By: Emon Reiser

Booting up with 6,000 attendees - 1,000 more than initially expected - the eMerge Americas Techweek concluded Tuesday with organizers and attendees lauding the convention that drew tech innovators and investors from throughout the U.S., the Caribbean and Latin America.
"We really saw this as an opportunity to get involved in what will begin to evolve into a technology wave," said Sherrie Porter, Senior Vice President of Miami-based EWM Realty.

This is the Start it up network for teaching entrepreneurship bubble. From May 2-6, attendees representing startups and businesses and tech enthusiasts gathered at the Miami Beach Convention Center for the event, which is slated to become an annual fixture in the city to help cement South Florida as an international tech hub. The convention touted more than 200 participating companies and 115 startups this year.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Breakfast With The Business Journal - Boca Raton
MAY 12, 2016
2016 Influential Business Women Awards
MAY 20, 2016
2016 Healthiest Employers Awards & Health Fair
JUNE 02, 2016

The conference was the brainchild of businessman Manny Medina, former owner of Terremark Worldwide, who said he experienced firsthand the lack of support needed to nurture a burgeoning technology business in South Florida, early in his career. “This particular idea came to me out of frustration because running a publicly traded technology company out of Miami, or South Florida, is just challenging because Miami is not seen as a technology hub,” Medina said. “I wanted to do something where we helped change that.”

Medina said many attendees were impressed by the substantive content the events' 150 speakers brought to Miami’s burgeoning technology conversation .
One of the speakers was José A. Quiñonez, Executive Director of San Francisco-based Mission Asset Fund. He was invited to speak at eMerge on his company’s social lending product Lending Circles, started to offer better financing options for low-income citizens through technology. Quiñonez said more than 65 attendees from different organizations met him at the convention, where MAF signed an official partnership agreement with the nonprofit Catalyst Miami.

“We’re going to be doing the program with them initially and then we’re going to be looking for other organizations to add to the mix,” Quiñonez said. “We came to meet the local folks and we got the chance to meet other foundation heads like the Knight Foundation. Everybody was at the table, as it were. “
Along with the 220 participating companies that networked at the convention, events included the Startup Village, where more than 115 startups from around the globe had tables and networked on the convention floor and a Launch Competition, where the top startup companies presented and competed for $150,000 in prizes. Tech enthusiasts also competed for $30,000 with ideas to help solve problems in emerging markets.

Young entrepreneurs participated in the convention's Youth Biz Plan Challenge and the youth business expo. Attendee Kristy Vale, a senior in high school, represented her family's business, Phantom's Custom Bikes. Vale said that with only an hour at the convention Tuesday, she had already connected with a local motorcycle company. "People are really taking advantage of this opportunity, especially young people," said Patricia Peña, social media specialist for the Weston-based tech marketing firm Optime Consulting. Medina said the events exceeded his expectations, but that plans for next year will include improvements. “Miami is the unofficial capital of Latin America for everything except for technology. What we’re trying to do here is by creating this gathering to spark what is already happening,” Medina said. “You have a lot of incubators, a lot of accelerators, a lot of startups, but we brought this massive amount of people here to accelerate that.”

By Kyle Swenson Thursday, Nov 28 2013    

Daniella Levine has a joke for you. It's a zinger, but it also nicely packages the philosophy that powers her life's work.

By Bryce Covert on November 6, 2013

Ten states — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin — have passed preemption laws that ban all cities and counties from enacting paid sick days bills, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute.

As can be seen from the chart, momentum has picked up recently, with seven of those laws passed this year alone. They have also been introduced in at least 14 state legislatures, and Pennsylvania is currently considering one that was introduced in October.

Big business has been helping to fuel this tide of legislation. As the report notes, “In each of the ten states, the bills’ sponsors included members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). And in each case, the bills were adopted following vigorous advocacy by corporate lobbies such as the Chamber of Commerce, National Federation of Independent Business, and Restaurant Association.”

