These are the type of videos you can expect:

The new video blog is on TV! And I’m the first in San Francisco to do it. Working with Marc Scarpa and my Pop17 production, we are on Comcast On Demand. All you have to do is go to Get Local, select Entertainment and watch Vidblogger Nation. I promise you will love it! Our content is fantastic. It’s just as good as any TV show, but in the vlogger format. You can read about it from Zennie at the SF Gate – he says:

“Because its something new, traditional television has been slow to pick up on it, giving a door for Scarpa and for Comcast Corporation and Comcast Ventures to walk through. But first, Scarpa had to find the talent.

There are vid-bloggers representing ten cities in America, from Atlanta, to Portland. As to how this blogger became involved, it was from a recommendation by Ms. Austin to Mr. Scarpa, because I’m a regular vlogger and spend about half my time in Atlanta. Sarah and Marc sent a Facebook message, which led to a long conversation with Scarpa.

What I and other vid-bloggers do is make 2 to 5 minute videos around a set of words like “Favorite Places,” which could lead to a video of favorite places to go in your city, or some other interpretation of the words. You then use the camcorder to take your viewers on a kind of tour of those places, at least where you can get a location release signed to do an interior shot, or do an exterior shot when you can’t, or use photos where available. You combine that with talks, quips, and whatever else to make the final show cut.

The idea is to form a kind of video narrative about the place you live in.”

Ken Lam took this photo a couple years ago inside a small garden in the east village, NYC. The small park used to be an apartment complex that got burned down and the land became a neighborhood communal garden. I love it! There are greens, ferns, and even a pond. I used to live in the East Village in an apartment we used to call the youtube house because Brooke Alley Brodack, Caitlin Hill and I lived there.

I love gardening so much. When I interned for English as a second language at the San Pedro Elementary school, in San Rafael, California, I spent my free time constructing a garden. Since most of the students are low income latinos, there is little help with nutrition. This is because the school district applied and was granted subsidized lunches. The sad part is, the food is all microwave burritos, donuts, and hot dogs. There is little to no nutritional value for these growing children. I built a garden there and planted tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, relish, celery, and other nutritional garden plants. The 3rd grade class and I made a large salad party at the end of the year and the kids were able to learn about nutrition while building a garden.

The summer before building this garden at the children’s school, I spent the summer building a garden in Oaxaca Mexico with Amigos De Las Americas. This was to help fight infant mortality in Oaxaca. One out of three babies will die from malnutrition there this year. It’s because their mother’s don’t have the resources and education to integrate nutritional grains and vegetables into their traditional recipes. I worked on organizing cooking lessons as well as the construction of a large garden. We planted amaranth grains and other plants.

The teleprompter takes so much preparation and experience! Anchor, Kym McNicholas, worked with me on the above video. I did the styling! Love this necklace! It’s my favorite from Forever21. Oh and I can’t wait for the new iPad 2!!! Eeeek- someone please buy me a white one for my birthday! lol

It’s incredibly creative and I’ve never met someone so science and technology driven in their fashion sense.

Oh and I loved interviewing these really great Stanford University students in the video above. Fun!

In business, one of the most important things is to find a passion and a demand in the market. My passion comes from how technology helps people improve quality of life and do their personal best. As a reporter of technology trends for Pop17, the stories that interest me the most are how people can bring their passion to life and change the world with tech tools.

There are so many ways to use tech tools to improve the lives of others. These are the stories I like to highlight the most! For example, Kiva.org is a site that I like to support because they help to change the lives of so many entrepreneurs by allowing individuals to make micro loans to support small business. During times of disaster relief the internet has changes people’s lives through making it possible for crowd sourced fund raising. One loan can give people a step ahead and a step closer to alleviating global poverty.

Bill and Hillary Clinton are supporters of micro loans. So when my sister, Rebekah, and I made a short film about micro-loans for Hilary Clinton’s social network contests, Rebekah won the grand prize to work in China for a summer semester abroad. The exchange took place this summer, 2010, as an example of how Rebekah’s life was changed as a result of harnessing the power of the internet and technology. 

In a recent interview for a Pop17 blog series, I interviewed Tammy Camp about making change through technology. Tammy is a technology entrepreneur, speaker, and writer.

Here’s an excerpt:

Tammy: I made a Kiva loan to some lovely ladies in Dominican Republic. They need $400 more! Will visit on my next trip down. It is where I go to in Dominican Rebpublic so if the loan is complete, I will go down there and visit and see the $$ at work.
Sarah: How do you take the opportunity to be hands on when you are in the DR?
Tammy: They are female entrepreneurs, like myself. I know the country of Dominican Republic very well and understand the market segment. I’ll be able to advise them and provide insight on how they can grow their business. Plus give them encouragement.
Sarah: Since the recent earthquake there are so many people all over the world- we see their conversations on twitter- how do you keep your concerned followers up to date when you are there? What does a typical day look like for you there?
Tammy: I’ll livestream from the schools down there via Ustream, shoot video and post them on my blog here and also use Twitter to share my experience in real time.

