 Hello, everyone. How y'all doing? Good, good. All right. There's plenty of room if you're out there and you're scared at the door. Come on in. So here I am again for you returnees. Hello again for you new people. Hello. Don't be afraid. This is what I do. And I've been doing this for a few years. So this whole talk people keep asking me what is your talk about? And for some reason I can't explain it anymore. So I'd rather just go through the stories and go through the steps, and maybe it'll become clear to me and you at the same time. That'd be really great. About seven years ago, I started like maybe a lot of you playing with audio and video on the internet because all of a sudden I realized I could, right? And I started with audio podcasting around 2004. And then around 2005 moved into video as well. And at that time I thought I want to be a journalist and I didn't have much luck in the world of newspapers. Maybe it's my own lack of skill. That's possible. Or maybe it was some bad luck or I didn't know the right people, the right gray-haired people. So I want to do it myself, right? A lot of us went through this back in 2004. And the only thing that is different between 2004 and 2011 is that a lot of us had to give up, had to hang it up, had to move on because take your pick. The business model wasn't sustainable. We got another job, better paying one, a steady paying one. We had three kids. My computer broke. My next computer broke. Can't afford it, whatever. There were all these reasons that so many good citizen journalists, and you know what? Let's get rid of the citizen right now. We're all humans. Never mind citizenship. No person is illegal except for that whole criminal thing. Except for that. I was looking, there was a t-shirt that said no person is illegal. And the point was that a human being shouldn't be, you know, arrested just for being from another country. But as I was looking at the shirt, I kept thinking, well, some people are illegal. But they're just, you know, it's the whole criminal crime kill thing. But otherwise, yes. So I agree with the t-shirt is the point. But so here I am 2011, what's left of it, the journey to the end of the year is near, right? And I'm still here. I'm still producing a podcast every week. You may not have heard it, but I'm still doing it. And that's kind of the point of this talk today. I have survived. I continue to survive. And sometimes I don't even notice how the hell I'm doing it because I'm just doing it. There's that old expression, life is what happens while you were trying to figure out what to do with your life. That's not the expression. I fucked it up, but that's the that's a good version of it. And like I would absolutely understand if somebody here said to me, if they had the nerve to say to me, and you would actually, a lot of you would, that it seems like, you know, you just saw me yesterday. I was just giving this talk last year. And I understand that because time is passing and some of us, we're getting older together. But what we didn't realize was that all these things have been happening, that our lives have been evolving, that our careers, if you want to talk about careers, have been evolving. And so that's the whole thing. What I started to notice was, out of no journalistic career, out of no big support, no large organization, a career emerged. And I want to tell you about it. And from that career, dare I do it, I can even try and give you tips, lessons, and generally, shit that went wrong. And just to further increase the possibility that shit could go wrong, I started using some new presentation tool, you know. Yesterday. Yeah, I know. It's gonna be fine. I'm older now. I'm wiser. So, you know, for those of you who are new, I don't mean to shut you out. Hello. I am a citizen journalist. What does that mean? Well, it just means that I decided I was a journalist and I dedicated myself to the craft and I didn't my way. Cue the music. Oh, fuck, new presentation tool. So, I did it my way. I designed my show the way I wanted to, a 30-minute podcast every week on global problems. Right away, some people aren't gonna listen because they don't want to think about global problems. There's a new iPhone, for God's sakes. And I know I looked at the new iPhone. Fucking Siri and all that thing. But so, right away, I've put myself in a position where I'm not gonna be the most popular show, if not, for one reason, subject. Then we get into, is my voice any good? Is the structure of what I do any good? All these things could be working for me or against me. And I guess over the last few years, they have. Why do I do this? It is simply because I felt the drive. If you speak with religious folk, priests, if you will, despite all the problems they've had over the last few years, they'll say they felt a calling, right? Well, I'm not into the kid touching, but I felt a calling. And I respect them, not the kid touching thing, but the let's not talk about that anymore, as a matter of fact, because, but I respect the idea that you have a calling in your life. You know, maybe you had a calling too, and it was that you had to fuck around with RFID, and then that's your calling. Nobody may be paying you for it, but you're gonna do it anyway, and maybe along the way you would get paid or compensated for it. So that's also good. And that's the way it all happened for me. That's why I do what I do. Along the way, maybe you didn't know this over the last few years from that little, well, I was this probably this height already, but that podcaster