Dear Mr. President — my proposal for better language education in the United States

Daniela Semeco

CEO, Polyglotte® İnc.

169 11th Street

San Francisco, CA 94103

www.polykeyboards.com

December 20, 2015

President of the United States
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I'd like to propose a solution to a problem you addressed in 2008 concerning the need for better language education in our country (http://youtu.be/BZprtPat1Vk). At a town hall in Powder Springs, Georgia not long before your election to the presidency, you encouraged Americans to become multilingual in two or more languages, like the rest of the world. It's true, we're pretty far behind. In Europe, for example, 10% of the population speaks over four languages; in the U.S., 70% of the population speaks only one.

Learning a language consists of making clear impressions on the brain. We should begin by making the learning process more natural. We could make innovative learning materials more accessible to students and create opportunities for them to travel and discover the world.

Language is learned through behavior and environment. I am an interpreter and inventor, myself. I speak four languages fluently (English, Spanish, French and German). From my experience, I can break down this learning process into three parts: 1) auditory skills (speaking and listening), 2) reading and writing, and 3) grammar.

How can we expect a child to write correctly in Spanish if their computer keyboard cannot produce an ‘ñ’ (n with tilde)? Or they may want to produce an 'ß' in German. The current typing solutions are inadequate and quite frankly a barrier to the learning process. They were designed for the monolingual world of America’s past, rather than the polylingual world of our emerging present and future. That's why I invented the Polyglotte® multi-language keyboard, because a person who is able to type correctly 100% of the time will learn more efficiently. It's confusing to sometimes write Genève and other times Geneve. After a while, a person will wonder if that word carries an accent or not. Their memory will become clouded.

Learning a language can be life-changing. It helps people gain confidence, understanding, and enlightenment.

We should make it easier for students to integrate language into their daily lives. We can send them to study abroad at low cost, rather than weighting them down with colossal loans. I was able to get a great education in France for only $200 a year. Other countries don't charge their students so much money. Let's give our young people more options to travel and take part in systems that will not subject them to indentured servitude (AKA student loan debt). There's a better way, and I'm living proof of that.

In the meantime, I invite you to try our patent-pending keyboard, which makes it possible to write in 20 languages using more than 200 special characters on a single keyboard layout. Any feedback we can get would be amazing!


Please, let's stop asking our students what they can do for us. Let us ask what we can do for them.

Thank you,

Daniela Semeco


https://soundcloud.com/daniela-semeco-1/dear-mr-president?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=email

Sixth Street Photography

Photo by Dorian

I found out about Sixth Street Photography Workshop through Dorian, whom I first met at Food Not Bombs, in front of the 16th Street and Mission BART station in San Francisco. At Food Not Bombs, we take food that would normally be discarded and turn it into beautiful vegan meals, which we share with the community. As Diamond Dave would say:

“It’s where strangers become friends, friends become community, and community becomes family…”

Diamond Dave is a beatnik and one of the original Diggers, the group that founded Food Not Bombs.

I met Dorian over a meal and began speaking with him in French right away. I had lived in France for five years. Dorian is from Belgium. Over time, I started inviting him over to my place for wine and cheese. I felt like he knew how to enjoy it more than your average San Franciscan. One day, as we were leaving my house, he peeked his head into a closet under the stairs and said,

“Wow, what a nice place. Someone could live in there.”

It was true. Someone could live in that little closet. There was just enough room to lie down in it comfortably. I asked my roommates, and they thought it was a great idea. They were both studying music at the time. One of them played guitar, the other played bass, and there was a drum set in our kitchen. As Dorian was rocking out on the drums one day, in between beats, he told me:

“You should check out Sixth Street Photography Workshop. They have a program for activists. It’s like with Martin Luther King, they’d give people 35mm cameras and have them take pictures of the protests. It was a way of documenting social change.”

I’d always wanted to do black and white film photography, but I’d never been able to afford the costs of processing and printing. Now, thanks to Dorian, I had a way to learn for free! And there was much to be documented, since Occupy was blowing up at the time.

