Three, two, one… On air! On air? Yes, on air!

When Cable News Network, CNN, was 20 years old 20 years ago, it posted an very understable interactive feature (I did not find the 20-year commemorative but the 25-year one, instead)about how it operated from its newsroom to the communications engeneering that allows it to have global coverage. One of the things I wondered of, how it organizes when there is the famous breaking news.

CNN, which broadcast started on June 1^st, 1980, born as an improbable entrepreneurship, loses wherever you saw, pushed by a neurotic Atlanta, GA-native magnate named Robert Edward Turner III, Ted Turner for friends.

No one gave a dollar for a 24-hour news channel initially broadcasting from a basement. No one impressed of its informative power even when it moved to Omni Hotels compound facilities, partially renamed as CNN Center later, in Atlanta Downtown, the home of the one most popular sodas in the planet. No one belief the small cable market would make a difference.

No one until 1991, when the world realized it was CNN-adict to know what was happening in the Middle East during the Gulf War, the first warlike conflict practically broadcast globalwide on live-TV, and that redefined the notion of journalistic inmediacy, covering the story as it happens in the same instant it is happening. And covering a live-story is not an easy job. If not watch this clip:

Like every respectable newsroom, CNN has the space organized by topics: domestic, international, business, politics, etc. Each one has a section editor, which job is reviewing the work of the entire crew, selecting the most interesting and important, upgrading another level in charge of a senior editor, who sets the agenda we receive everyday.

Nothing extraordinary until here because that is made in every newsroom. When there is breaking news, the thing changes completely right there. The secttion editors give the position to the senior editor, becoming part of the crew they lead, and it’s this senior editor who organizes the whole coverage with an only purpose – checking the news fact as it breaks, and once the fact-checking protocols were accomplished, go releasing, or coordinating to the line producer for addressing the on-air presenter.

According to Live From Baghdad motion picture (HBO, 2002) and a story on Time magazine on January 1992 (which excerpt was lended to me by one of my Journalism teachers, María Luisa Portugal), during the Gulf War, Turner as well as his CEO Tom Johnson took the editorial control of the network during the historic broadcast on January 16^th, 1991 (when the Desert Storm Operation started), because they were aware the entire world –the entire world!—was watching CNN. It was the first time it was happening, so reducing the error margin was their main task. Here is the original broadcast of that afternoon (17:00 EST):

Independently the ideologic criticism it receives everywhere, when the news are breaking in this right instant, many people even tune CNN around the globe to know how the story is developing, and, of course, very few people are aware of the crew behind making that happens.

Indeed, since 1980s-ending and more emphatically in the 1990s, the around-the-clock, around-the-globe news channels offer has multiplied, so options are to choose, but the live-story formula has not suffered from major modifications, except the technology wwhich it is broadcast, smaller each time, enormous each chance. And 40 years later, CNn, the news channels, the journalists have a great story to cover, especially when the world asks more than understands.

Five words to mark the after-quarantine

Just 20 years ago, when the Internet in Peru began to do the transition from the boom of internet-cafés to the slow growth of dial-up home connections, the online journalists were few. To be (then thin) in-cloud, and that  was almost a snob, unnecessary, arrogant act. Who went following you on the net if there were few connected people? Today, the print media are the rare ones.

I’m not saying the ink is over. I think it will have a long life, still, but modifying its display (3D?), and that’s the first keyword in the history of humankind – to modify. Since we invented the writing until we invented the first artificial intelligence algorithm, what changed is the way how we do itbut not the purpose we have – to stay in touch and to solve problems.

Perhaps, what has happened in most recent times is those modifications are happening too fast to understand (psychologist would say to mourn)and add them into our life, but let’s accostum – things are going to modify everytime faster, and that must not scare us because the shapes are going to change almost every minute, but what must not change or rather improve is our essence.

Starting from that premise and taking like an example what happened to journalism during the last two decades, let’s consider that an adaptation factor we have in mind is that we belief as normal or usual (especially before December 31st, 2019), has already left to be. Independently that the Covid-19 quarantine is going to  relax soon, new cultural patterns evolved violently, and they are going to go on among us not in remaining 2020 but long years. And the unadapted species come to extinguish.

Another challenge we are going to assume is how to pass from the overcontrol (or overprotection) and the uncontrol to the self-control. The extremes have been the relevant in humankind’s history, especially in the last 500 years, and they had its critical moment after The Illustration, 300 years ago. I don’t say they were unnecessary. In its historical moment, they served us to go through from hierarchies to equality, and as the coronavirus slammed us on the face with its own anti-discrimination policy, the extremes don’t serve us anymore in this historical moment.

Now, if you insist in looking for a historical reference that eases to understand the actual instant, I’d say it’s a mix of Humanism and Renaissance spiced by the technological advance in something we call now The Knowledge Society. So I consider to be making an arc with a moment in world’s history, 600 years length.

The new world order

We unite defeat the virus but not priviledging social classes. Look, it’s not communism, capitalist-socialism either. It’s something different but powerful than forecast by Smith or Marx & Engels as well. We thank their contribution to the discussion but their concepts are already discontinued to us.

