Valentí Sanjuan

On Thursday afternoon a guest speaker lead a discussion in Journalism 2.0. His name was Valení San Juan. We had conducted some research before he arrived, watched his videos, heard stories about his fearless escapades from our professor (Pipo Serrano), but nothing could have prepared us when we actually met Mr. San Juan.  Valentí San Juan walked into our classroom, pointed a camera at us, after asking permission, and began his discussion with our class asking us what his job title was, or what exactly he did for a living. I was immidiately intrigued. Blogger? Adventure Specialist? Journalist? T.V personality? I too, along with the rest of the class was stumped. I’d watched his videos, I knew what his work very well, but I couldn’t quite place my finger on what exactly it would be called.

Surprisingly, Google isn’t very helpful with this question either. When you look up Valentí you can see his repitiore of various videos and segments on “Visto Lo Visto (VLV), or his television show “Etiquetats” but nothing really tells you specifically what he does, or more importantly, what it took to get him there.

Valenti’s road to success was not a conventional one, nor was it easy. Some may think because he gets to pretty much work on his own schedule, and do “whatever he wants”, people may think he lives the dream life. And while that may all be true, he had to work much harder than one would imagine. There was a long journey, with many obstacles that lead to his current success. Starting off as a broadcast journalist on Catalunya Ràdio, to many cases of trial and error sampling multiple demographics and other various combinations of audiences, topics, and coworkers, to working alone, to spreading his talent worldwide using just his camera, Valenti’s career path is unlike any one else’s. Sanjuan has a total of four Youtube channels – vistolovistoTV with 135,956 subscribers, ETIQUETAGS with 10,660 subscribers, ValentiEstaLoco with 60,590 subscribers, and Mercè Sanjuan with 7,816 subscribers.When you see each of his videos you can see the true genius that is behind them. You can tell the detail that goes into every segment, the hours of film recorded and not used, the demographic tests, the countless sleepless nights that go into being one of the most successful “Youtube-ers” on the Internet.

Using a television-type-format his show looks just like a high quality program on television with a live audience (200 online viewers per month). He has created a new frontier of what one is capable of or what the internet today is capable of. There are so many career paths like Valenti’s that have not yet been discovered. So many people that are too afraid to take the leaps of faith that Valentí did to get to where he is. So many people told him no, as he explained, but he didn’t listen.

Even after his contract wasn’t renewed for Catalunya Ràdio, he persevered. Rather than broadcasting his show on the radio, he streamed it through the Internet, he knew the product had to change in order to attract financial funding. This was Sanjuan’s first step in joining the worlds of radio and television.
He knew his dream, maybe not in a job title or within the bounds of what is considered “acceptable” in society, but he knew what he was meant to do and he went out and did it.

So many people today have dreams outside the realm of doctor, or lawyer, or other more common professions. What a dream it is to be able to create your own brand, be an “adventurer”, to be able to run thousands of miles in honor of your mother, to complete an Iron Man, to fly to New York to do an ad for Turkish Airlines, to do an ad for Coca-Cola.

 To be able to spread your message to so many people, to be your own boss creating your own site, to truly live your own manifested dream, rather than what someone else envisioned for you. And, more than that, to be able to not just settle for one job title. Valenti gets to have at least seven jobs at once and, according to his website, by combining his various projects, Sanjuan has over 7 million YouTube views each month and nearly 3 million followers on his combined social networks. With such a wide reach and ability to influence that many people, he is an expert at digital marketing any brand, whether his own or another company’s.This knowledge and experience catalyzed the creation of Sanjuan’s own media agency/production company called Gordon Seen. Gordon Seen marries people like Youtuber’s, Bloggers, Instagrammer’s, with companies who want their content produced. It seems as if his work is limitless, like he can do anything he sets his mind to and encourages others to do so too without fear of failure or rejection.That is purely “a part of the journey”, as he so astutely explained in class. He is a true inspiration and example of how lucky we are to be a part of this generation and what we have access to. So often we use just the minimal amount and don’t understand the true impact we can have or people we can reach with one Youtube post or keeping a video diary. Our adventures, like Sanjuan’s, can motivate and inspire so many other people, we have so much more power than we realize and Valenti is a true leader of that concept.

Street Art in Paris

Do we reserve the right of free speech? Does our native country defend that right against all odds? What is freedom of speech, of press? How far is too far?