I showed up to the workshop, excited as a firecracker and met S. Renee Jones, the instructor. I told Renee about Dorian. She knew and approved of him. When I mentioned what he had said about the photography program for activists, she replied,

“Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but whatever, you can stay.” That’s how I learned to do black and white film photography. Later, I became a volunteer and helped set up our new gallery, 6th On 7th Gallery, at 105 7th Street. I’ve been a part of the workshop since 2012. 

This Thursday, November 12, Sixth Street Photography will be showing our member's photos at the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. We were asked by their Archivist to add a bit of edge to an otherwise formal environment. Polyglotte keyboard art will also be on display.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A GOVERNMENT BUILDING. I.D. CHECK AND SECURITY SCREENING ARE STRICTLY OBSERVED.

Day of the Dead: How to Enjoy it without Ruining it

(If you're a techie, you may want to read this).

Photo courtesy of S. Renee Jones

I'm going to spell this out in three basic steps, because I know that business people have a deep respect for things that are organized in threes.

1. Listen before you speak! Before you go painting your face, read about this tradition. Be humble enough to realize that you don't know everything and that 'Day of the Dead' has deep roots, which are worth learning about. Research. You may want to observe it this year and just stand back. It's better than painting your face and looking confused, like you don't know what the hell you're doing there. I've had techies tell me, "I went to Day of the Dead last year and all I saw were white people." Yes, the white privileged people have violently gentrified our city and clearly outnumber the Latinos who celebrate this holiday. Don't take it a step further by ruining the tradition.

2. Don't take life-sized pictures of your deceased family members to Garfield Park and set them up like altars. It makes it look like you're worshiping yourselves. Last year, I was surprised to see predominantly white people with enormous framed pictures of their loved ones, sitting around looking sad, like they had more of a reason to be sad than anyone else. Whether you mean to do that or not, that's how it comes across. The gathering at Garfield Park has traditionally been a small, organic operation, with a lot spiritualism and very little to do with materialism.

3. Don't invite all your friends to your cool 'Day of the Dead' party. Stick with what you know and call it a Halloween party. Why‽ Because for every person who celebrates ‘Day of the Dead’ in their own way, believe it or not, the tradition is being replaced with a new superficial vision. Many families in the Mission District have been evicted, and now the new 'techies' are more numerous. That is to say that if you all take your freedoms to celebrate this holiday in your own way, you will effectively be stomping out the existing tradition and replacing it with your meaningless Bohemian Halloween.

Street art - Bayview, San Francisco

By 2025, the Mission district's Latino population is expected to drop from 48 percent to 31 percent. During this time, households with children in the neighborhood are expected to drop from 21 to 11 percent. We are losing this neighborhood at an alarming speed. Some newcomers enjoy going to their favorite 'panadería' in the Mish and ordering in Spanish. They see it as a culturally rich neighborhood and find ways to benefit from that. We are for the blending of cultures, bilingualism, polyglotism. Be one of us rather than appropriating the tradition. You will be unintentionally dancing on our graves.

The Invisible Hand of Synchronicity

Skater Ghost by Daniela Semeco

San Francisco is a power spot. What is born here can live forever. Coast redwood trees are an example: When they die, as long as their roots are alive, they will grow back genetically identical. That's why they're called Sequoia Sempervirens, which means everlasting sequoia. San Francisco, also symbolized by the Phoenix, is a place where ideas converge, innovation is born, and these things are then propelled out into the universe.

Throughout my entrepreneurial journey, I've experienced many instances of synchronicity. The invisible hand has saved my company from the valley of death and laid stepping stones to help us through the patent process at our earliest stage. We've been bootstrapping for three years, and we've filed a provisional patent, non-provisional patent, patent cooperation treaty, and three trademark registrations. It all began with $250 and a dream.

I arrived in San Francisco in February 2011 after having lived in Berlin for a year. I'd completed an internship in art galleries as part of my studies in France. I wanted so much to stay in Berlin, but I wasn't granted a work permit, although I had landed a well-paying interpretation job. Having to leave Berlin was devastating, and I was so tired of having to deal with bureaucracy and paperwork that I decided to move to San Francisco to live like a hippie.