So, the new world order builds based upon those criteria: adaptability, unity, flattered & circling dialogue, urgency sense, humanity, proactivity, creativity, and wisdom. The parties and potencies will not be already led by countries or doctrines but the self-control capability (not self-repression) the individual has, and how this one transcends to the community in a positive, free, and effective way.

The social isolation this new order imposes us doesn’t pretend we become selfishest than we used to be (despite to have 4500 buddies on Facebook), but it’s an opportunity to see ourselves, reconciliate with our real potential, and carry it out for bringing it to everybody in the most original way as possible.

So, if you ever felt you outstood as an astronomer, but they said you to crash down if you didn’t stand onto your feet, good news: the new order gives you a revenge chance. And as every inner world doesn’t look like anyone else, what we will have is an almost 8-billion-possibility offer, if we get to that number.

New paradyms

The age of how much you are, what it serves you for, is not longer. We are in the age of how much you know, how you use it to innovate. And that’s the second keyword of those time. Realise that our need to be healthy, then not to be ill, has made the big fortunes address not to buy luxury but looking for a cure, a treatment at least because the human, the animal, the vegetal are not the enemy. It’s something not matching in any of these categories. Actually, the animal and the vegetal are coming back to recover the space offtaken by the human.

Then, over all this new philosophy of our history, how is the humankind, its star, going to survive? In my latest op-ed, I helped to birth a new professional career, RPSR, that means an holistic vision for managing the risk scenarios in a proactive, mitigating way, and it will be just one of many evolutions (Pokémon style) we are going to attend to.

Other fields to be assessed come innovatively re-assessed, and here we are going to name them, warning they are not exclusive but cooperative in the context that represents the third keyword of this new age – symbiosis, that inmediatly will outbreak a fourth one – synchretism.

• Technoprimary Production (TP)
• Generation of Integral Knowledge (GIK)
• Management of Synchrodiacrhonical Knowledge (MSK)
• Development of Informatics for Daily Life (DIDL)
• Customized Healthy Lifestyle Consultant (CHLSC)
• Promotion and Development of Creativity (PDC)
• Management of People, Resources, and Territories (MPRT)

If you want to know what this is all about, you can go on this.

And what will happen to the jobs as we know today?They won’t disappear. Someones will integrate to others, like others will follow as unique, but the common to all them is to have the authomation like its best ally. And who be the better, will have more market – competitiveness, the fifth word of this new time. So, nothing will turn back to before, but waht left to say is everything will be much better. It will depend on you, on me, on our talent and our attitude to make it happen.

Let’s go chatting on my Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn accounts, or my YouTube channel.

Antes de afirmar, verifica si tienes la razón

Hay historias que son realmente buenas para contar, pero que al disponerse para su cobertura encuentran una seria dolencia: el manejo de los datos. Un caso típico ocurrió hacia 2010 en Sullana, la ciudad donde vivo cuando una serie de hedores comenzaron a atormentarnos todas las tardes. Imagina a una ciudad de casi 200 mil personas aguantando oler algo parecido al excremento de cerdo, y nadie parecía tener una respuesta.

Y en principio ésa fue la hipótesis general, así que todo el mundo, incluyendo las autoridades, se puso a buscar si acaso las granjas de cerdo estaban haciendo algún tipo de manejo que generara ese hedor molesto. Cuando la búsqueda terminó, no se halló nada de eso. Entonces alguien culpó a las procesadoras de aceite esencial de limón, el que, cuando se fermenta, apesta de una forma que no tienes idea. Pero se necesitaba un océano de aceite para generar ese problema.

Fue cuando alguien descubrió que no eran ni los cerdos ni el limón. Rastreando la fuente del hedor, todos los caminos conducían a las plantas de etanol ubicadas al oeste del área metropolitana de Sullana, donde se procesaba la caña de azúcar, que dejaba como residuo la vinaza. ¡Ésa era la fuente del hedor!

Aunque su cantidad no era masiva, sí tenía el poder suficiente para generar esas olas que atormentaban (y que aún atormentan de vez en cuando) a la población todas las tardes. Incluso hubo una verificación oficiosa que comprobó el dato. Fue cuando alguien de nuestra comunidad saltó hasta el techo y acusó directamente a una de las empresas procesadoras de etanol por contaminar el aire. Como respuesta, la empresa amenazó a esa persona con una querella por delitos contra el honor y la buena reputación. ¿Actuó bien la empresa? Pues… sí y no.

Sí actuó bien desde el punto de vista estrictamente legal. Una investigación de FACTORTIERRA.NET basada en el Código Penal peruano, donde se compendian todos los delitos y sus posibles penas, encontró que existe un vacío legal en la forma cómo se denomina a la contaminación: los supuestos eran amplios, pero obviaban el asunto del mal olor por una razón puramente técnica, ¿cómo podrías ccuantificarlo? [Lee la historia completa]

Si tú acusas a alguien de algo, y mas aún si haces una acusación pública, necesitas una base que lo sustente todo. Si la empresa contaminaba el aire con hedor, ¿en qué cantidad lo hacía? La respuesta de la gente solía ser mucho, poco o nada. Pero, si todo termina en una acción legal, ¿cuánto es mucho, cuánto es poco, y hasta cuánto es nada? Peor aún, si no existe delito bajo el que puedas acusar a alguien, no hay caso, se derrumba, se archiva y ahí quedó todo. Empresa, 1; población, 0.

