Democratizing Technology To Enhance People’s Lives Around The World!

A company offers Latino immigrants videoconferences with the families they left back
home and may not have seen for years.

By Anna Gorman, Times Staff Writer, LA Times

Mariano Gonzalez’s eldest daughter appears on the television screen from Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, wearing a long woven skirt and a blouse embroidered with flowers.

In Los Angeles, Gonzalez looks confused. At first, he doesn’t recognize her.

Claudia was just 10 when he left home for el norte five years ago, searching for a way to support his growing family. She wipes tears from her face and tells her father she wants him to come home. She asks if he will be back to celebrate her quinceanera in June.

“Mamita, I’m not going to be able to be there,” Gonzalez says in Spanish as he puts his head in his hands. “But very soon I’ll be there with you all.”

“It’s OK, Papi,” Claudia responds quietly.

For the first time in five years, Gonzalez, 36, saw his family on a recent Sunday morning — via videoconference at the offices of AmigoLatino near downtown Los Angeles. The private company links immigrants with relatives throughout Latin America.

As illegally crossing into the United States becomes more risky — and more expensive — families are spending more time apart. So when they hear about AmigoLatino, many are eager to pay the agency’s $40 fee to spend half an hour visiting with their wives, husbands, children and parents, even if only through a TV screen.

“This is the closest thing to being there with them,” said Gabriel Biguria, who founded and runs the company. “They can smile with them. They can cry with them.”

Gonzalez’s wife had just given birth to their sixth child when he paid a coyote $5,000 to guide him on a monthlong journey to the United States. Friends already living in Los Angeles had told him that he could make 10 times more money than in Guatemala.

[Read more →]

It is not everyday that we find movies that are so close to what we stand for at AmigoLatino, the importance of the family unit and the real issues that many broken Latino families go through as a result of their migration to the north.

In the movie Under the Same Moon by Fox Studios, Executive Director Ligiah Villalobos, “says she wanted to explore the theme of abandoned children, a subject that became painfully real to her when her parents split up when she was 3 years old”. This is exactly one of the main issues we attempt to address at AmigoLatino, by democratizing access to affordable face-to-face video conferencing services, to allow families to keep in touch.

According to the Chicago Tribune’s review, Tracking both sides of story when immigrant family is split, “several of the film’s most memorable characters are nameless illegal immigrants shown struggling to reach el norte or, once there, struggling to make ends meet financially and not be sent back to Mexico. Reading over the script during pre-production, Riggen “suddenly discovered that all these characters have one thing in common.” “All these people risked their lives crossing the border, leaving everything behind, for love,” says Riggen, who was born and raised in Guadalajara, studied film at Columbia University and has lived in Los Angeles for the last several years. “For love of their families who they’re going to go reach, for love of their families who they leave behind and send money to. But it always has to do with love and family.”

Enjoy it and let us know if you like it!

I wanted to share a cool video application that I discovered through one of our favorite blogs, Techcrunch.

“Animoto lets you grab photos from Flickr, Facebook, Picassa, Smugmug, Photobucket, or your desktop. You can then upload a DRM-free song or choose from about a hundred licensed tracks on the site. It then does its magic and matches the photos to the music, “mimicking the post-production done by professional video editors,” says CEO Brad Jefferson. I mashed together some old Fllckr photos from a trip to Korea and a visit to HP Labs, added an Electronica beat, and the video above is what came out.”

See one of our AmigoLatino sample videos:

For more info about the post see the Techcrunch article
Source, Erick Schonfeld at Techcrunch

Thanks to our good friend Juan Guillermo from Hispanic Trending for sharing this video. Guaranteed to make you laugh so enjoy!!!

Amigo Live, the affordable video conferencing service that helps connect families and communities face-to-face and in real-time, is now available in Puebla, Mexico. Thanks to a partnership with Ultravision, a leading Mexican company with a team of visionary executives, the families of Puebla can now connect via live video, with their loved ones in the United States.