Stories like Tammy’s are inspiring. For example, the one red paperclip guy is fascinating. This is a story of an ordinary man, Kyle MacDonald, who changed his life and the lives of others by trading his way up from a red paperclip to a house in 14 trades by using the internet. I love seeing how people can time and time again, use technology to turn lemons into lemonade. He helped others by making trades for their career advancement, like his 10th trade to Jody Gnant, who traded a record deal for her music in exchange for a year’s rent from her home in Phoenix, Arizona. The book, One Red Paperclip, is authored by Kyle who I was fortunate enough to sit down with at MIT in Massachusetts for ROFLCon.

I’m pretty much one of the biggest advocates for technology because I like to look at the people who use it and how that changes their lives. Technology is a way to change the world. If I could do anything with technology it would be opening up the lives of people to the resources technology has to offer. Everything from using the internet to find employment to aiding the disabled with tech tools that improve their lives show that change can happen with the right resources. Technology makes our lives easier and advances our quality of life.

Being a freelance video editor, software and hardware improvements can make the difference of what I can and cannot produce via the computer. I love Apple software and also software for PC’s, however, I’m more of an Apple girl today with exactly five excellent Apple computers.

I’m a fan of saving paper. We are moving away from print and closer to using electronic data transfers for information exchange. Having lots of computers is not always necessary, unless you are transferring massive amounts of data. When uploading data to my server, I like to keep the computer running without having to multitask.

Ever since I was 12 years old my friends and family looked to me for support with their computers. Today, I study and investigate computer information for reporting on various new outlets. I’m an online video journalist. You can see my work regularly on Forbes.com and Pop17.com. In the past, I was the head of video- video editor for the west coast- for Gawker Media, including Gizmodo. My favorite video project was the iPhone launch.

Recently, IT has been more than study for me. I’ve been dabbling in tech design and development. I’m the lead designer for the video player and the Facebook application game. Development and design are key elements. I learned how important communication and management become when running projects that I do not fully understand. I know a little HTML and CSS and am learning HTML5. However, most of what the developers on building the facebook games I’m not an expert at. I do reading and research so that I can speak the language and communicate with them.

Design is one of the other elements that IT is about. Other than the software that designers use, there are more tools available for people who want to design from their browser, software, or application. There are logo generating sites and easy tools to crowd-source design communities. I’ve organized several design competitions with my audience before and generated great results.

Finally, I’m seriously in IT when it comes to networking. Isn’t IT all about social media these days? My social network communities on Pop17 are really powerful and influential online. I have worked very hard for over 5 years in Silicon Valley to gain access to certain individuals and build strong interpersonal relationships. I have about 1,000 strong tech contacts that I regularly communicate with and 500,000 monthly video views to Pop17 live seminars. On twitter we have 30,000 followers and I was even featured in Vanity Fair as one of America’s Tweethearts. Today, I think of IT leaning more towards social media than ever before. Social media is the biggest trend to look out for right now.

Jesse Draper is really cool, fun and sweet. Her vlog, Valley Girl Show, is a must see.

I’m so proud of my sister. She really has come a long way. In collaboration with Pop17 the US Department of State will be vlogging and blogging about microfinancing! Yay! Hilary Clinton is running this program and personally reached out to us. My sister, Rebakah Austin, is going to make a real change in this world.

I’m off to SXSW with Watchitoo and Nikon. Check out twitter for when I go live and post about all the great stuff from Austin, Texas.

Oversharers describes it as, “anyone who publicly shares embarrassingly intimate–or gross and disgusting–details of their lives, right out there where anyone can read them.” It’s a pretty funny blog with tweets and facebook posts.

I learned about this word in 2007 and 2008 when I started lifecasting on JTV. Justin Kan offered me the opportunity to stream live to thousands of people watching the ultimate reality TV show. 24/7 raw, live and uncut. Myself and several others became lifecasters on the beta site. This experience changed my life and taught me about live video on the web. It was so cool to be the first to do something so cool! I’m one of the first live streaming lifecasters popularized by JTV. Today, I lifecast in a more professional and brand safe way on various websites. Lifecasting doesn’t have to be 24/7 live video of every detail of your life.

Today I’m here to announce that I’m hosting segments on Justin.tv for Pop17. Pop17 is a web show highlighting trends, internet culture, and micro-celebrity. You can expect Pop17 live Monday-Thursday PST starting this Thursday. I look forward to seeing you there! Here are the best submissions for the design contest:

Vote on the winners in the comments:

A. Branded Kirkman

B. Rudy Cuestas

C. Leon Bacud

I will send the winner a Poken. A poken is your ‘social business card.’ it’s the easy way to share your contact details and online social networks in the real world.  just hold two poken palms together – high4! – and you’re connected.