Ya en términos de imagen, de responsabilidad social si quieres, es obvio que la empresa pudiera haber actuado mal porque su actividad, si bien da empleo y todas esas cosas, debería considerar como un factor clave la satisfacción de la comunidad, la buena imagen de ella, el hecho de que generas ganancias sin afectar a terceros. En mi opinión, creo que una salida digna para la empresa debió ser una petición de disculpas y la promesa de que están trabajando para corregir o mejorar el problema que causa la molestia. Eventualmente, se requirió la presión de las autoridades para hacerlo, lo que resquebraja más la relación entre empresa y comunidad.

Al margen de ese caso en especial, la lección detrás es que si bien es cierto puedes tener tu problema a comunicar perfectamente identificado, el otro aspecto que debes cuidar es que esté debidamente ssustentado, y sustentado sobre una base oficial. Pensemos en el sujeto que acusó a la empresa por contaminación. Quiero creer que en su pensamiento, causa-efecto, el delito era evidente. Yo pensaría lo mismo, déjenme confesarles. ¿Dónde falló esta persona? Debió verificar si tal delito existe, y aquí el razonamiento es interesante: si el delito existe, claro que podía denunciar y eventualmente eso iba a proceder; pero si no existe, hay dos opciones, o frenar en seco o darle la vuelta a la tortilla.

Sobre darle la vuelta a la tortilla, podemos dedicarle otro artículo si lo deseas; pero yo quiero mas bien concentrarme en la moraleja que nos deja esta historia: antes que nada, verifica en la fuente oficial si aquello que vas a decir en público puede ser probado. Si existe, úsalo como tu referencia básica; si no existe, tendrás que generar el dato usando el método científico, y siendo muy inteligente en el manejo de las conclusiones de tal modo que si alguien quiere rebatirte, le sea altamente complicado lograrlo, o simplemente le dejes sin palabras.

Como alguien me lo reflexionó en redes sociales, el asunto aquí no es si el público piensa que eres acertado o no; tienes que ser forzosamente acertado muy a pesar de lo que el público piense de ti. Si consideras que no eres capaz de ganar el grado de certeza, lo mejor es esperar hasta lograrlo, o desistir si no hay manera de probarlo… o voltear la tortilla de manera inteligente, como lo sugerí hace poco.

En nuestro caso, no insistimos en si el mal olor configura delito de contaminación porque la respuesta era obvia: según la ley peruana, no. Mas bien decidimos no atacar a la empresa sino llamar la atención de los legisladores peruanos: hay un vacío legal sobre el mal olor, y al existir un problema social en progreso, el legislador debería buscar las herramientas técnico-legales para regular. ¿Lo hizo? Hasta ahora no, pero fíjate cómo de pronto la fuente oficial nos permitió mover la historia hacia un arista que nadie había explorado. Habrá que seguir insistiendo.

Recuerda que me encantará mejorar tus técnicas y estrategias de cómo te relacionas con los medios de comunicación. Contáctame a mi cuenta de Facebook, Twitter, mi canal de YouTube, LinkedIn o aquí abajo en los comentarios.

Don’t mistake exactly like Sullana

This is a real story at the Peruvian Northern, where I live. I dont know if it happens to you, but I feel the smallest, furthest towns use to be the most proactive when it’s about recognizing and saving in every sense. It happens me with Malingas, Tambogrande District, it is beginning to happen me with Sapillica again, which I just have a journalistic relationship, where something happened this week that encourages particularily to me.

It was just the last Sunday when checking out the filtered messages on Facebook, I found one from José encalada, whom I have met 19 years ago, and who has been a Radio Cutivalú’s Correspondent in Sapillica during his lifetime. I was introduced to him while a trip with Margarita Rosa vega and the Tambogrande Collective, once we had the first news of non-formal mining activity out there the nascents of Chipillico River.

Then, José was our guide, although that was not my first time in Sapillica. Actually, this year marks two decades since I knew that beautiful place for the very first time. I worked for the Fe y Alegría’s Project in Malingas that time, and only by one school, located in Sesteadero, it was necessary to sspend three hours tripping by pick-up for doing paperwork.

Including the Catholic nuns I worked for, a Mississauga, Ontario-based stock broker named Matthew sammut came with us, whom I browsed many times on Facebook but I have not found yet. And the joke with Matt was he came ignoring much about Spanish, intended to learn Spanish, and got back not speaking more Spanish than some basic greetings and thanks. And as I was the only bilingual guy at the office, discounting the nuns, so match him to Nelson for the man doesn’t feel very isolated in some meaning.

What I remember much of that friendship with Matt is he taught me to read the NBCUniversal’s business channel CNBC stocks ticker running below the screen, and the trip to Sapillica, that was scored by Shania Twain’s hits, whose both resulted to be fans.

Matt didn’t let to take photographs of everything in Sapillica, especially the cattle gracing at the nearby hills to the town.

 “It’s great!,” he repeated once and once again.

Already in previous days, we tried to hik Malingas Mount,where the nuns have their convent – he was not tired to shot photos.