I arrived at my father’s house in Georgia, where I first came up with my invention. I was with my father in the car, joking around about my idea for a multi-language keyboard. Racking my brains trying to figure out how to fit five languages on a single keyboard layout, I asked him half seriously: “What if I made a key that would turn things upside-down, like the parenthesis, and the brackets‽”

He replied, “That would be really great for Spanish, with the upside-down question mark and exclamation point.”

That was my ‘ah ha’ moment. The next step was me rushing to the computer and researching the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website for anything that resembled this, and it didn’t exist!

All of a sudden, when I looked to the future, it no longer seemed uncertain. It was like the sun had come out on the horizon. I made my father swear he wouldn’t tell a living soul, and I kept it secret for a year and a half before I was able to file my first provisional patent. I paid off the last of my student loan from one year of studies at Indiana University. That’s when I felt ready to begin the patent process.

I wrote my first provisional patent myself. Then, I made an appointment for a free initial consultation with a patent attorney. I drilled him with questions for an hour about the patent process. Shortly afterward, we began working together. I came up with a logo and a name for my multilingual keyboard. We filed the POLYGLOTTE trademark registrations. I was working as a tour guide at the time, and at one point I asked my attorneys how much this was all going to cost.

“On average, it costs $10K to file a utility patent”, my patent lawyer said.

The provisional patent would expire in a few months. I looked at my salary, did the math, and realized there was a problem. I had a few rich friends in San Francisco, whom I asked for $5,000. They said no. I felt desperate. I considered selling my body.  Then, one night, I went to the inaugural dinner for VoKü (short for Volks Küche or the ‘people’s kitchen’). My friend and housemate at the time founded the San Francisco version of this originally German free-dinner-and-entertainment event. I was served a delicious vegan meal, and as I sat down, I introduced myself to a young woman: “Hi, my name is Daniela. I’m an inventor. What’s your name?”

“My name is Cora. Do you pay for intellectual property?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, stop,” she said. “I work for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, and we can connect you with lawyers who will work pro bono.”

“What‽” I thought. I couldn’t believe it.

I applied for the legal services for entrepreneurs program offered by the LCCR (Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights) and was accepted. I must have been the happiest person in San Francisco. Shortly afterward, I had a launch party, where I announced my invention to the world for the first time. That's where I met my mentor, Stan Osborne, who was invited to the launch party by Cristian, the founder of VoKü-SF (and my good luck charm). Stan would later introduce me to some of his closest friends on the West Coast, Gerard and Diane Cerchio. Gerard is now my mentor and computerist. That's how it all came together like synchronicity.

It only takes one person to change your life, and sometimes that person ends up being one of your best friends.

How to Start Up with Almost No Money

"It takes money to make money", so they say…

But startups are for everyone! At least, that's what I've been telling myself for years. Much of it has to do with attitude.

Here are a few guidelines to beating the odds:

1. Intent:

Being poor doesn't take away a person's right to dream. This is a basic principle. We have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and what is life without happiness? If you don't believe in yourself, no one else will. Like when you shoot a basketball into its hoop, it's not so much the mechanics of your motions, but the intent which allows you to reach your goal. Much of this has to do with concentration.

My advice: write your goal on a piece of paper. Read it aloud every day. Even better, choose a song (or write your own) that explains how much you want to succeed, and sing it every day for a year. Most importantly, while you state your goal, focus your intent as much as possible.

2. Don't be a slave:

In other words, don't go into debt! In the U.S., on average, students finish a 4-year university degree with $100,000 in debt. I consider this indentured servitude. Don’t do it!  In other countries, tuition can be as low as $200 a year, or free! Don't be afraid to take the path less traveled and study somewhere more affordable. I studied in France and only paid €150 (≃$170) per semester. When I came back to U.S., I hit the ground running.

3. Inventive step:

In order for a patent to issue, it has to meet three criteria: It has to be novel, applicable in commerce, and it has to have an inventive step (non-obviousness). The same is applicable to entrepreneurs. Investors hear pitches all day long. How are you to stand out in the crowd? What is unique about your value proposition? Leading a vision implies taking direction, and that course should be clear from the beginning. Without a great idea, it’ll be difficult to succeed with very little money.

