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.

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.

Introducing #aGoodStoryToShare

Let me introduce you what this is about. As we know, bad news are easy to find and to share. Even we do that. What we propose is not ignoring bad news, but also not ignoring good news. And we are looking for good news, and good news for turning us up, for inspiring us, for moving us to make a change.

Currently we are exploring that kind of news inside our community around. Then, we compose them into a webcast spoken in Spanish that we post via Facebook Live. Once finished, the uncut copy is uploaded to my YouTube channel. So, we prove the people that the good stories deserve to be told and to be shared. The project includes a living, motivational live experience, whether individual or collective. Our purpose is teaching the people to go inside their insights, identify the good stories, let them emerging, build them a display, and use all traditional and virtual media to make the world to learn about.

But, we wwant to step up. We want to use our skill of speaking English to get our people close to you, who don’t speak Spanish. Additionally, we want you to use that chance to connect with our people. So we are goint to build bridges by using the information technologies. Obviously, we also can perform the same kind of live experience with you, your organization, or your community. And everything starts from choosing the good news. Thus, that’s our challenge for you.

Follow us on Google and the social media with #aGoodStoryToShare

This is the time to begin.

We have a good story to share. What about you?

More reports spoken in English - Why not?

One of the things I consider as a part of the contents production, especially the journalistic coverage, is that the audience would like to receive them in its language. It’s true the translator, whether text or voice, can break such barrier, but if the producer or the speaker can do it, why not trying to produce or adapt those contains in your language?

At least, when we analyze the performance of the webs and blogs we are involved into, we detect that English-speaker audience interacts better than the Spanish-speaker one, even when our mother language is not the English and our production headquarter is located in Latin America, where Spanish or Portuguese –Romance languages- are mostly spoken beside the native ones.

We assumed that as an opportunity, so we have a bilingual contents offer – a good competitive advantage.

Now, I’m encouraging my producers as well as myself to produce more English-spoken content, not only text, that could be something easy. Speaking implies to display more communicative skills, use more resources, open to a wider market. Then, our commitment is try to include more audio and video in your language, reaching to make it on-live at any time, in order to you can interact with us simultaneously. Meanwhile, I leave you this little clip Marco Flores aand I recorded last September 18^th, in West Sullana City, Peru.

I hope to know what you think here on the comments box or on my Twitter account. You can also get me on my Facebook account to chat live.

Lon-term love is possible and sustainable

Ayabaca is a lovely place to me because has been the destination of my mid-year vacations. My mother’s parents, as many Ayabaca-natives know, lived at the right entrance, where Piura and Arequipa Streets begin at the same time, just in front of so-called White-Trunk Cross, on a promontory from where you could look at the three emblematic mountains of the Ayawaka people, especially Aypate, toward the Sun rises.

So my earliest memories start in that my grandparents’ big house, now remodeled as a restaurant and  home (after my grandparents passed away, my family sold out the estate), those continue downhill passing beside the cemetery, the long flat sometime called Maracaná, until following down the road to Suyupampa, finding some of those doors, going down through a path to a place called Rosales, where one of the Castillo Family’s acres where located.

To satisfy the curiosity of the one reading or listening to this op-ed, the other acres where located on the path to Montero, just at the site known as The Devil’s Nose, the most complicated place to advance for who pilgrim to the Captive Lord Festival every October.

Then, even when it doesn’t seem, Ayabaca is an issue I’m concerned about by a double reason: first, by my interest as a journalist, second, because of that emotional connection. That’s why when the Ayawaka Cultural Association invited me to join a debate about development chances for the zone, it was impossible to say not. But what development does Ayabaca need?

First step – Think of multi

A couple of months ago, the local people, or a portion of it, demonstrated against a mining project that is being announced 15 years ago, and what, anyway, because an opposition in Ayabaca and Huancabamba Provinces as well, it’s not possible to start. I was wondered about that protest because its advocates insisted of its local development model was based on the agriculture and the tourism. Great, we already evolved!, I said, because monocathegorizing a development model is the same than considering a person as monotalented for the lifetime, and the truth is that’s not true. The persons, if they want, can be multitalented.