 “Do you feel this looks like something in North America?,” I asked.

“Yes… like… Montana.”

When we traveled to Sapillica, I didn’t ask him what it looked like but if that motivated him to come back further. He said yes, and that was one of many experiences those convinced me about an additional development possibility for those towns beyond agriculture and cattle – tourism. Of course I was not clear that time what kind of tourism, as I came to learn it 11 years later in Malingas, but there was a chance, indeed, and that increased me the pride about that Piura where the Andes start to rise. [Check out Matt’s YouTube channel] 

As everybody, the next one we learnd about Sapillica was the invasion and the infestation of the illegal mining, that instead to keep beauty the mountains and the forests, drill them with holes and tunnels every size. The today congressman Daniel Urresti interestingly worked for pacification in the zone due to the interdiction policy, for the Farmers’ Patrol took the control of the district later, at the point that nobody comes out to the street after nine at night.

But in July 2016, an urgent call put me over the track of a science I was starting to appreciate – archeology, and that has been one of the recurrent coverages of FACTORTIERRA.NET. Then, my partner Marco Paulini was beginning the journey to decrease the maternal mortality across Sapillica from three per year to zero –what he achieved and held until the Health officials decided not to hire him again—when he found a beautiful trace on the rock that made him to remember the sites we have identified and registered in Malingas. [Check out the full story] 

It’s about a big spiral on a 20-feet-height rock, just at the entrance of Loma Alta Village, Masías Bajo Community, that when he sent it, he put the whole newsroom on alert and eased next to other producer, estany Tineo, I traveled with to verify what seemed to be incredible on the photograph – A petroglyph! A more-than-touchable evidence of the Formative Age’s people needed to picture something on the rocks for marking something we are trying to understand since 11 years ago! [Check out the full story] 

In Malingas, we came to convince that work could be until 4000 years old, much more ancient than the Incas, the Aztecans, the Mayans! Anyway, could it happen the same in Sapillica? The first photographic and spectrographic analysis by the archeologist Daniel Dávila upon high-resolution images we got to take at that place leave the suspicion more than open, and a hypotheses for the moment: they could be part  of the so-called Samanga Tradition, in reference to the site at el Toldo Village, Ayabaca District, where the best conserved traces are located.

My initial reaction during the two trips I did to identify and register petroglyphs was notifying José encalada because, to begin, before than me, I ever tought he is the fair person who has to tell the world what we are finding. It’s his district, isn’t it?, I mean. What matters if I have or don’t have an interchange agreement with Cutivalú! The issue here is it must establish it exists, and it’s there when the journalism does one of its most wonderful works, increasing the science and the knowledge.

I never could met Pepe but I ever kept the connection, we ever have been in touch. I also have known his house and met his beautiful family that had me much kindly, what I will ever thank. And, look what nice the human relations are, Pepe call at my cellphone Sunday night to release me the story: “I was noticed about some petroglyphs in Pampa Verde.”

I confess I tried to hold moody, something it’s not happening while I write this op-ed, that I write pretty enthusiastic, but I was fascinated of the story, because it proves a work hypotheses launched by the same Sapillica people since the first time we arrived: the district is nailed by archaeological evidences. I have mentioned you Loma Alta, now Pampa Verde, that is in the occidental side, add Tunal in the southern side, and Trujillo, very close to the Sapillica Town. Is there much in that territory that is just over 150 square miles? We do suspect that. [Check out the story]  

The good to be in 2020 for Sapillica, for you, for our crew, and for me, is we are not in November 2009 anymore, when we started underground and following fake clues. Today we can say, almost not mistaking, the petroglyphs networks in Sapillica and Tambogrande could be connected, being part of one only way, that also disperses across Quiroz Valley, climbs up through Pacaipampa, reaches Huarinjas (Huaringas), passes over Sang Ignacio and Jaén, in Cajamarca, and could have one of its starting points in Luya, Amazonas, at the Peruvian Jungle highlans.

José, as well as us, has wondered to know more, to understand the message it has been kept (who knows) during four millennia on those rocks, to explain the district, the region, the country, and the world what they all are about and how it can evolve the history as it has been taught for decades. That would be a nice Project, actually, that the people of Sapillica must engine! Look at Malingas, where they are very motivated to retake it.

And while I look at Sapillica encouragingly, when I get back mentally to Sullana and I watch around, I can’t say the same. Here, in the second most important province of Piura Region, we are predating our past rather, as it happens in El Cucho, or we treat it indifferently, despite, as a colleague of mine whom I covered one of those stories told, there is evidence wherever you step on.

If Sapillica (and Malingas) gets to arrange an archaeological research and changes the History books, it will have something real to blame to Sullana everytime it wants because it will be a positive example that everybody will wish to imitate. And if the tourism comes in a planned, ordered manner, it would be much better. They really deserve it, and they have to work since today for that becomes another local economic axis.

Send me your comments to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

The trail of this samurai started in Peru

 The ChulucanasGym Project, that was created by Chulucanas, Peru-based lawyer Jhon Gómez, and produced online by me, has been launched in December 2014 to identify talents who highlight because of sports in general, and bodybuilding and fitness in particular, originally across Piura Region but extensively everywhere, and using the Internet like its main promotional platform.

