Fourteen years ago, Mark Horvath was in crisis. The former exec was living on the streets in Hollywood, California, where for a dollar he let people take a photograph of his pet iguana, named Dog.
“I was sitting by the Chinese theater with my iguana, surrounded by Asian tourists, with my head down, thinking, ‘How am I going to get out of this?’ ” said Horvath, whose nickname was the “Lizard Man of Hollywood Boulevard.”
Last month, Horvath returned to Hollywood Boulevard, this time as a featured speaker at the 140 Characters Conference, a Twitter-inspired gathering attended by movers and shakers in social media. Horvath told the audience how he uses an arsenal of social networking sites — Twitter, Facebook, Whrrl, MySpace, YouTube, Vimeo and Flickr — to illuminate the plight of the nation’s homeless.
Armed with a hand-held videocamera, a microphone, a laptop and an iPhone, Horvath approaches homeless people on their own turf and empowers them to share their personal stories. He posts the raw, unedited video interviews on his Web site, InvisiblePeople.tv, and other places.
For Horvath, the stories he captures hit close to home. He was once a Hollywood distribution executive with a six-figure salary. In 1995, he lost it all to drug and alcohol addiction.
Horvath cleaned up with the help of the Dream Center in Los Angeles, a nonprofit ministry and outreach that supplies food, shelter and life rehabilitation to people in urban areas. He went into faith-based broadcasting and marketing, and eventually relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, in 2005.
“I rebuilt my life and bought a three-bedroom house with a swimming pool,” Horvath said. “From homeless to a 780 credit score is a miracle.”
After two years of stability, however, Horvath faced another challenge: the faltering economy. He lost his marketing job for a church in St. Louis and spent nine months unemployed.
“When I went to McDonald’s and Home Depot [to apply for jobs], they wouldn’t look at me because I made too much money,” said Horvath. “I lived off my credit cards to cover my mortgage and food. I maxed out two cards.”
Horvath relocated to Los Angeles for another marketing job with a Christian denomination, only to be laid off three months later.
He was seven weeks from being out on the street again when he started InvisiblePeople.tv in November 2008.
As someone who knew firsthand the shame of homelessness, Horvath felt compelled to do something about it. He wanted to share stories about others like him and put a face — many faces — on the problem.
n April, he took a major risk that became a turning point for his cause. He spent his last $300 on a trip to Sacramento to interview homeless people in the tent communities that had sprung up there as a result of the recession.
“I thought nobody was telling their story, and I needed to go there,” he said. “I left [Los Angeles] knowing that I could be evicted.”
Horvath roamed the homeless tent cities, documenting the experience on his Twitter stream, @HardlyNormal. He also used Whrrl, a Web and mobile application that lets users share stories via brief updates, photos and location.
“I call it ‘reality twittering,’ ” Horvath explained. “I try to engage people and bring them along for the ride.”
The ride took some uncomfortable turns. In one Twitter update, Horvath wrote, One man upset at media starts screaming at me. I walk away. Two guys follow me to my car. I’m scared and rethink my sanity.
I start walking fast yet keep hearing a guy getting closer yelling at me. I turn and he is behind me on the path running. He was very upset, he wrote in another post.
Horvath’s visceral tweets caught the attention of Whrrl, based in Seattle, Washington. The Whrrl team intently followed the updates from their office that day.
“We were all shocked that this man had the courage to go up and help people, even in a violent situation,” said Heather Meeker, Whrrl’s spokeswoman.
Whrrl invited Horvath to meet with their developers in Seattle, and the company hosted a tweetup — a gathering of Twitterers — on his behalf.
“He’s not trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. He’s been there,” said Chris Pirillo, a technology expert for CNN.com who met Horvath in Seattle. “It’s still very uncomfortable to watch the videos, because it’s just so raw.”
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Via: CNN.com