suddenly got asked to do more, to write, to explain, to teach, to, yes, travel, to teach. So before I knew it, I went from a guy doing a show in his shitty little apartment in Amsterdam about things he thinks are important to that same person, now doing it in Kosovo. That's the strange thing about how it happens, right? Before you know it, your life is changing, and time is passing. All right. So talking, teaching, preaching. I'm not talking about the priests, I'm talking about me, me, and that's what I do with a lot of my time. I mean, I say preaching because sometimes you get asked to go to a country like a Georgia, and they line up a bunch of journalists in front of you. They're very old, aged, a lot of beards, gray, and the women are not bearded. I was gonna do it the other way around, right? You're supposed to say, and then the men, structure a joke. And they tell you, listen, here are a bunch of journalists. These guys are managers of television stations and they're writers for newspapers, but they have no idea what they should be doing or different strategies for using social media, right? Like, you know, they all want a Facebook. What am I doing with Facebook? And they're all really worried. Should they be wasting time, spending time on Facebook? No. But they're concerned, right? They're concerned about where they should be spending their energy. And unlike me or you, probably, who sat around spending the energy to figure out, well, does this suck or not? Maybe I can help them out by telling them, as it turns out, it sucks. Or, or the opposite. So I end up doing a lot of this kind of talking and teaching and indeed preaching. Okay. I want to do a little bit on the technical. I tend to forget about the technical a lot. It's nice to forget the technical because I get so lost in it so often. I wanted to give you a little short evolution. One thing about me is, although I mess with technology constantly when I shouldn't and then to get myself in trouble, I'm still more or less doing the same kind of editing I was doing seven years ago. That seems kind of sad. You'd think I would have ramped it up, bought five computers, got a team of, you know, people doing it around the clock for me, assistants and so forth. I don't. I use this currently for the real audio nerds. I use Hindenburg, which was a thing. And then it blew up and then it became an audio player. And it so I use it, you know, we're trying to change history, have good memories of Hindenburg. And it's basically what you see, not a very complex tool. I'm just a guy doing an interview show, right? So I tend to only have maximum two people on the program, sometimes three. Some say I should do three or more. I don't know. Group things are interesting. So I'm still doing the same kind of editing audio wise. I haven't really changed as much. A lot of people, my good friend, Tim, I don't know if he's here, but he's always talking about how he'd like the perfect audio editing tool. And I hear him, but I'm just going on with the same old program and it's going fine. Audio recording wise, I look at toys constantly, especially when I go to the United States, who I think are using some kind of shells or clams as currency. And when you go there, you could just buy whatever you want. You hold up a euro and people just give you audio equipment. I've been using the same. This at all looks very clean and nice, mine not so much. I've been using the same at all for probably at this point, four or five years. I want it to break so that maybe I'll feel justified to get something new, but I will not replace it until it dies. And I'm not throwing it down the stairs or anything. It is still my trustworthy audio recorder. It does the quality that I need, unless somebody wants to tell me otherwise that you haven't told me in the comments on my website yet. This is still my audio recorder and I don't spend my limited funds and my time trying to replace it all the time. That hasn't changed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's my mixer. Yes, I still use a mixer and the condenser mic of the same one I had five years ago. I think this is what it's like to get older. You just use the same old shit forever until your grandkids come over and go, why are you using that, Grandpa? That sucks. I am a sucker. I am a sucker, obviously. I still use liberated syndication. I'm so sorry to those gentlemen who are not watching right now in Baltimore, or wherever they are. This was a service that when podcasting first started, promised to host what does that didn't just promise. It hosts your files, audio, video, whatever you want. And it's rapid download. Not that I have such a problem with the speed of download in some other site. But the idea I supported it in the beginning, I was one of the first customers and I've never really felt like they even know who I am. Libsyn doesn't give me anything extra. I haven't. What's the word? Loyalty. They don't give a shit one of their first customers. And I still use them. So by all means, when I'm done, you can not too many of you tell me what I should be using. I'm thinking about moving on, maybe SoundCloud. I don't know. I am interested in any service that isn't going to try to censor my ass. And the good thing about Libsyn is they're not trying to tell me what music I can't use. Oh, copyright. Oh, copyright. I still don't really respect copyright. Batman had the same problem with the first cowl. You couldn't. And then he told Alfred to remember, remember, he said, I can't turn my head. And then so now I'm