The same happens to the development model at any territory. It should be multicathegorized, and the reason why is such simple as the development is built by the people, not the schemes. If you take the person out the scheme, the scheme borns dead.

The agricultural development model for Ayabaca, priorly, has no discussion, and who doesn’t convince, walk just a mile away the city and get without doubts. And the agriculture comes together with the cattle, if not, it becomes unsustainable. And inside the agriculture itself, the idea would be to have a whole stock catalogue this land could grow for good. The question is – which ones?

Second step – Love the numbers

And the interesting thing comes here. Many people defend development models based on slogans, the priorly, but when you ask someone to sustain it in a real way, the problems begin. First lesson: the priorly could motivate me but is not enough to me because in most times, it comes from an anticipated judge, and that’s a big mistake.

The real way to sustain that your development model is the model is based on diagnosis made with field information as well as statistics. Yes, I know that the numbers have nothing romantic, but the numbers help us not to put the chariot before the horse… although almost nobody uses horses.

I remember that after that demonstration, I wrote an op-ed on El Regional de Piura where I left a homework for Ayabaca people, and for everybody who reads me in general, that we start with a key index saying us how much sustainable we are in terms of economy, the gross domestic product. It seems an interesting basis to me to know what the GDP that Ayabaca has got because its agricultural-cattle activity, for instance. Does somebody know it? As I said then, the information is available on the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics, even by clicking. So now, what is it? Just as a clue, the Peruvian agricultural GDP is more than 7%, the double of the Peruvian general GDP projected for 2019 in 3.6%.

OK, if we can’t unfold at that level, at least what the Ayabaca Province’s or the District’s GDP is. Of course, the GDP is not the only index, but it is indeed fundamental, what must complement to  others as the existent land surface, the land proportion dedicated to cropping, cattle, forest conservation. In the end, numbers, numbers, numbers, and you’ve got my number.

If you want to pitch your development model to who you want to convince or debunk, I should stand up strongly on those indexes, and honest indexes, not supposed, not guessed, not made-up. It’s going to cost us to work but the true loves are not easy. I’m sure about that.

Third step – Turn-on the fan for refreshing the air

And not only with the agricultural-cattle sector. The same, priorly, I believe that the tourism in Ayabaca has an amazing potential, but it’s priorly, and we already established that holding to the priorly is a huge mistake. If we think of Ayabaca being Aypate, we fall into a dangerous reductionism, very similar to the people have about Talara when they believe that everything is Máncora, or when they believe that Piura is only beaches. And here I pay the attention about why we don’t end to convince everybody that Piura is touristically multicathegorized around and across.

Let’s return to Ayabaca. Reducing the all beautiful to Aypate already means a problem to me as a journalist and more as a tourist, because after Aypate, what? I know as a journalist that there is also Samanga, that I’m personally much interested on, or Huamba, or Cujaca, or Yanchalá, or El Toldo, or Olleros, or Yanta, or Culucán, or very near the city, in Socchabamba, or still pretty near the city in Yacupampa, where that beautiful combo is, composed by the Yantuma, the Chacas, and the Cuyas-Cuchayo clod forest. And I learned around of some waterfalls those somebody wants to launch. Excellent!

And even the Ayabaca City itself is able for beautiful urban circuits those you, at the most, haven’t realize like one that my producers and I were invented, beginning at the Main Square, going through all the balconies of Arequipa Street, reaching my granparents’ former house, resting for a while in the White Trunk Cross, and going down along the Piura Street until arriving to the Main Square again. And there is another through the path to Pampa de Lobo. And look - I don’t live in Ayabaca.

