What you missed at the UNITY Seattle mixer

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That's U for UNITY. Top row, left to right: John Ryan, Peter Sessum, Genevieve Alvarez, Venice Buhain. Middle: Katrina Barlow, Mai Ling Slaughter, Melissa Hoyos. Bottom: Sona Patel, Lauren Rabaino, Sharon Chan.

Thank you to everyone who came to the UNITY Seattle mixer on Tuesday night! We had a crowd of about 20 journalists of all backgrounds at Lucid Lounge in the U. District: Asian American, Latina, white, gay, student, professor, digital, TV, radio, nonprofit, ex- and job-seeking journalists.

We projected the #UNITY12 Twitter stream up on a screen and UNITY and alliance presidents Joanna Hernandez, David Steinberg, Doris Truong, Rhonda LeValdo all joined us via Twitter. UNITY Programming Co-Chairs Paul Cheung and Robert Hernandez also joined in the event via Twitter.

I did a short slideshow about why you should think about coming to UNITY:

    • Thousands of journalists
    • Inspired workshops
    • Vegas

AAJA Seattle President Sona Patel announced a convention grant the chapter will award to help a laid-off journalist attend UNITY. She also highlighted the Northwest Journalists of Color scholarships, deadline April 15. This year the winner will receive a grant to attend the convention as well. Former scholarship winner Peter Sessum spoke about how the scholarships changed his life.

We raffled off two “J” pins and a $50 gift card to Lucid Lounge. Congratulations to the three winners, all students at the University of Washington. Thank you to Lucid for donating the gift card. If you haven’t been to Lucid lately, they have a new elevated stage and a great digital presentation setup (they handed me an iPad to run the slideshow).

Don’t you wish you had been there?

The early-bird registration rate for UNITY 2012 convention ends on March 16! The early bird rate is $325 for members, $150 for student members, $500 for non-members and $250 for student non-members. After March 16, rates go up $75!

Register now at unityconvention.org.