good. And not to say that I don't respect copyright at all. I use music that I'm legally not supposed to. But I'm not trying to sell you music, so I don't see what the point is. Pretty soon, I might get rid of music. I don't know. I don't feel like going to jail ever, except for a visit. All right, here's the part I like, and I'm going to try not to bore you and not to boast. I don't like bragging. I really don't believe it or not. I'm standing here giving a talk and I actually don't like bragging. It's very ridiculous. Yes. What's been great is I haven't made my fortune, my fortune is, if there's a fortune out there for me, doing podcasting. But I have been invited to some of the most unlikely places in my opinion in the world. Now, maybe you find some of these places perfectly normal. I understand. But the beauty has been that because of my podcast, because of whatever it is that I was doing online that made sense to somebody, they wouldn't then invite me to come to whatever city, whatever university and do what I do, teach their students, teach their adults, whatever kind of group they wanted. And, you know, I like to travel. It's worth a lot of money to me. It doesn't pay my bills, but it feeds my brain and my soul. Right? So some of the unlikely trips in brief, right? Back in 2007, nobody invited me, actually. I said I really would like to go to New Orleans. This is Long Beach, Mississippi. There was a house there once. It blew away or they didn't wash away. That was a big debate in court. Either way, somebody lost a house. Many, many people lost houses. And I said I would like to go to New Orleans. And I would like to go to Long Beach, to Mississippi in general and see the damage. And I said this in my podcast and immediately or very soon thereafter, somebody wrote and said, I'll give you frequent flyer miles and you can go to the States. After that, it's up to you what you do, but I like your program and I'll give you these miles. OK, someone else writes to me and said, actually, I'm in New Orleans. If you want, you can come here. I'll show you around. There are people who doing rebuilding after Katrina two years later, but they're still doing rebuilding, of course. And I said, OK, and slowly these things came together and I wound up going to New Orleans, then going to Mississippi, then going on to Florida and visiting people who had gotten in touch with me or recommended to me who were living and working and lived through the storm and were working now to recover. So all of a sudden, the journey was sort of laid out in front of me if I wanted to do it. And it wasn't going to earn me a lot of money, although maybe I could write something that's of value. Maybe somebody would donate and so forth. That was the New Orleans trip. A little while later, I had a freelance gig, because I am a freelancer, right? Who isn't? We're all freelancers. That's the future. Yay. Yeah, we'll get into it, but freelancing. That's somebody's house. No, that's a prison. No, it's a high school. It's a high school and a prison. It was a prison. Anyway, I get a job. What a stupid idea, but I get a job. And I'm doing web mastering, just crazy, because I'm not a master of the web by any means. But I do the job and it turns out that it's a conference that occasionally has conferences in Southeast Asia. So we go to Thailand, paid. All right, right? You all do this sometimes. I think I saw you guys there, all of you. And I was going to make a joke about little Neverman. Thailand. And so I do the job and then I get an email from a blogger in Cambodia. Hello, Mark, from Cambodian bloggers. I'm like, wow, great. Since you're in Thailand, if you want to come, I probably had said somewhere that I did want to come. If you want to come to Cambodia, we're here. Come to the cafe, tea and coffee. A lot of the Cambodian bloggers are here. We'd love to show you around and tell you about issues in Cambodia. And I thought, yes. And then I went, went to Cambodia and indeed the bloggers were all there at the cafe waiting for me. Some of them didn't know who I was, which was weird. But then the story, again, laid out in front of me. That was the Cambodia trip. Then comes something weird. In 2009, I get invited to speak in southern Russia near Ukraine and that's already exciting for me. I don't know about you. I'm in Rostov-on-Don and there's a lot of people from different Russian republics. Shamefully, I don't know the names of all the Russian republics. It's very difficult, by the way. Be a good, jeopardy thing. And this woman comes up to me and she says, she speaks in code. Or either that or she doesn't speak a lot of English. And she says, do you like the cold? And I say, I think in my head, if somebody nice asks you if you like the cold, say yes. Like just, might be good. So I say yes. And she goes, you will need a good boots. And I said, uh-huh. And the coat. What am I doing? And she goes, and we can invite you to Siberia to teach some online journalism. I said yes, like fast, like, yes. And sure enough, two months later, I'm in Siberia, maybe three months later, I'm in Siberia and I'm teaching online journalism in Tomsk. And you know, while I'm there, I say, I think I'm gonna take this Trans-Siberian. No one's paying for that, this was me, of course. And as I say on Twitter, because that's where you tell everything that happens, I tell my conscious Twitter that I'm gonna go on the Trans-Siberian. And immediately I get an email. And this one's from someone I actually know in real life. And she says, you know we have a friend in