Until there, the existent offer. Now, what services do we have to offer to the tourist considering just two basic aspects like assistance quality and essential services: safe water, adequate management of spaces & supplies, safety. We have to quantify all that. Of course, the romantic ones will say me “the troublemaker is already here”, but if you already convinced that the priorly is not enough, you are ready for upgrading the next level. Once we quantify all, we have to specify which ones apply for minimum quality standards those motivate the tourist to come once, twice, and everytime, and bring more people. Right then, we’ll have a sustainable model!

Fourth step – Project to the world

Once we have all this well fixed, we can put that other component right, that’s my best professional talent – how we release it to the planet. Not your next-door fella, not the Ayabaca-natives living abroad, but the whole planet, where you truly contest, and where even you have to speak in codes we haven’t grown.

And, sure, how to feature all this with a text, picture, sound, hook production of marketing that makes irresistible going to Ayabaca, but once you be in Ayabaca, prove it’s better than they told it to you. And here is when the romance just borns strong and everlasting.

Fifth step – Real goals

In this sense, Ayabaca can place as a brand, the Ayabaca Brand. I know many people have thought on that, but if you pretent to get it by skipping from A to Z not passing along the whole alphabet, you’re going to give up. And the successful way to go along starts from knowing wwhat we have, knowing how it is, knowing what we can improve, knowing how we’re going to feature, knowing how we’re going to react before the response, and knowing how we’re gonna to evolve upon the first results.

In other words, people, strategic planning, because it’s not worthy to me that something is beautiful if I don’t have a whole network behind pointing me out goals, activities, resources, persons, results those allow me to measure if I am advancing through the right way or I am falling down. Yes, something like going madly the Yantuma uphill from Yacupampa, and getting unsteady and releasing you had no liferope once you reach the summit.

Sixth step – Be proactive

So now, I know very well that many people will say this is the authorities job, and notify us when you have it already to see how I take advantage. I’m sorry but I have to inform that in the Peruvian context, that is the simple and fast way to give up.

I understand that the ideal is in the social construction of every community, our leaderships open the way, or at least they say us where it goes, but the reality has proven that our leaderships have shown to be incompetent, selfish, and even corrupt. Then, what do we do? Unmotivate? No, that’s not the choince.

If the formal leaderships are not as high as the challenge that demans to launch a brand like Ayabaca, don’t cry, don’t regret. Let’s bet for our own initiative capability, and in that aspect I consider that the private initiative, even being incipient anywhere, can be the same or the better good than the public initiative. And I’m not talking about corporations. Peru has proven it moves 70% of its economy because the little companies, as well as the many independent entrepreneurs (including me). So, if it rains limes, make a lemonade. I mean, if your productive system is mostly the littlest or the independent, build your social network from there and manage the development model from there.

Yes, the authority is going to feel lost but I think there’s no most punishment for any leader when sees not to have a place in the picture. And that’s what the world demands! If you see the international reality, the governments are not those moving the processes but the people like you or me who do it. It happens exactly to a community like Ayabaca!

Then, when that attitude changes, and moves the things into a most proactive direction, believe me that the human asset will be an irresistible added value for that natural, archaeological, commercial, agricultural, cattle, touristic assets, whatever you decide for Ayabaca, looking for including everybody who wants to work on and get it. In other words, when a community becomes competitive, when it transcends from the priorly to the factually, it’s when it really improves the things, and when the things improve, it’s when we have a good story to tell, and when there is a good story to tell the world, well, it’s when you count on me.

Pleased again for the trust, and how good that the Ayabaca people are looking for solutions everywhere. If you keep that way, I guarantee you have a good portion of the success for sure. And if somebody wants not to join, you know?, don’t lose your time by criticizing. Get focused on the good that you’re getting because you’re going to get so far that way.

“Risky Teenage Love” – Five years later

There are two principles I was proving in those years because of my work: everybody is summoned to make science, and your professional title does not limit to the scientific field you want to explore. After this, I can say that in the difficult and almost misunderstood scientific divulgation market, I’ve got achievements I’m proud about. Across Piura Region, the journalists who specialize in that are a little handful, and I’m the youngest among them, I guess.

