PRODG Entertainment Promotions

PROFILES

Louis Elneus
Founder of HLD

Richard Jeanty
Author & Entrepreneur

Leslie Demangles
Author & College Professor

Danielle Legros-George
Haitian Poet & Autor

Margaret Papillon
Haitian Author

Myrtelle Cherry
Haitian Artist & Painter

Carole B. Joseph
Mass Bay Community College President

Gashford Guillaume
Mozayik Drummer

Pascale Auguste
Haitian Association Against Cancer

Andy Jacques
Haitian Fashion Designer

Phillip J. Brutus
State Representative

Yvecar Momperousse
Haitian Student Alliance

The Maroons
Haitian Writers & Poets

Evans Thesee
Founder HaitianConnection.com

Abdias Charles
Founder of Repair Haiti.org

Mecca AKA Grimo
Haitian Hip Hop Artist & Activist

Fania Simon
Writer, Lecturer & Activist

Nadege Fleurimond
Owner of Fleurimond Catering

Interview: Evans Thesee

		Evans was born in Port-au-Prince, and moved to the US after completing both Baccalaureate exams at Petit Seminaire College St Martial (class of 1986). He went on to study at the University of Minnesota where he obtained a BS in Mathematics. He started a software engineering career working for Firefly.net (an MIT spin-off) which later got bought by Microsoft. From there, he launched his. own business providing software engineering consultancy to Fortune 500 companies around the world.
Evans has completed work for many Fortune 500 companies including the likes of Time Warner Inc (New York, NY), Knight Ridder (California), Nomura Financials (Tokyo and London), Lockheed Martin (Lexington, MA), the Boston Globe (Boston, MA), and Yahoo.com (California) amongst many others. He has taught Advanced Java Programming at Boston University Corporate education for 3 years and has since founded www.HaitianConnection.com, the most popular Haitian community in cyberspace. Blake Seide recently caught up with Evans:

Blake Seid: First off, I know you're a busy man, so I definitely appreciate this moment. I know many people on Haitian Connection know you but here at PRODG we would like to share your success with the rest of our community and hopefully it will motivate someone else to indulge and jumpstart something that will benefit our community as well. So Evans, how did Haitian Connection get to this point? How did it come about?

Evans Thesee: Haitianconnection.com is a spin-off of a simple email list that a network of Haitian professionals in Boston used to exchange ideas while at work. That email list became notorious when a few highly educated/cultivated Haitian ladies (E. Backer, L. Backer, Larissa, Dominique) from the New York area joined the list. The list grew popular to the point where all the members (Florida, DC, California, Chicago, New York, and Boston) convened and decided to seek a better format. That reunion, later, created all sorts of havoc and division amongst us. Different people took different routes and started different things that didn't live long. But given that I had already proposed an idea to the group, I just kept my focus and devoted my time to developing the project and I launched haitianconnection.com in December 1999.

The site is a sanctuary for those who want to express their views without having to always sugar-coat the truth. In real life, you always have to mince words and you always have to worry how you express yourself lest people will accuse you of being unpatriotic, unruly and what not. But on haitianconnection.com, you are free to express your thoughts and once you're used to the culture of writing in a forum, you'll read, discuss and argue online, but at the end of the day, we would hope anyone doesn't hold grudges. After all it's cyberspace. But the bottom line is that you get to hear a truth that you probably would have never heard in a face-to-face social setting. Haitianconnection.com connects Haitians from all walks of life and Haitians from all continents of the planet.

BS: Being a member of HC, I can definitely attest to what you're saying, I have certainly met many people that I would never encounter in real life. The majority of the people contributing to PRODG are HCians, so I know that we have been greatly blessed to have a site such as HatianConnection. So, what is the current total number of members?

ET: We have a rough total of 82,000 registered members, but a lot more visit and use the site without ever registering.

BS: What are some of the challenges you have faced in promoting the site? Have you made any enemies due to this site? How do you rate success of your work/site?

ET:The site promotes itself. Its forum is known to be the best Haitian forum. The discussions are not monitored and the administrator does not filter anything. It's raw and real. People come in and they express themselves. Unlike other forums, it's not a propaganda machine, and it doesn't constrain anyone to speak highly of anything. It's an anything-goes type of forum, albeit highly social and intellectual.

BS: Why should Haitians visit the site?

ET:Haitians should visit this site because it's the only website that features an open forum for discussions. The administrators of the site do not direct or control the discussions. What you end up with is a real experience; you end up reading real opinions. On HatianConnection sugar-coating is not necessary. Also, Haitianconnection.com predates myspace.com and hi5.com in providing its members a personal space online. Once you're a registered member, you get to create/edit your own page where your friends can connect with you, leave you messages and more... A lot of people have met their soul mates that way and have gotten married thanks to these features of HC.

BS: Evans thanks again for this interview and we hope HC will continue to prosper and educate the Haitian Community.

ET: Even though the administrators don't control the discussions and the quality of the posts initiated, somehow when you read the forum on haitianconnection.com, it's amazing to realize how there is a sense of culture on the site. The culture is that people don't hide the truths about Haiti's problems. People appreciate more than they hate realizing only when you learn to appreciate that you will be appreciated. Therefore, in the music section of the forum people talk appreciatively of Kompa, Hip-Hop, Reggae, Zouk, and Couper Decaler as freely as they want. That sort of culture is unprecedented, and yet there's no one to take credit for that. It's like magic. You come to haitianconnection.com, you log on and you simply find yourself evolving into this socially-fit culture through reading and writing on this forum that the rest of the world would have never fathomed possible given the many stigmas they've put on us.