“We have a strong commitment with our community, so we are very excited to be working with AmigoLatino to provide this valuable service to the thousands of families in Puebla that have relatives in the United States”, said Renato Ulloa, an executive with Ultravision who is in charge of managing the Amigo Live project.

It is now very easy for families and community members to access the service by scheduling an appointment. All they need to do is to call the local Ultravision office in Puebla at +52 (222) 242-3183 or visit the office at 2 Oriente No. 6, 5to Piso, Col. Centro, Puebla, Puebla.

For appointments in the United States, they can find the closest office offering the Amigo Live service by calling AmigoLatino at (213) 380-4761.

Amigo Live’s family reunions, story of the week
By Francisco Rendon

Nervousness and excitement were the feelings Norma Judith Perez was experiencing the day she was going to meet her boyfriend of 5 years, Aurelio Ixcot. But this time it was not one of the regular dates they used to go on in her native town of Quetzaltenango in Guatemala: the usual walk in the park in the afternoon or going to a party. After two years of being physically apart, Aurelio in Trenton New Jersey and Norma in Guatemala, and only keeping in touch via the telephone; today they were having a virtual date, face-to-face, thanks to the video conferencing services of AmigoLatino. During their highly emotional virtual conversation, both cried and laughed, and then at the end of their hour-long meeting, Aurelio took Norma by surprise by popping the big question, if she would agree to marry him? Although shocked, Norma took a couple of seconds to breath and then, to Aurelio’s relief, immediately cried out YES!!!!!!

Here are some of their comments about their experience connecting through Amigo Live, AmigoLatino’s affordable video conferencing service:

Q: How long was it been since you last saw each other?
A: It has been a little over 2 years that we have been apart, ever since I left Guatemala to come to the USA to work

Q: What did you to keep in touch during this time?
A: We talked over the phone on a weekly basis only (sometimes more)

Q: What were the emotions you were going through before your Amigo Live video conference today?
A: A lot of emotion including nervousness, excitement and happiness that I was going to finally see my girlfriend again

Q: Would you recommend the Amigo Live service to others?
Definitely!!!! It is worth every penny and it’s the best way to keep in touch with the ones you love the most. This service beats phone calls because I get to see her and talk to her at the same time. I will be returning every month now.

This meeting via Amigo Live took place between the Trenton, New Jersey office of Comunicaciones y Envios and AmigoLatino’s office in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. For more information visit us at www.amigolatino.com

Published in Connections by PUG (Polycom User Group) www.pug.com

Gabriel Biguria is the embodiment of the American Dream. A native Guatemalan, he immigrated to the United States to attend college, ultimately earning an MBA from Northwestern’s prestigious Kellogg University. He spent time in some of corporate America’s powerhouses and lent his talents to Sillicon Valley start-ups in the late 1990’s. As the dot-com era came to a close, Biguria was looking to start his own company, one that would combine his business experience and the latest in technology to address the needs of underserved segments of the population.

“Having grown up in Guatemala, I saw the sacrifices people had to make to come to the United States - it tears families apart,” says Biguria. “I needed to do something to help solve this problem, for Latinos family is the strongest bond there is, yet many family members are unable to physically see each other after five, 10, 15 years or more.

Biguria had experience with interactive video conferencing and decided it was the technology that it would take his concept from dream to reality. His first conference connected immigrants in San Francisco with their parents in Guatemala.

“What happened that day when those family members laid eyes on each other for the first time in five years was incredible. I knew I was on the right track”, recounts Biguria. And with that first conference AmigoLatino was born. The company offers video reunions, dubbed “Amigo Live”, for a low cost, and it now counts Chicago, Los Angeles, Rhode Island, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Mexico among its locations. Biguria has partnered with others offering similar services to reach additional countries. Read More (PDF File)

A new videoconferencing business brings immigrants in Rhode Island face-to-face with loved ones in Latin America.