The scientific divulgation, in my opinion, is important because it allows to enable the curiosity of the audience about something they knew a few or ignored at all. And the curiosity you break out comes from your own curiosity, that is also based on the curiosity of some proffessionist, specialist in a science topic, who asked a question that seemed unnecessary one blessed day, went into it, and realized at least that he was found a key for a door that was not open even by using dynamite, or that we were sat down on pure dynamite, and we were not aware, neither. And that was the case of Risky Teenage Love (Somewhere Piura Andes), published on El Regional de Piura, in his original Spanish version, on July 30^th, 2014.

The story’s idea came from the curiosity of Obstetrician Marco Paulini Espinoza when he asked how much the teenagers of the fifth grade Bellavista de Cachiaco high-school, Pacaipampa District (Ayabaca Province), knew about a condom in terms of contraceptive method. And upon that knowledge basis, what attitude they had about its using.

Paulini took the issue because he was doing his Rural and Uptown Health Service (Serums, as its acronyme in Spanish) between ending-2013 and beginning 2014, just in that village. The story of how he landed there is epic, and the better is he tell you live by himself someday.

You will say – why to get focused the study in teenagers just months before leaving the basic regular education?Simple, folks. One of the strongest problems we have across Piura, and about what we can’t chant victory yet, is the teenage pregnancy, what means to have pregnants between 13 (11 in some countries) and 19 years old. And some stories we gathered at Piura Andes revealed us there are pregnants under 13 years old.

It’s supposed the teenage is  when many

women and many menare thinking what to do abouth their life so they mature. Then, whatever the reason, a boy or a girl comes on, and much of these plans postergate or abort, what, in many cases, stresses the poverty conditions. And Pacaipampa is one of Piuras districts with highest poverty levels. Add to this, Piura is one of Peru’s regions that has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, 14% to 16% in the last five years, above the Peruvian rate around 13%.

Plus, if you invite Marco anytime to hold an educational session, a conference, or you include him in a debate, that he tells you about the levels of existent gender-based violence, which is very engaged to machismo and the precarious life quality there is in many parts of Andean Peru.

As I ever say, the value of that investigation was nobody requested it to him. He was proactive about making it, and he proposed it as a thesis project (despite he had sustained and approved his own undergrade thesis months before) and, in fact, the original work  from the four-and-a-half-page story was almost 100 A4-size pages, which we excerpted the part of results, conclusions, and we added an introduction to give it a journalistic value, so we sent for releasing.

Of course, that is the brief story. The manner how it born is almost funny. It was around nine at night on July 15^th, 2014, when Marco talked me quite sad because he was trying to engage in a job after his Serums in Pacaipampa, unsuccessfully.

In my effort to comfort him, because that was the reason, I proposed him to work on some topic of his area that could awake the public interest. Then, we had one and a half months meeting each other, and one of the recurrent themes was his life in Pacaipampa. I presume, because of his reaction, that my proposal sounded him like fried egg over ice cream, but he didn’t say no, what was a good signal.

The next he did was to recuperate his whole papers he had brought from the Andes and he put to process them into one of these softwares specialized in statistical work, then he began to write the full document adding almost one hundred pages. We can say he was all the possible time to do it then, and it was usefully advantaged free time too.

Let’s make elipsis and skip to 2014 Peruvian Anniversary. While everybody was rested or got drunk meaning to celebrate Peru, Marco and I spent a whole day –lunch included- working the story, and messaging the poor El Regional de Piura’s publisher Andrés Vera that, please, wait for us because it was to arrive any way before the closure time, after I spent three days pitching the idea to him. If I don’t remind bad, we became to send it with photos attached, then or twelve minutes to five in the afternoon, one of the deadlines, and very despite our web producers, who wanted already to go home for resting. Did I mention it was July 28^th?