Mongolia. And I said, no, I didn't know we had a friend in Mongolia. I said, yes, you went to school with her and she follows your work online. Go see her in Mongolia. I get the train ticket. Off I go to Mongolia. And sometimes you wake up in Mongolia, that's just how life is. And while I'm in Mongolia, you can see where this is going. Someone says to me, what are you interested in? Because they don't know my show at all. But someone says, what's your podcast about? And I said, well, problems in different countries in the world under-reported. Okay, here's who you should talk to. First, there's my friend who works in one of the poorest districts where people live in gays or yurts, depending on what you wanna call them. You can go visit them and they're gonna want you to stay in a yurt. Okay, round the house, I can stay in that. Then he says to me, oh, and I know someone who's gonna wanna meet you. He's the grandson of the first prime minister of Mongolia. He slapped Stalin in the face. Stalin killed him. Okay, yes, I wanna meet this person, yeah. And sure enough, that day I'm having lunch with the grandson of the guy who slapped Stalin and then disappeared. And he's telling me this story and it's an amazing story. It's sad, you know, but at the same time he was so proud of his family and he's glad to tell me about it. And then towards the end of the meal, he goes, when are you leaving? And I said, two days or so. And he goes, no, you should stay. And I said, yeah? And he goes, yeah, young people, it's good for them, Mongolia now, foreigners. You could stay and you would have a job in the parliament. And honestly, I'm looking at what's left of my shitty dinner and I'm thinking, maybe I stay in Mongolia. And I said, what would I do? And he goes, you would help with English things. And you know, silly me, for a second I actually thought he knew, he understood, like, I am a podcaster, I'm a journalist. And he's just like, English foreigner, you can stay here and work. All right, so that was my Mongolia adventure. I did leave, I did not stay. So sure enough, as it goes, I had given a few talks here at the lovely Repubblica conference and you meet a lot of interesting people just like you do here at this conference. And one guy I met goes by the name Baghdad Brian. It's a good name, it says something about you. And he said to me, we should work together. I like when people say that for the most part. But I think we all kind of go, yeah. Baghdad Brian, and I end up hearing from him periodically for several months after that. And towards the summer of 2010, we met up in New York, I think. No, Frankfurt, same thing. It's all a bunch of banks, tall buildings. And he says to me, so are you ready for Afghanistan? And I'm like, sure, yeah, yeah. Sure thing. And, ow, it's because I have a beard, this is, don't worry. And so he says to me, yes, in like three weeks, man, you gotta be in Afghanistan. Like I had a homework assignment or something. Okay, let's go to Afghanistan. And sure enough, three weeks later, I'm in Dubai getting my visa to go to Afghanistan. And then I learned that my job is going to be, of all things, I'm gonna be teaching elections observers to do crowdsource mapping. Cause I work with online media, so I know what crowdsource mapping is. Never having done any crowdsource mapping, but you know. Why should that stop me? And of course, while I'm there, I'm doing interviews, I've got the Ederol, of course, it's still alive, despite all the Afghanistan that's around. It gets in the, it's fine. And there it is, I do another job in Afghanistan, I mean, I do a job in Afghanistan. Plenty to write about after that, even some stuff that actually pays. And you see where this is going, it's like some kind of bragging show. But I don't understand how this all happened, really. I get back from Afghanistan, life goes on, doo-dee-doo-dee-doo, riding my bike. And then I get a message from Baghdad Brian. And he says, we're gonna need you to go to Georgia. And I said, Georgia, yeah, that's good. What am I gonna be doing there? Oh, you're gonna be teaching social media to veteran journalists. I'm like, what? So journalists who've been working for a long time who are much older than me and wiser and have seen war, I'm gonna tell them what to do. And sure enough, that's what I did. And so I thought I had enough Afghanistan, but apparently not, because a few weeks after Georgia, because I haven't been home enough, I get told that there's a job to do and it's in Afghanistan again. And man, do I know my way around getting the visa back in Dubai, I know my, I don't need a map anymore. And I'm back in Kabul really, really quickly. And there I'm told that I'm going to be teaching young journalists, which is actually my favorite thing to do. Because I remember what it was like to be a young journalist. And so I can teach, I can. And so there I am, I go to a place called Herat, which is on the Iranian border. And I go to a place called Jalalabad, which is on the Pakistani border. And I'm constantly sick to my stomach, because I don't know. These vegetarian options are very limited. They consist of mostly oil and oil. But I get to teach video storytelling, which is something I actually love to do, as well as audio storytelling. But they don't like audio as much, which is unfortunate, because I do. But so I teach video storytelling in Afghanistan. It's a fantastic experience. And on the way home, but not the way home, the way back to Kabul from this border in Pakistan, this happened twice, actually. We're told, yes, God, I'm