BY KAREN LEE ZINER
Journal Staff Writer, The Providence Journal

PROVIDENCE — Otto Gonzales has not seen his parents or extended family in Guatemala for 16 years. But in a week or so, he expects to talk with them live, through a new videoconferencing service adapted for families from business use.

“If I can contain my tears,” Gonzales said through an interpreter on Friday, “then I will tell them a lot.”

Gonzales’ parents, seven brothers, and numerous nieces and nephews he barely remembers but is anxious to see will be visible and audible on a 60-inch screen at AmigoLatino, whose office opened Thursday at 754 Branch Ave.

Gabriel Biguria, 37, a Guatemalan native and chief executive officer of AmigoLatino, plans to tap Rhode Island’s rapidly expanding Hispanic population for his market base. That population includes Guatemalans, Dominicans, Mexicans, Colombians, Nicaraguans, Puerto Ricans, Peruvians, Salvadorans, Argentineans and others.

“This videoconferencing technology has been around for a while,” but primarily in corporate boardrooms, said Biguria. In fact, it was used at Hewlett-Packard and Proctor & Gamble, two companies where Biguria worked. He also worked for high-tech start-up companies in Silicon Valley. “Basically, we thought we could use it to do something good for families,” said Biguria. Recent technological advancements “finally make it accessible and affordable.” The service uses fiber-optic technology and high-speed Internet connections.

[Read more →]

By Kari Richardson, Kellogg World, Kellogg School of Management

Reaching the right audience
Though most 21st-century companies realize ethnic marketing is more complicated than casting an African-American in a commercial spot or posting a sign that says “se habla Espanol,” many still struggle to find the right way to reach their core audiences.

Focus groups can be an effective tool for getting inside the consumer’s head, but research methods must be sensitive to cultural variations. In-home visits can uncover insights that subjects are unwilling to share in larger groups, but Rodriguez says researchers must understand why, in some cultures, people are uncomfortable sharing personal information or buying habits with a researcher who is outside their ethnic group.

Building a racially inclusive workplace, he suggests, is a good way to start tapping into the multicultural marketplace: “You can’t reach multicultural consumers unless you have diversity in the workplace. It’s not about casting. It’s about cultural insights and cues.”

But even marketers with their feet firmly planted in one culture sometimes have to work to understand all of its nuances.

A first-hand witness to the dramatic family separations wrought by migration to the United States, Guatemalan-born Gabriel Biguria ‘96 founded AmigoLatino to connect Hispanics living in this country with their family back home. Customers, who pay $40 for a half-hour live videoconference, use their time to wish someone a happy birthday, gaze at an infant’s face for the first time, or say farewell to a relative who is seriously ill.

From the beginning, Biguria struggled to explain his service to a dubious, tech-wary clientele.

“My Kellogg friends didn’t even believe this type of videoconferencing was possible,” he says. “Imagine a family that comes from the countryside in Guatemala. I had to hit on the right wording to describe it to them.”

[Read more →]

Videoconference firms find market in Latin American immigrants

By Patricia Yollin, Chronicle Staff Writer, San Francisco Chronicle

Manuelito Juarez, a strong-minded boy of 5, wants burgers for dinner. But his brother Osberto lobbies for “the chicken place.” They bicker and balk until their father intervenes and tells them to arm-wrestle. The winner gets to choose.

It is the most ordinary of squabbles except for a few things: The boys are in Guatemala City, their father is in San Francisco, and they’re in the middle of a videoconference.

“People don’t believe it’s real,” said Gabriel Biguria, whose company, AmigoLatino, had arranged the session. “It’s like something out of a science fiction movie.”

Although videoconferencing has been around since the mid-’70s, mostly in corporate boardrooms, it’s a new medium for immigrants and those they left behind — especially in Latin America, where many families lack phones or computers. Businesses like Biguria’s also have surfaced recently in New Jersey, Florida and North Carolina.

[Read more →]