One day later, 29th, we changed the original title maybe twice until it stood in its actual writing country song-style. Well, the story was produced at a rural environment, so the literary license was appropriate.  Then, I figured out the rural philosophy was making a short circuit wwith all the policies of pregnancy prevention or sexual initiation postergation, and, in my opinion, the answers the teenagers gave were romantically absurd, like I could make it with my boy friend not using a protection as a love proof. So, forgive me, but there is nointerculturality you allege about: or you apply rationality to your life project, or you waste your life by opening or closing the eyes, not that you’re thinking of because it could sound quite ugly.

Yes, of course. I was also a teenager, and I also belief I could bring down all the starss to the being who you love to. But as you grow up, and you understand that the metaphoric sounds nice but scientifically improbable, and it also generates a vulnerable scenario for a part of the population, there’s no worthy romanticism. Or you act with maturity, or you are part of the problem.

Thus, as Marco says, if you are not to protect, at least see how you are going to prevent, and the condom has proven it can be until 97% success for avoiding pregnancies and 95%success for prevention of sexually transmited diseases, including HIV/AIDS. And in a region like Piura, that is 150 thousand people up to reach two million habitants, according to the last Census, the decisions that teenagers and young take regarding to their sexuality are, indeed, a public health issue, especially when you have 5^th-grade high-school kids having a 7% knowledge and 5% positive attitude before the using of condom. And the other 95%, what?, I mean.

And if we carry that to public policies management, that have actually accostummed the poorest people to government or corporate dependence, then you understand the transcendence of investigation works wit those characteristics. Look – I don’t say this is the only one of its kind, what I say is this is one of the few when the author trusted in a journalist and decided to make it public.

That is the value of Marco Paulini’s study, and that is the value that almost nobody , except the colleagues of Radio Cutivalú (add to El Regional de Piura’s crew, I mean), could see once published, and, forgive me, even the efforts of the Regional Government of Piura for decreasing the rates in some districts, where they inclusive have put specialized offices in teenagers assistance, had the expected result despite the work, neiter.

I don’t insinuate it’s lost time and money. What I say is that no matter the effort our authorities do, the problem is the cultural environments where teenagers and young grow up, and where an anti-Semitic-style campaign, because it is so, anti-Semitic, Hitlerian, says there’s no right to act. Maybe no acting, but actually displaying enough scientific information for teenagers and young to take their own decisions, because if you don’t teach them to be responsible since kids, and realizing Maluma and company, and the Peruvian union of cumbia as well, are fucking brainwashers, tthey won’t be responsible along their personal, family, professional, and social life. Already, if with all the information, they insist to disgrace their lives, it’s their business, but the government already played its part, no matter if it seems pretty cruel.

Paulini himself repeated the task in 2016, this time with family planning service users in Huasimal de la Solana, Lancones District (Sullana Province), now about the attitude regarding the emergency oral contraceptive, that recently was supported by the Peruvian justice for being distributed in the health public system for free, and he found again that cultural and religious believes of the population, many of them based again upon the machismo, ended to put in risk the life of women and kept many violence cases ending in unwanted pregnancies, and the obsessive attitude of mothers who confessed they would control the sexuality of their kidsas much as forbidding the use of contraceptive methods.

And what deserved Marco Paulini in exchange for its effort? Nothing, no thanks neiter. Even with the published story and blasting in hits (all Marco’s stories ended 2014 with more than 20  thousand hits on El Regional de Piura), the Health director entity, at least in regional level, felt like a mosquito flew, slapping included. Maybe the administration of Jorge Camino, instead, recognized him on behalf of Sullana Province Municipality, and La Matanza District Municipality invited him to hold an educational session in its townhall and a local high-school (then the mayor was Nelson Mío, now Morropón Province’s Mayor), but Pacaipampa District’s and less the Ayabaca Province’s reported not to be aware about.

OK, they maybe had not to be aware, but if you’re an authority concerned to solve problems in your community, at least you had to phone him: “Obstetrician Paulini, and what action plan do you suggest?” And that feature had –well, has- actually an action plan: to insist in educating for prevention, and making closer the sexual and reproductive health services to teenagers. Eventually, the Peruvian government has implemented the second one. The first one, I insist, with this fake veil of the moral has sserved to disguising doctrinal-religious argues, instead of widely technical-scientific debates. Because in those cases, you forgive me, the science will save us. There’s no other way.