In this sense, part of the project consists in searching and telling the stories of those talents for opening markets and inspiring the people, first and proposedly in the audience around Chulucanas City, but effectively in unsuspected places as both coasts of the U.S., England and Europe, and sometimes Eastern Asia (there were interactions in India and Cambodia, especially when we released features about martial arts). Obviously, those results were mainly gotten with the English versions of the features (originally published in Spanish).

Although I meet some bodybuilders and athletes, even online, when I suggested them to tell their stories, the most accept but start to postergate the interviews, or they simply remain silent. The few who lead producing a good feature agree to publish but vanish for promotion. There were ones who came to say straight if that could be worthy for them, totally skeptical, or simply prefer to stay undergrass or undisclosed, even having interesting points of view to be known.

However, my recent assignment brought me across the Pacific Ocean –well, at least online—to meet a 29-year-old dance trainer, a Peruvian migrant in Nagoya, Japan, named Mario Kanashiro, whose story was impossible to miss since the very first time he told me as a simple chat among friends.

He got a good job at a Japanese corporation until a hard health condition was diagnosed. The right side of his body was falling into a progressive stroke, so the surgery was the first response. But, as he lost strength in the arm, hand, and leg, he had to do rehabilitation, and a long rehabilitation by the way. Initially, he was not motivated to pass through, but a medical doctor pushed him, and that was his lifetime’s plot point: during a dance class, he realized he could do it very well.

I’m wondering now his face when he understood that. Indeed, one of his female cousins remembered on the comments when he shared the story, that he used to be quite apathetic to dance when they attended to the disco, totally unlike today. The fact is that Mario in re-invention got interested more and more, until becoming a master trainer in shaka-dance, which licensing for trainers in Japan is his new job position now.

Yes, it’s the hero’s myth but with a real-life character, somebody you can meet online or personally in case you are in Japan, and that myth is not necessarily oriental but universal – somebody who considers not to have a place or a mission, who rejects it everyway, until the own experience leads to take control and make more than the circumnstances could set to get a change for real, ultimately.

And the interesting thing is Mario is aware about it very, very well. I think that’s why he was so accessible to me for opening his heart and sharing his last decade of life, with all the lessons attached. My job was put everything in a logical order for the audience to recognize the tips, and realize how they apply into their life. That is the magic behind every journalistic feature made for touching your soul. And, obviously, his humility made me possible the rest of the assignment

I’m still wondering why Mario’s is working, because once we released the story (Spanish and English), the acceptance of the people was instantaneous and positive. My hypothetical answer for the moment is self-esteem. Reviewing my former coverages on this issue, I have the bodybuilder or the athlete, which image is enough to catch the interest of the audience, his story that usually reveals a hard trail to build everything (a body and a career, indeed), and they have got fans. So, what could fail? Thus, the attitude.

I can, you can, everybody can consider that bodybuilder or that athlete may be a reference for others, even when mistakes (or risky decisions) have been committed and overcome, but if that person believes it’s not worthy to share because of fear, shame, distrust, or any reason you can imagine, the problem are not the media those elude to support those people who really need exposure, but the own bodybuilder or the own athlete’s self-conception.

In Mario’s case, definetly his medical doctor was a mentor who knew how to trigger some strings inside that guy, and leading him to find a vocation he never supposed to have, but what is opening himself out to the world. But, what about  the other cases?

If we review the Peruvian chapter, the mentors in bodybuilding and fitness are inexistent or unclear about how to build a personal brand, even doing some things considered as inmoral for people who criticize everything in public but ask for special attention when nobody sees them in private. In other words, if your guide or model doesn’t have clear where the way is, how is going to guide you?

And I’m not talking to be an angel everytime –although it would be the ideal—but clarity to understand my place, my mission, my direction, and my legacy. That’s it.

Building the attitude (not enacting one that’s not yours) escapes to the field of the journalism and even the sport, and goes inside the psychology, and specifically the sports psychology. so you don’t need to have a diploma for that (but it’s recommended), rather the enough criterion to stop, not to push, help that guy for going inside his insights, and carry out again to recognize that the good or the bad is a lesson, and that lesson needs to be processed, and released it someway.

Let’s get back to Mario’s. I’m wondering what happened if his environment were not Japan but Peru. Could his attitude be the same? I live in Peru, and I know that being yourself, to be different, to stand up strongly on your opinion (even if it’s wrong), is a heroic act. People prefer to go with the flow because the local system says that you can suffer lifetime if you try to be unique. But, what is the lesson we find around the planet? To be unique is not bad, and if you know how to take it advantage, it can pay your bhills and even save your future and the future of the ones your love so much. But, to be unique, you need to build self-esteem before muscles, records, body, or career. That’s your basis. If you dismiss that, you can build the rest, but something could be weak down there.

And about this point, there is another aspect I’m aware of, the fact that Mario is a migrant, and as he told me on the story, it was not easy to climb up for him. As Mario trusted me, the Japanese society uses to be very close to foreigners. We blame the migrants in Peru for everything (well, there are some guys who act very bad, actually), but Mario’s experience could make us to do a little empathy homework.