Yet even though these business opponents claim that paid sick days would create unbearable costs, the evidence from those places that do have paid sick leave shows that they can be beneficial. Business growth and job growth have been strong under Seattle’s law. Job growth has also been strong in San Francisco and its law enjoys strong business support. The policies in Washington, DC and Connecticut have come at little cost for businesses. In fact, expanding DC’s current law would net employers $2 million in savings even with potential costs factored in. On the other hand, the average employer loses $225 per worker each year thanks to lost productivity when they get sick and can’t take paid leave.

And as the momentum grows for preemption bills, so too does the push for paid sick days. Six cities and Connecticut have them on the books, and fights are underway in Newark, NJ; Tacoma, WA; Massachusetts; New Jersey; and Vermont.

Follow: #GetWellFL

It seems nobody talks about climate change, but everybody wants to do something about it. Consider this head-in-the-wet-sand piece from the Miami Herald, “Rain or no rain, beachfront streets flood due to ‘spring tide’.” 

You probably think it would be impossible for an entire news article on worsening street flooding in Miami to omit any mention whatsoever of global warming or even sea level rise. Think again.

“It gets super flooded from the tide every couple of months,” said [Moses] Schwartz who lived on the island for more than 20 years before moving to the Brickell area on the mainland. “It’s getting worse and worse as the years go by.”

Hmm. Why is it getting worse? The Miami Herald offers no explanation. This is all it has to say about the cause of the flooding:

The current levels of high tide are caused by an astronomical event known as “spring tide,” according to Chuck Caracozza, a meteorologist from the National Weather Service.

See, nothing to worry about. It’s just high tides. Except the article runs with this quote from Schwartz:

“It’ll be interesting to see what happens to Miami Beach in 10 to 20 years,” he said.

Why? Why? Why? Why will it be interesting to see? Why does he think it’s going to get worse? Why did the reporter include that quote? No explanation is given.
Indeed, while the article fails to mention climate change or sea level rise, it does quote one “Nanette Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the city,” explaining that Miami is studying how to deal with this apparently inexplicable plague of street flooding.

Rodriguez said the city is thinking of short-term fixes to deal with the issue.
“We’re looking at improving our sea walls and raising some of them,” she said.
In search of a long-term solution, a delegation recently returned from the Netherlands, Rodriguez said, and the city will determine which of that country’s strategies to hold back high tides can be used here.
“Some of their ideas we can do, others we can’t as we are in different geographic areas,” Rodriguez said.

That last quote from Rodriguez is quite the euphemism given the reality of the region’s topology and geology. As the must-read June Rolling Stone piece, “Goodbye, Miami,” explains:

Even worse, South Florida sits above a vast and porous limestone plateau. “Imagine Swiss cheese, and you’ll have a pretty good idea what the rock under southern Florida looks like,” says Glenn Landers, a senior engineer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This means water moves around easily – it seeps into yards at high tide, bubbles up on golf courses, flows through underground caverns, corrodes building foundations from below. “Conventional sea walls and barriers are not effective here,” says Robert Daoust, an ecologist at ARCADIS, a Dutch firm that specializes in engineering solutions to rising seas.

D’oh.
But, undaunted, Rodriguez and the Miami Herald end with this reassuring line:

Rodriguez said the tide should be back to normal by early next week.

#FAIL
For a dose of reality, let’s end instead with the Rolling Stone piece:

But the unavoidable truth is that sea levels are rising and Miami is on its way to becoming an American Atlantis. It may be another century before the city is completely underwater (though some more-pessimistic­ scientists predict it could be much sooner), but life in the vibrant metropolis of 5.5 million people will begin to dissolve much quicker, most likely within a few decades. The rising waters will destroy Miami slowly, by seeping into wiring, roads, building foundations and drinking-water supplies – and quickly, by increasing the destructive power of hurricanes. “Miami, as we know it today, is doomed,” says Harold Wanless, the chairman of the department of geological sciences at the University of Miami. “It’s not a question of if. It’s a question of when.”
… “If you live in South Florida and you’re not building a boat, you’re not facing reality.”

