […]
Article · May 5, 2015 by Fernando González
In his closing remarks at the eMerge Americas technology conference last year, keynote speaker Armando Christian Pérez, aka Pitbull, said, “Get ready for this thing to grow bigger.” It turns out he was right. Funded in part by Knight Foundation, the inaugural eMerge Americas attracted more than 6,000 attendees and over 400 companies. A year […]
Article · April 24, 2015 by Fernando González
At the “Stories From the Peace Corps” discussion at the University of Miami Wednesday, there were poignant moments and laughter; tales of mullahs and mud bricks in Iran; river merchants and a moustache in Venezuela and a birth in a village in Western Samoa. Together, they provided snapshots of ordinary people having extraordinary encounters. And […]
Article · April 24, 2015 by Fernando González
As readers, listeners, viewers or creators, we often turn to art to transmute pain into beauty, to find clarity in our darkness, to explain ourselves. Sometimes a work of art might start with a simple need. For a veteran, it might be an answer to a silent question: how do you tell your neighbor what […]
Article · April 15, 2015 by Fernando González
The crowd at the YoungArts Salon. Getty Images/Aaron Davidson. It’s hard to imagine listening to “Louie Louie” as a subversive activity or practicing Michael Jackson’s moonwalk or Rudolf Nureyev’s steps as a crime. But in 2009, under a theocratic government of the Islamic Republic of Iran that faced a critical election, these were punishable offenses. […]
Article · April 14, 2015 by Fernando González