So, when the environment is made to respect who you are, whatever you are, and is clear about the importance of the diversity not like a conflict source but a multi-factor development keystone, then you go up. Check other environments without prejudge and have your own conclusions. Life and science, ultimately, are made of much reflection, instead of prior conceptions.

Setting up that environments is not the only responsibility of the government, the system, but families in the first term, then schools, and finally all the spaces where we go to. And that system, if you want to name someway, is called peace culture – being yourself respecting the others like you want the others respect you. Simple logics, and from that start line, everything has to be built, self-esteem included.

Then, that is the way we must take in general, talking ourselves so respectfully, reaching consensus, learning what we can negotiate and what we can’t. That’s attitude, too!

I’m very happy to meet Mario Kanashiro, and I hope his climb-up to continue because he deserves each good thing he is getting now. I’m proud of him like a human, like a sports fan, like a Peruvian, like somebody else who also fights to enlight. And this is the time to invite you for knowing his great, inspiring story, so click here.

The photos on this post and on the story we produced were provided by Mario Kanashiro.

What I learned after sharing good stories

One of the best ideas I could be involved this 2019 has been the production of a webcast (releasing contents exclusively on the Internet), what we called, objecting the rules of branding, A Good Story To Share, or BHC for the Spanish acronyme we chose it, which concept is simple – to tell and to release real, inspiring stories those give us back the faith in the good news.

It seems easy to write it, but 13 episodes later, it has been a whole challenge for sure, because the enthusiasm of Francesco Navarrete and Daniella Peña, who became my producers, was not enough, or the care we gave to choose the topics, or the contents management, or the performance of a complicated technique despite its simplicity – the sequence shot, the art to feature an audiovisual piece without edition cuts, even travelling the camera, plus –as we decided to complicate with our few resources—completely on live.

Who say it’s like making radio are wrong, not because the radio is more simple to perform, but they are two totally different languages. Also, the television has a critical component than the radio doesn’t have – images. But, being fair, inclusive the radio has like its main task to estimulate the imagination of audiences for creating mental pictures, so the only-audio media neither is a piece of cake. Meanwhile, let’s get back to the sequence shot stuff.

Who reads this and has no most notion about audiovisual contents production, or still has no notion about how to produce mass-releasing contents at worst, could think it’s about pre-historical television, when there were no 1-inch tapes those allowed to keep images neither, but curiously, the simple in times of digital recording, storage, and distribution formats, is turning on the camera, making what it must to make, cutting, and gathering all by edition, especially if bloopers have happened a lot. And if there are mistakes, there are filters in post-production.

It’s not about  screaming action!, or cut!, or print! Is easy neither, what I say is, suddenly, many producers are seeing in edition an easy resource to make contents, and it’s not so. If the play is not set up in three acts with its related plot points, even when it’s about non-fictional reality, then that magical moment to play with the emotion of audiences will not be gotten, technique we inherited from Classic Greece, that must be about 3000 years old as a little.

Lesson 1 – Live means on live

On preset-content on live television, as made in Peru until mid-1960s (and in the U.S. during the 1950s), there were no option to cut. Probably some adjustment in sound, lighting, but basically performing everything, to begin, requires three key characteristics: a very good communication in the whole crew, that the on-camera talent (not only the anchor) has enough resources to save the frame if something gets out of control, and whenever losing the awareness that there won’t be reverse back once the first second gets released.

The first was solved  by handling a checklist that sets that is going to be spoken, to be shown, which moment is going to be shown. It seems I were talking about a teleplay but it’s not strictly. Yes, who thought that the webcasting just began, Nelson started to speak the first coming to his head like a parrot, get wrong. Behind the camera, my producers were marking me timing, topics, and time. And the work document was the checklist I wrote.

The second, even when you don’t believe it, was to apply casting. There are people who know that proposed us themes and characters, but they were never included in the season. The answer of why we didn’t include them is simple: the stories were not pitched adequately, or they didn’t sound consistent, so it would be complicated to understand what hook would be we can use to catch the audience. Is it possible to get? Yes, it is, and I’ll comment how to get it later.

The point is when we began to work with other persons on camera, whom we named the stars (not the guests because, basically, we were to get inside their daily space to webcast), we became rehearsal sessions and even we did rehearsals before going online to be sure that everybody was synchronized.

And the third was definetly a general focusing exercise –not only the producers or mine, I repeat—where the main instruction was forget abot there’s a camera, continue talking to me and the another was if something goes wwrong, there’s no problem ‘cause we solve it on the way. What I can say, indeed, is every webcast was a weekly conversation topic for everybody was sure we were speaking the same language. Of course, details broke out, as the camera trembling so much, or the wi-fi signal fell down bitting pieces of audio or video, but, in general, the work was really good.

Lesson 2 – The story is more important than the technology

When we were to webcast on location, some stars expected we appeared with a huge camera, cables everywhere, lights, microphones, and a truck with large dishes linking the signal up to any satellite outside. We are sorry to deceive you but everything was made with a smartphone linked to a wireless Internet signal, and there was no more car than Homero, the red VW beetle that transported us through the city and around.