4. If you can't afford it, try to get it for free.

This applies to anything. You may find pro bono legal advice for your patents and trademarks, as I have done. Ask your friends to help you plan events. If they are good friends, maybe they’ll help without expecting to be paid (a lot, or at all)! If you can’t afford to rent a space for public demos, which can be very expensive in a place like San Francisco, try finding a hackerspace, tech lab, community center, or even a meeting room in a public library where you could hold the demo free of charge, or at reduced rates.

5. Network with the right people in the right place.

One of the best decisions I made was moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. The network here is dense. As a result, I’ve been able to find a developer, mentors, an awesome copy editor, and a wide range of services and support from my community. When dealing with people in the Bay Area, my main piece of advice is that it pays to be nice. Sometimes you’ll run across an old hippie, and as far as you know, he may be a super genius. When dealing with people, don’t take anything for granted. If people learn to love and trust you, everything becomes possible.

Growing Up Third-Culture

What does it mean it to be a naturalized citizen? An alien no more? What do you say when people ask, “Where are you from?”

They ask, “You’re American, right?”

That’s when I answer, “I’m American, but not American born.”

The Beginning

From left to right: My father, older sister, mom and neighbors

I was born in Venezuela to two Venezuelan parents… Caraqueña, meaning “from Caracas,” the capital of the country. My father brought us to the U.S. when he received a full scholarship to Georgia Tech, where we stayed in family dorms. He was studying computer science, something very few people understood at the time.

Growing up, I wasn’t exposed to the same children’s stories most American kids are. My sisters and I learned English more quickly than our parents, seemingly through osmosis. As a child, I would sing along with songs on the radio, not knowing what the words meant. To this day, I can recall every word to some 80’s songs, and as I sing, I discover their meaning as if for the first time.

Georgia Tech family dorms circa 1985

Being an immigrant isn’t easy. It sure is interesting, though. Many of us develop identity crises in high school, and as we get older, we realize it’s O.K. to be different. Our knowledge of other cultures can make us see the world through a more critical eye. We are third-culture kids, global citizens of the world. Third-culture kids are people who travel extensively between the ages of 2 and 18, during which their vision of the world is being formed. They combine their knowledge of other cultures into their own ‘third culture.’ My older and younger sisters were born in the U.S. They were American. My twin sister and I weren’t, because we were born in Venezuela, and our parents weren’t U.S. citizens.

From left to right: Maria Daniela, Maria Beatriz, Maria Estela, Maria Gabriela (my twin) and my mom, Fanny

As a teenager, I made a master plan to learn five languages before I die. I realized I was lucky to speak both English and Spanish fluently. Knowing Spanish would allow me to learn French and Italian more easily. English would make it easier to learn German. I had a passion for music, and I was determined to learn the languages of Opera. I also didn’t want to go into debt. Both of my parents had studied in university for free, and I realized I could do the same if I studied abroad.

Traveling is a more effective way of learning languages, I thought.

Following my master plan, I began to learn German intensely. German is difficult, and it’s best to learn it at a young age. At age 19, I applied for U.S. citizenship. I was 20 when I went to Germany, where I learned German at a Goethe Institut in a little town called Prien am Chiemsee, near Munich. Trips back and forth to the U.S. were expensive and impractical. I wanted to be able to travel for more than six months without losing my green card!

Around the same time, a Colombian friend of mine qualified for a scholarship to study in Germany. I researched the program, and to my dismay, I didn’t qualify, because I wasn’t yet a U.S. citizen. My application was in review. My Colombian friend, Maria, had come to the U.S. with her family seeking asylum, and they were all citizens. They’d been in the country only for a few years.

I’d been in the U.S. most of my life.

The Test

Becoming a U.S. citizen isn’t difficult. However, many people hesitate to do it, perhaps due to the intimidation factor.

There’s value in letting them know how easy the process really is.

During the naturalization process, you’ll receive important letters notifying you of appointments (fingerprints, history test, English test). These notifications are very important. If you can’t make it to an appointment, it’s imperative that you reschedule. If you don’t reply, your case will be closed. You don’t want that to happen!

