Voices: A peek into the future of tech

MIAMI — Anyone interested in what the dot.com future may hold would have done well by strolling through the second floor of the InterContinental Hotel here recently.

There, mingling between the Disney World display and the CNN en Español booth, they would have found an intriguing mix of media titans, marketing gurus, start-up entrepreneurs and YouTube careerists — all part of and aimed at the country's burgeoning Latino population.

They were there as part of Hispanicize 2015, an annual gathering of the nation's top Latino media execs, journalists and new-media entrepreneurs for a week of workshops, networking and parties. I was invited to the conference to speak on a panel on race and media.

A few days prior, I had covered the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin. It was interesting traveling from SXSW, one of the premier tech gatherings in the country but one still struggling to be more diverse, to a similar, albeit smaller, gathering of techies flush with diversity. Hispanicize, in fact, is often referred to as the "Latino SXSW."

In Austin, panel discussions explored the myriad reasons Silicon Valley firms — especially at the managerial level — aren't more black, brown and female. In Miami, those very diverse faces that have eluded the upper echelons of Yahoo and Facebook shared ideas and unfurled their cyber strategies.

Hispanics make up just 4% of managerial positions at Yahoo and even fewer at Facebook and Google. That number drops even further for African Americans. Black and Hispanic professionals — such as lawyers, accountants and computer scientists — make up 5% of all professionals at Facebook, Google and Yahoo but 13% of similar professionals nationwide.

Meanwhile, Latinos are the nation's largest minority, numbering 53 million in the USA, and its fastest growing. By 2060, they're expected to make up one-third of the total population, with more than $1 trillion in spending power.

Attendees at Hispanicize didn't seem overly concerned with those disparate stats. They appeared less anxious about climbing corporate ladders at Silicon Valley and more focused on starting their own empires.

Hispanicize is the brainchild of Manny Ruiz, whom I knew from our days working at the campus newspaper at Miami-Dade Community College two decades ago. Ruiz left journalism to start a Hispanic-focused public relations firm, sold that and used the proceeds to launch Hispanicize. The gathering has grown from 260 attendees at its inaugural event five years ago to more than 2,000 today.

"We're in a new era where there's so much opportunity for everyone," Ruiz told me. "You don't have to be in Silicon Valley anymore to succeed."

It was a mantra repeated throughout the conference. Entrepreneurs shared stores of how they've cobbled careers out of blogs and YouTube channels with names like Rocking Mama and Crafty Chica, drawing hundreds of thousands of loyal online followers and the attention of major brands willing to pay handsomely for that coveted audience. There was very little talk of trying to break into Google.

Alejandra Ayala, 29, started her fashion/beauty blog and YouTube channel, known as Chulavision, two years ago. She began in English, with just 1,200 subscribers. But when Ayala, who's Mexican-American, started posting videos in Spanish, her channel quickly swelled to 123,000 subscribers. Her YouTube channel has since captured 5 million views.

Ayala said she doesn't know how far she'll take her project. But the fact that brands are reaching out to her tells her something about the direction of online enterprises.

"Slowly, they're starting to notice us," Ayala said about both her loyal following and corporations willing to pay for a few seconds of their time. "They're starting to realize the impact we can have."

Asked about the lack of diversity in Silicon Valley, Ayala smiled.

"If someone doesn't want to give it to us," she said, "we're going to find a way to get it."

Jervis is an Austin-based correspondent for USA TODAY.