Of course, when it came to the ears of our competitors, they started to say us for introducing this device or this one or this another one, and the truth is every suggestion has been very good, and that proves the feature generates interest as much as your competitors wanted it improves. But in this first season, Francesco and I wanted to encourage ourselves for taking all the possible advantages that a such little device as a cellphone allowed us, making things not needing to carry more equipment, and that is the sign of this time – the convergence allows you to put in public anything including with a spy device. More than a technological challenge, it was a technical challenge.

Then, if the technology was not our spot, which was it? The story, the narration, the data management, the logic of the storyline. And overall this, the veracity of the released. And the proof of that is the multimedia version, we mean a content that the audience can play again and complement with additional information in text, audio, and video existent on the net and in sources those are not necessarily belong to or are controlled by our feature. Research, in other words.

Like I said up before about the facts, the next was to dose them someway so the interest went growing in the audience. And another challenge came here: everybody is usually assuming to tell something in two, exceptionally five minutes. ON BHC, we took until 29 minutes 30 seconds to make it, uncut (remember it), and the reason why is pretty simple: the narration became too good  at the time to perform it that basically we let to flow. The stars have much of the credit, and this is not about we discovered the penicilin.

The very talented Mexican artist Verónica Castro told once that an interview with late singer and songwriter Juan Gabriel scheduled for two hours (music included) extended five due to the guest deserved to take more time. The funny thing is I was not much inspired on  la chaparrita. Rather, my reference, as I told it to many people, is the Cuban journalist Cristina Saralegui. And in fact, thinking of her, we have talked about the possibility to migrate to a live-audience format, but we are still thinking of it, because everything is submitted to funding.

Lesson 3 – The trust in the own story

Another challenge of this first webcasts package happened since the episode 8, when we left the monologues and incorporated the participation of the stars. Actually, the idea to bring in more people on camera began since the episode 3 when I shared the anchoring  and we had our first star, but different factors, the availability of the other person among them, made we to postergate it for four more webcasts.

But what people would be able to share us their stories? During the first half of the second phase, we worked to search and convince them  that their experience, including to be inspirational, had to be told on camera not like an interview but a natural conversation between old buddies rather. Getting it was such as complicated as building trust in the format, in the manner how we were to treat the contents, and in myself.

And in this sense, the webcasts working better in terms of positive feedback were the ones starred by women. There’s no much science to explain why: the women value better their life stories than the men, and when they tell them, they update them so much that the audience connect to them so easy, instantaneously. Right for those webcasts. Our remaining challenge, if we launch a second season, is to alternate a webcast starred by a male to another one starred by a female, as we encourage initially.

In the second half of the second phase, the stuff was relatively simple. People watched on the video what we were making, trusted in the format quality, and started to appear within who we invited to feature on camera and who requested to be featured on it. So now, what’s the power to share a good story? First, you re-validate what you lived no matter wwhat kind is, second, the lesson you learned is a learning to be useful for somebody else, third, you contribute to change the attitude of people turning to a much positive vision of the life and themselves. In brief, we build peace culture by using a mass-media.

Lesson 4 – The planet wants to meet you

No doubt – the accurate thing of the format was when we included  a star on camera in terms of impact on the people who watched every episode. And the magical comes here: not only we reached netsurfers around Sullana (the city where our headquarters are located, actually), but we got beyond it and expand to the north as much as Canada and the U.S, to the south as much as Chile and Argentina, around as much as Western Europe and even Japan. Wherever a native or adopted Spanish-speaker was, the content works perfectly the same, and as we try the style to be unactual, if you play it right now, is so current as the day it was webcasted.

Then, when somebody features on the BHC project, must consider not only is speaking the buddies known face-to-face or via Facebook, but is able to generate the community spirit joining thousands around the globe. The point is to face. That’s why the show’s slogan is the planet wants to meet you.

The challenge in this sense is going out Sullana, exploring other towns. We became to make a webcast in Piura, and other elsess left to launch. But good stories also appeared in Chulucanas, Ayabaca, Catacaos, Paita or Huancabamba, other places in Piura Region. We couldn’t cover them because a logistic issue (sponsor wanted, by the way), but we would like to feature on the screen.

Other activities we have thought around the format, and I’m going to announce right now, are living on live experiences which we teach you to identify your good story and hhow to use our own platform or the yours to go sharing with your buddies as well as everybody, so if you are interested to have your own, where you are, go to https://facebook.com/BHXoficial and leave us a little message. Also, you can watch all the episodes on their three versions.

And I close this year with the footer of the show, and that should be a kind of manthra for 2020 and the upcoming years – I have a good story to share, and you? So, the planet wants to meet you!

Please, forgive me if you don’t speak Spanish, but I share along this posts some webcasts with a better impact in our audience. Leave me your comments on my Facebook or Twitter accounts, my YouTube channel, or right below here.

Two marketing ideas you can invest in Piura Region

Because of the show I am hosting here in Piura region –well, mostly Sullana City, were I live-,

I have the opportunity to meet some interesting people who are launching and managing diverse entrepreneurships. Although I’m requesting my producer to have some episodes in English, I get no results up to today. Actually, my producer (on the photo beside) says it’s planned but the time is not now yet. Despite, I could make a couple of English-spoken videos about.