All of the questions above, among millions of others were put to the test when an act of terrorism occurred in Paris last month. From January 7-9th, gun-men (later discovered to be affiliated with Islamist militant groups) opened fire near the offices of the satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo. The gunmen killed a total of 12 people in the attacks and were noted yelling “We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad” and “God is Great” in Arabic while shouting the individual names of the journalists working for the magazine. It is said that the magazine’s satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad enraged and provoked the attackers that day.

Nearly every country has some limits on freedom of speech and it is still one of the most contested subjects in every single society. Yet, recently after, Paris president Francois Hollande and leaders from Germany, Italy, Turkey, Britain as well as Israel and the Palestinian territories marched among French and other flags defending the honor of entitled freedom of expression and against terrorism.

“No person, no human being should be subjected to violence, still less death for anything that they have said, written or drawn,” Respect MP George Galloway said regarding the attacks.

There is a “fundamental difference”, declared the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, in a speech to parliament on January 13th, between the “freedom of impertinence” and “anti-Semitism, racism, apology for terrorism, Holocaust denial”.

Journalism, among other forms of expression, was the main target in this act of terrorism. Needless to say this posed and continues to pose a tremendous amount of questions such as, How far is too far? Can we really, as journalists, as bloggers, freely and safely express ourselves without serious, even fatal risk?

I had the opportunity to visit Paris two weeks ago and what I saw was completely opposite of what I’d imagined I would find after such a tragedy. Street performers flooded each street we passed, murals of street art, some relating to the recent attacks framed the city. It was as if these attacks only revived the culture rather than hindered it. It was incredible to witness such retaliation in a peaceful, passive way and showed what a profound impact self expression, including street art messages can have on an entire city and culture of people.

 

 

Blogging meets Street Art

Needless to say, we are a generation essentially centralized around a phenomena known as “social media”. Everyone is connected, constantly, through websites and apps such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. More so even than in person; these aforementioned mediums around which our entire generational society orbits, are perhaps the most prominent forms of day-to-day social interaction; Through most of these social media tools one makes a profile, chooses a username, selects a picture, all to identify them as an individual. It’s who they want to be, or how they wish to be presented to society, to their “friends”. But how true is this representation?

Along with this trend of social media people often discuss how behind a computer, behind this façade, people are fearless. People are more inclined to say things they never would out loud, parade themselves in a way you would never see in person, all because they are masqueraded behind this computer screen. I agree, that perhaps when I make a profile or writing a tweet, I feel somewhat protected in the semi-veiled podium. But, at the same time, I see social media as the least anonymous form of communication possible. I absolutely see it as the most warped, meaning you can be whomever you’d like, put your “best self” forward, post the most “artsy photos”, portray an imagine of your life that may or may not be true.

Sure, I believe that there is a freedom to, in a way, trick those around you in to believing in an identity that may not be what they’d see in person. But, to me, social media is the most vulnerable trend in the world. When you take the provided mask of a computer, those non face-to-face interactions, you tend to allow yourself to write or post your most false statements. But, you at the same time, more often, may post your most inner truth. You may take the anonymity of social media to tweet your most inner thoughts, Snapchat exactly what you’re doing at one particular moment, and who you’re doing it with. The “veil” of social media is much more transparent than opaque. Blogging particularly.

When I first learned we’d be creating a blog, I’d be lying if I said a certain surge of panic didn’t rush through me. I thought choosing one subject to write about every week, one subject to identify me as a person, very daunting. I’d never really thought about what an “internet identity” meant and I felt intimidating by the thought of having to create one. But that’s what lead me to think. Why would I feel so exposed blogging? Why did I prefer to be hidden from the judging eyes of other computer users?

I realized that, to me, blogging meant exposing myself as a person and as a writer, something I’d avoided in the past. That is precisely why I chose to write about street art. Because when I pass graffiti on walls, initials carved into street signs, ambiguous stickers posted everywhere, nameless art of all kinds framing the walls of cities around the world with no known owner: that is the new frontier. I love the idea of pairing what I view as the most exposed form of social media (Blogging), with the most mysterious wonderment of street art. Blogging forces you to state an opinion, share a story, publicize your interests, your likes and dislikes, and create an identity. While street art, for the most part, happens in the dark of night, is essentially nameless, yet has the largest audience of public who see this art and judge it or view it as they please.