And Marco Paulini proved it when he was assigned by the Luciano Castillo Colonna Health Under-Regional Bureau  to the posts network at Sapillica District, reaching with that crew and the prominent district’s institutions the feat, because it is so, to reduce the annual amount of maternal deaths (it was three) to zero (yes, zero) by ending 2016, record that held, until I checked out in our archive, during 2017. By the way, the machismo –the negative cultural patterns, again- is one of the causes for maternal mortality, at least in that territory.

That’s why is too important the professional contribution he did to the international campaign One Billion Rising from Sullana, for fighting against the gender-based violence, understanding that the effort can’t last one only day but everyday, every minute, or his virtual participation to the 2014 Annual Conference of Businesspersons, held in Paracas, Ica, where El Regional de Piura had a pretty lot to do.

And that’s what I celebrate five years later. That the solutions journalism, like it’s called now that type of the contents production, had generated, first, curiosity in the audience, second, the need to see if it’s about a general pattern or an isolated fact (we realized it’s the option number one),  and third, these plans have to be pitched into the existent social forums for these facts to reverse or prevent.

And in the scientific divulgation journalism, the investigative journalism, or the solutions journalism, or just journalism, if you don’t ally to someone who never went into a newsroom to explore these action plans, you’ll hardly see that a reality changes.

And in this point, I want to remember the divulgation work that Marco does on his own blog https://marcopaulini.blogspot.com/ that has given us the satisfaction of getting positive interactions in English-speaker audience, at very complicated markets as the United States, England, United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and even Jordan and Afghanistan. And they are organic twitterers, just in case.

Although nobody else cares about it, I’m proud for making that little milestone, and making that the contens we have produced help you to take better decisions. And of course, I’m proud of Piura’s talent that continues to row ahead and above, that follows to evolve. I continue to generate contents that way, Marco follows working wit me when he can and is free from his Human Medicine studies at Piura’s César Vallejo University, pretty scored by the way. I’m excited to believe there will be an upcoming challenge, and we’ll take it for sure!

Something new comes for Malingas

This Sunday, June 30th, I’ve been coming back in Malingas, Tambogrande District, Piura Region (Peru), but I didn’t go alone. This time, we have joined a multi-talented crew with Francesco Navarrete, Daniela Peña, Robertson Vidarte, and Marco Paulini.

Francesco is an entrepreneur with so many skill to smell profitable business opportunities, Daniela is specializing in architecture and urbanism, Robertson is a young promise of photography, videography, and graphic design, and Marco is a specialist in public health projects, author and coach too, whom I shared other spaces as the generation of scientific contents for FACTORTIERRA.NET and the management of One Billion Rising initiative in Piura.

All this crew atended by an invitation from the Malingas Town’s Mayor Jesús María García, who became notorious during the 2019 rainy season in Peru when she used the social media for claiming government relief once her community formed by more than 20 villages got isolated because of a San Francisco Creek’s overflow, a Piura River tributary.

The work of this Sunday has been a first approaching to the people’s expectations, and what comes in the next months is a sucession of activities looking for the benefit and the projection of Malingas abroad, and that we’ll be updating you about constantly. Meanwhile, among these lines, we share some photographs of today’s meeting.

Eberything begins with a click

Original prompter  of my presentation to the Piura’s Regional Council of Youth, October 13th, 2014. Edited and translated by the author.

Thanks for having me, and I hope to give you  useful information, if not you bull me at the time of the questions. How to do marketing on the social media? The key of everything is making a click. Of course, making a click is the easy part. The complicated is to build all the strategy that becomes that magic moment meaning a click. But making a click has few magic and much science, indeed.