In that sense, I noticed some interactions from the U.S. West Coast on my Twitter account, and all from people involved in marketing. And if limes rain from the sky, why not I make lemonade? So, I wondered what ideas here could be interesting for you to develop, especially in terms of funding.

Fortunately, Peru is a free-markett economy, what promotes competitiveness. The problem for many Peruvians, including me, is we have not been educated in what the innovation is. In consequence, we ever are waiting for somebody saying what we have to do, or where to send our resumé for becoming another employee. We name ourselves as entrepreneurs, but we don’t highlight to be ultimately original. And the original ideas are never known because their creators are shy or jealous, ignoring how to pitch them by themselves or via alternative media, as our FACTORTIERRA webpage.

The conditions to be a formal business in Peru are easy. The paperwork is fast and almost free. Establishing a company doesn’t cost more than 150 dollars in the worst scenario, and the title is eased in one month at most. But, how does it connect to the show I’m working on? Simple! There are actually good ideas to invest, but we are understanding through this production the people in charge are not promoting them in the right place, or they are not SIMPLY promoting them. Yes! The promotion is the trouble.

In my case, I have a strong feeling in tourism. I’m convinced, because my job as a journalist, that Piura has a lot of chances for rural tourism because our agriculture, forest management, cattle, and even magic rituals at the highlands (only to mention what I remember now). My problem is I’m not a good salesman, I recognize. However, my huge talent is I can motivate, inspire, pitch before a camera, a microphone, on the keyboard. I speak TWO languages, as you see, and my skill to create copies is the ADMIRATION for everyone who knows me, even when I have to only-speak. I’m an anchor, indeed.

And the show is teaching me I can be an excellent conduit for those ideas to be know for the world, ideas which you can put your money and make real good deals. Just take two of the episodes: one dedicated to the Museum of Sullana and another dedicated to products made of environmentally-sustainable prime matters.

Let’s start with Museum of Sullana. Yes, it combines education and culture, but tourism across Chira Valley (where Sullana City is located) too. The museum hosts a little-but-attractive collection of ancient pottery coming from cultures those flourished around before the Spaniards officially arrived here in 1532 AD, where they founded San Miguel in Tangarará Town, just 15 miles away Sullana City.

First, the museum needs to invest in improving the security and the administration of the space it occupies. The curator Carmen Cruz (on the photo beside here) does it for free, what represents no problem for her, but the only fact to receive visitors and guide them through is a huge job. Plus, many pieces here are still uncathegorized, so urges an archaeological research and survey that needs to be funded too. The entrance to the museum is free, but even charging a dollar or less per visitor, it doesn’t cover what a good research demands. Then, about results, integrating it into a local touristic circuit where the starting point to be this. What about related merchandising? It’s another great idea. Local tourism operators have no plans about, as much as I learned. However, I was talking with the manager of a local hotel, Luis Curay, who is highly interested in exploiting that idea, so he could be a great local partner for you, I promise.

And I think the keyword is that – partnership. And partnership could work perfectly in the second range of marketing ideas. While we were producing the show, we met Medellín, Colombia-native Marlon Lugo (on the photo beside this), who is an exchange student in Piura City. He is involved in all related to sell products manufactured under estrict environment respect rules. Actually, he is representing Dagua, a little entreprenurship based on Marina del Rey, Calif., that is selling teethbrushes made from bamboo wood. The story interested us for the main reason that we use the ones made in plastic, that is producing a global problem because of the pollution, especially to the sea. But the other thing I realized just when my producer told me about it was the fact that Piura crops bamboo, particularily in Andes midlands, but it is used mostly to make rustic furniture and house decoration at beaches and farms. Obviously, Peru doesn’t export that, but what about if a similar industry to the teethbrushes cand base in Piura and use the local resources obtained as part of communitarian projects to avoid deforestation and soil erosion?

I have no clarity about the Dagua’s business model, but the bamboo comes from Colombia, and it’s purchased from California. What about if you can establish an industry using Piura’s local resources and purchasing from here, taking advantage of free trade agreements we have wit some countries, including the U.S., the European Union,  and the Pacific Rim?

And I’m not only talking about bamboo. Piura crops organic coffee, cacao, and makes organic sugar,all for exportation. I recently learned that a rural community in Sóndor District, Huancabamba Province, in the Andes, is making essential oils from mint and a local plant called lemongrass (yerbaluisa in Peruvian Spanish). And this is just two species from the hundreds with medicinal purpose, even. My contact is called Jesmir Núñez, by the way, and I have a pendant visit to the town to train the people for using the social media in order to marketing their products. Oh! And I remember about the chocolate that Palo Blanco Community, near Chulucanas City, wants to move on. And, in fact, rural tourism could be great choices for both places.

As you look, I am talking about just two ideas. I think that if we explore across Piura Region (around 20K square miles), and we go through each of its 8 provinces (counties) and 65 districts, its two metropolitan areas… well, across Piura, we are goind to find more opportunities, many looking for funding, markets, promotion, placement – marketing.

Indeed, I want to explore, and with your help and your requests, I think we can do a great job together for improving life conditions here and abroad. You tell me where we can start on. Use the comment box, or my Twitter account, or my Facebook account to stay in touch directly with me.