My fingerprints were taken, and now came the time to study for the history test. I downloaded and printed out a study guide I found on the Internet (a simple multiple choice test), which I learned by heart. When I took the test, I was surprised to see that every question on the history test had been taken directly from the study guide, almost word for word.

The English test was even easier. I was asked to write down this sentence: “I go to the store to buy some bread.”

I wrote the sentence down on a blank piece of paper, and ta-da! I passed! I couldn’t believe it.

Before you know it, I was in a room full of newly naturalized citizens. We sang the national anthem, and my voice bellowed amidst the crowd. We walked out happily with our citizenship certificates. I became the first naturalized citizen in my family. Shortly afterward, my father and twin sister followed suit. I went on to study in Caracas, France, and Germany.

Now I’m pursuing a patent for a multi-language keyboard I invented, another consequence of my life’s geographically diverse journey, and the role it’s played in shaping my experiences and my life.

Daniela Semeco, the inventor of the PolyKeyboard, is a multilinguist from Venezuela who acquired her language skills during time spent in France, Germany, the United States and Venezuela. Her company, Polyglotte Inc., is a benefit corporation facilitating the use of language through the PolyKeyboard. This story is Semeco’s personal journey to citizenship. 

This article was featured on the 'New Americans Campaign' website!

3 Reasons why every startup should have a launch party

1. Networking: You may meet someone who will change your life forever.

That's what happened to me.

My first launch party took place at Parisoma, a co-working space in the South of Market area of San Francisco. Stan Osborne, my first mentor, had been invited to the party by a crusty punk friend of mine. On the flyer it read that there would be good food and great wine. It was about dinner time.

Stan helped start Craigslist back in the day. Shortly after the party, he introduced me to his best friend, Gerard Cerchio, who used to work for NASA. Gerard was the needle in the hay stack, and now we're like family. That's how I built my team! Polyglotte currently has four products on the market and many more on the horizon!

2. Memories: ¡The birth of a new product is a moment to rejoice!

Looking back, you'll realize those were the happiest days of your life.

I hired a clown. We weren't supposed to make a lot of noise, and the clown began his act with a primal scream. At the end, he stood on his head and announced that I was going to turn the world upside-down with my invention. And I went on stage to unveil our patent pending upside-down shift key. Some people were mind-blown.

3. Speech! Speech! Speech!

As an entrepreneur, you're going to have to speak in public a LOT. Might as well start getting used to it!

That thought inspired me to hire the clown. I thought the he would lighten up the atmosphere and make it easier to do the speech, and it totally worked. Sometimes I go to piano bars and sing with the piano, or I go to a goth club and dance for a second in their cage like a gogo dancer. IMHO, making performance a part of your life will make you a better entrepreneur.

Go getem!

Daniela Semeco

CEO/inventor

Polyglotte Inc.

www.polykeyboards.com

Integrate, Integrate, Integrate

"Learn a new language, and get a new soul."

-Czech proverb

That’s what it means to be a polyglot. Your soul is split into a multicolor prism. It changes you forever.

Learning a language means integrating it into one's life. When you're walking down the street, how much energy does it take to wave to a friend?

Not that much, right?

Automatic responses

One important trick is training automatic responses. As a teenager, I decided one day to only count to myself in French, especially during exercise sessions. I’ve been doing this for 16 years. We all talk to ourselves. Just like an actor enters character, you can train yourself to adopt a culture. Experiment! (e.g.: try setting your phone to a new language).

Look for that direct connection.

I've formed many funny habits along the way: rolling my 'r's in the bathtub, learning the national anthem* of every country I move to. Finding artistic and creative ways to integrate into a culture can be fun.

Training an automatic response is like playing a sport. Have you ever heard of a book called The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey? It’s no wonder that many professors of music conservatories ask their students to read this book. Like music, language-learning is a small muscle sport. Training muscle memory consists in making clear impressions on the body and repeating them in a consistent way.

If you’ve recently moved to a country and would like for your speech to flow more, try to integrate one slang word into your vocabulary every week. You may feel kind of silly at first, but the more you say it, the more that new word will start to roll off your tongue like a local.

Just remember: It’s your daily bread, and you have to eat every day!

*Our CEO sings the French and German national anthems.