First, let’s define  what marketing is. In simple terms it’s the ability that I have to satisfy a need of the people in any field, so they ever continue to choose me. Said simple – it’s the art of selling. We offer a good or a service through every sale in exchange of another good or service. The trick is in the verb to offer. Because it’s not the same to say “buy those potatoes” instead to say, for example: “Make your family to enjoy tonight – put some Piura’s fried potatoes to your crispy chicken.” Essentially, we’ve said the same. The difference is in how we present it, and how this presentation satisfies a need of the people.

The Malingas Initiative

Well, what do the social media have to do in all this?I learned how to edit webpages for myself 14 years ago. When I thought to have some experience on the issue, I decided to launch my personal website in September 2000, and one month later I launched FactorTierra, what we call FACTORTIERRA.NET now. The most of our coverages has been social-environmental conflicts, until an interesting door opened to us in December 2008.

After a problem related to  natural resources predation in Malingas, Tambogrande, story we became to release, a community’s leader sat down with my crew in March 2009 and made us a challenge: to put Malingas on the map. For making that, the first we realized was to research in-depth how this community is, so we spent a full week living with it. Initially, we were  to focus on the agriculture and cattle topic, what was that you could see straight, until ending the first day of research, Luis Correa, one of the producers, came back with news: a new petroglyph. Who knows Malingas, its best known archaeological vestige is The Devils of Guaraguaos Alto. But, what Luis Correa was saying to me was we had more sites.

Because of his insistence, we got an archeologist who we started to research with by our own, and we found, at least, a dozen of archaeological sites in a 200-sq-km area. The evidences we got to gather set that the petroglyphs could be until 4000 years old. Only as a reference, Chavín is 3200 years old. With all this information, we began to build a microsite you can visit, now if you want, on http://www.factortierra.net/malingas

When we closed the research in 2011, we decided to pack all those sightings on an article that made viral. In May that year, we released El secreto de Malingas (The Secret of Malingas), that was first ranked by RPP Noticias and Radio Cutivalú, and what came later was a load tthat included Andina News Agency, that is the official news agency of Peru, and other media across the nation and abroad. In the next two days, the story of the 4000-year-old petroglyphs in Malingas went around the globe, literally. The challenge that they imposed to our crew, to put Malingas on the map, was gotten, at least in a first step.

(An award to the) identity

And wwhat was the secret of Malingas? The truth is that the secret was seen for everybody: its own identity. We all have our own identity, or we should have it. The same happens to the products. And if we understand Malingas as a product, then the first one we have to look for is the own identity, I mean what makes it unique in the world and different to the rest. And when you bet to the identity, you make a trend.

Obviously, we put the link to the original article and the rankings on Facebook, and they had too likes and shares that it almost made pretty viral. For Malingas, it was an opportunity that costed more than the gold because they could add the touristic activity to the agricultural and cattle activity, so they could improve their life conditions.

Because of the impact we got –remember that our goal was to put Malingas on the map-, we received the Environmental Citizenship National Award for the Best Media Campaign, ending 2011 . This trophy, granted by the Peru’s Ministry of environment and the Peru’s Pontifical Catholic University, is the first one that Piura got. The other one was gotten by my colleague Alberto Navarro for a beautiful series about the carob tree. The formula applied by Alberto is exactly the same like the ours: betting for the identity, for the own. The own sells. But, is enough to bet for the identity to sell?

Originality (Via Satellite)

I think the other reason for what Alberto by his own, and my crew by its own, received the award is the manner we presented the product. I don’t know if Alberto, but the exigence inside my crew was to be very creative in the manner how we presented each one of the features we published. In other words, we bet for originality. The opposite to the original is called copy-and-paste.

Originality means you are capable to create something from nothing, or you can set what was already created so it is seen as a unique, different  thing – to innovate, in other words. Then, to do marketing  on the social media, we need identity and originality, and we get innovation with both. But, and what about the social media themselves? They’re simply platforms. They’re only tools to magnify all those contents. And did we have additional results plus the award? Yes, we did!