I had a learning disability called dyslexia. For me, the words would move around the page and I couldn’t get them to stay still in a straight line with my eyes. In 2nd grade I started to attend special education classes outside of regular class. Thus, I was working twice as hard as my peers and constantly falling short in the classroom.  (Dyslexia is actually pretty common and many great minds have struggled with it like Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill, for example). It took a while for the school to figure out what was going on with me, but because of their fine resources and small teacher to student ratio I was able to get the help and assistance I needed early on. At the time the California school system had funding and dedicated those resources toward my education. Ironically, I wasn’t able to read until 4th grade, however, by 6th grade I graduated special ed and my teachers started to give me B’s and C’s for my work without additional help. I have my mother and the once funded California school system to thank.

In 9th grade I was recruited to apply for a leadership and mentorship program targeted at low income/high potential youth called Summer Search. I applied and was accepted for telling my story and being myself. It was pretty great! The founder, Linda Mornell, personally mentored me through high school. She gave me scholarships for summer learning programs, a college counselor, and after school tutoring for my college aptitude tests. Upon graduating high school I wrote my college essay about how Summer Search was like a family.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he_XR-DBTZ8

By the time I finished high school, much of which I spent home schooled, at Stanford University and a in the wilderness, I graduated with honors and was awarded seven scholarships to Ivy League’s and Colleges back east like Emerson College and Mount Holyoke. Linda Mornell and my college counselor, Sandy Pebbels, encouraged me to attend Mount Holyoke so I went!

Today I value my accomplishments in school. I have a 3.85 GPA as I’m currently getting my MBA in Business Management at Dominican Universities Pathway program for working professionals. Dominican has the most perfect program for me and is located close to my home town in Marin County, California. Ironically, it was my father’s suggestion to go back to school because, while I was away at college on the East Coast, he went to a similar program at Saint Mary’s College of California where he earned his BA in Business Management.

If it were not for the encouragement I received from my community in Marin County, my mentor Linda Mornell, and all of Summer Search I probably would not have had the opportunity to overcome my learning disability and go on to higher education. If I had stayed in Arkansas I would have found little motivation to learn because I wouldn’t have had the stimulation there. As I complete my MBA at night and on the weekends, I decided it would be a good time to take on anouther mentor. I’d like to proudly announce my new mentor, Larry Kramer.

Larry Kramer is local to Tiburon, California and a pioneer in digital media. He served as president of CBS Digital Media and prior to that founded MarketWatch. I’m so lucky to have the opportunity to work and learn with Larry.

Getting an education has no ending. It will go on as long as the mind wants to consume. Education is stepping into the light and learning about things we were ignorant about before. The “light,” according to Plato, is being educated. It is being able to see the sun and being in the right place to do so. Getting an education is similar to getting a degree because they will both bring you into the light and open opportunities. 

When I first became involved with technology I did not learn about it in school. I was 12 and did not have a computer so I used the computers at school at lunch break and after hours. As a teen, I learned about tech by going to meet-ups, informational conferences, and social gatherings around tech in the Silicon Valley and Bay Area. There was nothing that could get in my way because I was so passionate about the power of technology and the possibilities of social media. 

By the time I was 21, I attended 32 different conferences internationally and nationally, interviewed over 200 technology leaders, created over 300 videos about tech, and wrote 182 blog posts about tech. By the time I was 19, people started calling me a technology leader. This happened because I had an education, but not because I had a degree in technology. Getting a degree is similar to getting an education because they both will take you places. 

Steve Wozniak, who didn’t get a degree, ironically wrote my college letter of recommendation as he told me I didn’t need to get a degree. He said that with my experience and leadership I wouldn’t have a problem getting a job, however, the only reason I should get a degree is so I can tell my kids to get a degree. (So many hires want at least a Bachelors degree). I have always looked up to Woz as a leader in tech along with Jobs and Gates. Woz would agree that getting an education is just as good as getting a degree. 

Getting a degree is similar to getting an education because along the way to a degree one does become educated. You are forced to see the light. The difference from getting an education and getting a degree is when you get a degree you finish with an ending. You take required classes along the way and graducate with a single sheet of paper that says you did it. Getting a degree is important to many and unimportant to some. 

p.s. As many of you know, I’m a full time student with an end goal. I like the structure of school and the joy it brings every day. For part of my high school experience I was home schooled. I learned that I didn’t need anyone else to help me learn. That’s why I decided to take education into my own hands. Be it in school, the real world, or both, education will set you free!