Our guest today is íazHernáa Venezuelan blogger, who is also a writer, human rights activist, and an advocate. Marianne Diaz Hernandez writes in Global Voices Online and volunteers to Global Voices Advocacy. Hi Marianne, would you please tell us when you started blogging? Can you let us know more about your blogging experience? I started blogging in 2006, on my personal – and extremely random – blog “La Vida no Trae Instrucciones” (Life doesn't come with instructions). Since then, I have had a few attempts of “serious” blogging, until the beginning of this year, when I started “Ex-Cátedra“, which is a blog where I write on other non-personal subjects, mostly related with Venezuelan laws, development issues, gender, poverty and human rights. I have to confess that for me, my blog, specifically my personal blog, is kind of a concessionary, where I go to say things that no one in my “real” life wants to hear. And in the same way, when I write about the things that worry me, about poverty and hunger and law-making, it's also because that’s the way to get to the people who actually want to hear about that. If it wasn't for my blog, I wouldn’t have friends and my family would have disinherited me already. How did you learn about Global Voices Online? And what attracted you to Global Voices Advocacy? I first knew about Global Voices Online through some wonderful people from Th!nk About It. I became interested in the work they were doing, and after that, I learned about GV Advocacy and their amazing commitment to online freedom of speech, and I thought that sadly, it might be needed that someone from my country reported the constantly-changing situation between our government and freedom of speech in the web; so I wrote a message to Sami Ben Gharbia, who made the mistake of letting me join Advocacy. Now I’ll never leave. We all know that you're not only a blogger, but you also are a writer with an already published storybook, “Cuentos en el Espejo” (Stories in The Mirror). You are a lawyer as well, you blog for Amnesty International on Human Rights Issues, participated on “TH!NK ABOUT IT” blogging competition, and for sure you have your twitter. I am not going to ask you the obvious question, “How do you find time for all that?”. But let me ask you instead to give us a brief on each one of the above projects you work on, and if you have more projects to add to this impressive list. Well, I don’t even know if all of those things you list are related at all. I might say that I have this insane need to write about everything I know and see, and therefore I write stories, and that’s why I blog. On the other hand, I’ve always been interested in human rights and gender equality issues, and that’s the reason I offered myself as a volunteer for Amnesty International. Amnesty International led me to Th!nk, and Th!nk led me to Global Voices, and combining them all makes me think that destiny draws the most amazing and beautiful patterns in one’s life. I plan on continue writing on all the things that interest me. I have a storybook on hold to write, and another on hold to be published. And I hope to be useful in the future in the organizations where I volunteer, hoping to give back all the good things they've given me. How do you see your blogging, human rights, and advocacy experience effects your book writing? And on the other hand, do you think being a writer has helped making you a better blogger? I hope that effect isn't apparent, but I think that every human experience enriches the stories one writes. I believe that the main difference between writing in one's own room, in the solitude, and blogging, is the people one gets to know, and therefore, all those different opinions and views on life, and beliefs and cultures, may enrich one's characters and stories. Besides that, to blog is a way to expose one's writings to a broad audience, and a chance to receive good and bad critics, and so, an opportunity to improve that was impossible to get before the net existed. However, I don't think my actual writing of “books” has improved my blogging. If so, it has taken my time for writing in my blog. But it was a necessary balance. What is your most memorable blogging experience, or writing experience in general? And how do you see the impact of what you write on people? I would have to recall from four years of writing a blog, what's the most memorable about that. But I have to say that almost all the bizarre, awesome, unbelievable opportunities I have had in the past four years, have come from my online activities. I've been contacted to be a part on forums, contests, to travel abroad, I've known amazing people that I'm very fond of, I've done things I'd never thought I'll do.