In 2013. History Channel Latin America network came to shot the Alien Contact series, and it contacted us because it was interested on an original story we produced at Huancabamba highlands, where the identity was what sold. The episode wwhich we featured was premiered in July 2013, and it’s reprised by the network up to today, and we’re penetrating in about 40 million homes from Bravo River to Patagonia.

The anecdote of that show is the reenactment of the story could not be video-taped in Huancabamba because, when the crew came to shot, the road got interrupted. So we needed a petroglyph, water, trail, and people. All this segment ended to shot in Malingas, Tambogrande.

Marco Paulini

And can the identity-plus-originality formula work for other products? Yes, it can. On May 30th  this year, I met a Young proffesionist from Sullana. We were becoming friends. You know the friendship is based on the gradual aknowledge of the people. I learned this way this guy had made a research by himself, in a Pacaipampa’s village.

He is an obstetrician and his speciality is the sexual and reproductive health of the people. What did his research discover? Between 7% aand 8% of teenagers from that village know what a condom is, but between 5% and 6% would use it. When those data were processed, we advised him to write an article to be understood for the most people as possible. We got to release it on El Regional de Piura website, on last July 30^th, just two months later we met each other. The feature now overcame 2000 hits. Why?

I forgot to mention a detail. The research was made in Bellavista de Cachiaco, Pacaipampa, the same place where the Guerrero-Neyra family comes from, the creator of Corazón Serrano band. Los riesgos del amor adolescente en tierras de Edita (Risky Teenage Love – Somewhere Piura’s Andes) is now one of the most successful original articles in Piura. And how this guy decided to bet for his own professional and personal identity, he gave it added value. Then, we recommended him to activate his Twitter account 

After that first article, he wrote one about how to use a condom correctly. The feature wwent over 2500 hits. Then, it came another about having bareback sex. It overcame 2000 hits. And he just released one about teenage pregnancy, a little time ago, October 2^nd, that already overcame 1200 hits. All these features have been released by El Regional de Piura.

El Regional receives, at least, 10 dollar cents for every hit because it’s subscribed to the Google’s AdSense programme. For this montth’s ending, we estimate that the four Marco Paulini’s articles can overcome 10 thousand hits. That means Marco Paulini could give 1000 dollars to El Regional de Piura for the end of October. And for the end of the year, we think he could generate about 2000 dollars. What would you do with 2000 dollars?

Plus, it’s enough you post something that says “Marco Paulini” on El Regional de Piura and the visit counter triggers inmediatly. What? Does Marco have magic powder? No, he doesn’t. It’s the same recipe than Malingas’ – identity and originality, what becomes him an innovator. And what does Marco gain from all this? Well, ADDING they start to consider him in Sullana for some activities, he had a tweet that said something like, and I’m paraphrasing: “Marco, what do you propose from your region for Peru to enter the first world?” Signed: Annual Conference of CEO’s, CADE 2014.

Rather, his article about teenage pregnancy has been marked as Favorite by Peru’s Vice-President Marisol Espinoza. Also, the Health Integral Insurance recommends everyweek on Twitter to visit the @MarcoPaulini account, at the same level than Pan-American Health Organization, Aldeas SOS, or journalists as Pilar Higashi or Ana Trelles. Now, Marco and my crew are looking for funds to prove what he found in Bellavista de Cachiaco repeats across the region, and if urgent rules are not taken about, we’ll have a population crisis in the next 10 years. To make it simple: there will be few food, few place for many people.

Conclusion: The Malingas and Marco Paulini formulas are no lab ccreations. They’re products that have identity and originality. Through the social media, we also prove they’re an innovation. If they could do it, you too. If you doubt of how to do it, look for me. I already said you I’m on  http://www.facebook.com/nelsonsullana and http://www.twitter.com/nelsonsullana  And what I do? I turn local ideas to global impacts. And I’m waiting for my next challenge.

© 2014, 2019 by  Nelson Peñaherrera Casyillo and Asociación Civil Factor Tierra. All Rights Reserved. Authorized reproduction quoting the source.