BY DANIEL CHANG [email protected]

The (Affordable Care Act's) online exchanges — also known as marketplaces — are the centerpiece of healthcare reform, and they will give consumers unprecedented power to examine an extensive menu of health plans and to compare prices and benefits side by side.

For Florida, where an estimated 3.8 million people live without health insurance, the exchanges could make an especially big impact. The state ranks near the top of the nation in terms of plan choices, with an average of 102 health plans to choose from on the state’s federally run exchange.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/09/30/3661825/health-insurance-marketplace-key.html#storylink=cpy

By: John Dorschner
With less than two weeks to go before the exchanges open, Miami-Dade's nonprofit entities are talking about working together to get word out about Obamacare and the opportunities for the uninsured to obtain  coverage.

"I'm feeling encouraged," Daniella Levine, head of the action group Catalyst Miami. Last month, Levine had complained "we are all  up in arms" because South Florida had lost out on a major federal funding effort to pay for navigators, persons trained to help the uninsured get coverage under measures that take effect Jan. 1.

Levine said a key development was a coordination meeting Thursday in a Florida Blue conference room. The meeting was convened by the Health Council of South Florida, bringing together groups willing to work on the project.

"All the groups in town were talking about what they are going to do," Levine said. "Most are doing it without getting paid -- a volunteer mobilization effort."

That meeting occurred after Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, visited Miami and trumpeted how much the federal government is doing here to raise awareness in Miami-Dade, which has more than 700,000 uninsured according to the latest estimates.

Sebelius brought along Karen Egozi, president of the Epilepsy Foundation of Florida, which has received a $637,000 federal grant to train navigators statewide. She told reporters that 50 of the navigators are slated to work in Miami-Dade.

Levine said the volunteer effort wouldn't be as good as having more paid navigators, but some will become certified application counselors, meaning they can help people sign up through the exchange process.

Federally funded  health clinics, universities and others are training staff to inform people about the opportunities of getting health insurance through the exchanges, where people cannot be denied coverage because of preexisting conditions. 

Santiago Leon, a Miami health insurance broker and board member of the activist group Florida CHAIN, agreed with Levine that the county's efforts are at last stepping up. "Between Enroll America, the safety-net providers, the libraries, the schools, and whatever resources we get from the official navigators, I think we will be fine.  It would be way better if we had Medicaid expansion because, as it is, people could be turned down for being too poor (!) and then tell their friends not to waste their time."

Insurers say the exchanges will work if both healthy and unhealthy persons sign up.  Some critics are skeptical that the healthy -- particularly the young -- will sign up, meaning the insurers will be stuck with a pool of expensive patients.

   HIALEAH A KEY
 
One key test will be in Hialeah, where the majority of adults 18-64 do not have coverage. Most residents work for small companies that don't offer coverage, and most don't seek policies on the individual market. Daniel Shoer Roth, former El Nuevo columnist, once wrote that many in Hialeah believe they don't need health insurance because if they get sick, "Voy a Jackson."

Miami's one bidder for navigator funds, the Health Council of South Florida, didn't get a contract. Last month, the group's chief executive, Marisel Losa, said she had "no clue" why the bid was rejected when the Center for American Progress had ranked Miami-Dade as No. 1 nationwide as the community that can benefit the most from the Affordable Care act.

Asked in an email last week whether she felt better after the Sebelius visit, Losa didn't respond. 

For persons willing to volunteer to help in the enrollment process, Catalyst Miami is sponsoring a training session on Oct. 4 at Temple Israel. Levine said about 70 have signed up for the training so far.  Register at http://bit.ly/18dGId7. For more details go to catalystmiami.org.