sorry. It's my beard, that's what I'm putting it up. Anyway, we're told we can't drive on the main road back to Kabul, which usually takes about three, four hours. No, no, you can't drive the four-hour road, because you don't know what happens on the four-hour road. So we're going to just take a helicopter. What, I don't know. Does that cost extra? No, it's free. Fantastic, let's go to the helicopter. There were probably some rules about not photographing on a military base. Nobody told us those rules. So we're walking around, we're taking pictures, and taking a lot of pictures, and we're drinking free water that we find along the way. I'm looking at all the little trinkets they sell the military. And that night, I get to a guest house. We made it. And I get to this guest house, and there's a big seasoned British security contractor, you know, those are the people with jobs basically, contractors, we're all going to become contractors. Freelance contractors. And he's sitting across from me and he goes, are you Mark, bicycle Mark, something like, and I'm like, yeah? Are you teaching here now? And I said, yeah, temporarily. And he goes, did you walk through a fucking military base today, taking pictures just on your own? And I said, is that wrong? And he goes, some people are really pissed off, man. And I said, well, nobody said anything. And so, you know, sure enough, we got scolded and we were well known. The next time we came back through the American Afghan military base, we had a personal escort, it was fantastic. Yeah. All right, I don't know why I like this Kosovo petrol thing. It's the right colors. Maybe I like gas, pour it into my bike. We're almost done with this ridiculousness. A couple of months, months later, I get a message to speak at a conference in Macedonia. Nice people, trip is paid for, I get to speak to youth media again. Fantastic, off we go to Macedonia. And I learn about what Fire Room is. You guys know what Fire Room is? Of course you do. It's the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Yeah, that's what it's called, Fire Room. Anyway, sorry, I was just complaining. So I do my speech in Fire Room, as they don't like to be called, because who does? And I had said to somebody, I would really like to go to Kosovo. It's two hours away by bus. I know how to ride a bus. And everybody tells me, no, you can't do it. It's Bayram, it's Eid, it's the holy days. And I know what that is. So I'm starting to give up on the idea. And during the water pee break, a guy comes up to me, not in the bathroom, he comes up to me out there and he says, I heard you want to go to Kosovo. And I'm kind of used to this. So I said, yes. Yes. And he goes, okay, I'm going back tonight, so you can show up tomorrow or anytime this week and stay at my house. And I said, okay. And so the next day, I went to Kosovo for the first time in my life. And while I'm there, I do an interview, like the good journalist that I am. I put it on my podcast. I write some observations. I'm immediately told on the internet by trolls that there is no Kosovo and I must be out of my mind because I couldn't have gone to such a country, it's not a country. I was very confused. I went to a place that does not exist. And then they said, could you come back in a month? And I said, yes. And they said, yeah. And you could teach. And I said, yes, who am I teaching? He's just students, young journalists, absolutely. And so sure enough, less than one month later, I was back in Kosovo this time as the teacher and I had a whole group of students and I did my job, it was fantastic. These are a few of my adventures. What was that? These are a few of my adventures over the last three or four years that I've just given you. They've been going on since I started podcasting. I mean, my first one was a Swedish university in a place called Umeå that asked if I would come to Umeå and speak about what is this podcasting and who would wanna do it? This was 2004. And I thought, holy shit, a free trip to Sweden. And I did it. I figured out yesterday, because I wanted to add some useful details for you guys to stare at instead of me, I figured out that, well, actually Doppler, which is run by robots, shows me that I've traveled almost 400,000 kilometers since 2008. I have no idea what that means and I'm kind of sorry about it to the environment and such. Apparently, I'm in Berlin a lot, which is also interesting, but nevermind. And Kabul is my other favorite place to go. By the way, hello to Kabul. I know someone at least who stayed a very late to watch this horseshit. So thank you. The applause is for Kabul, of course, not for me. So that was interesting to see. You may notice I've never been to Africa or South America. So there are the goals for the next few years, besides being able to support myself and exist as a decent journalist, South America and Africa. And I'm working on it. That's a teaser. Some of these things you know, but I wanna go over them real quick. And I used to say this as a theory and now I can say it as a practice. Fuck resumes and CVs. I have one, but who wants to read it? It doesn't say anything about who I am. It's a list of schools and years and tasks that are broken down into about three words that don't really describe what I did. I much rather use my website. My website is my calling card. Unfortunately, sometimes I have fake snow falling from the header of my website and it's kind of embarrassing, but I still do this shit because I'm kind of nostalgic for Christmas. But the point is, and just one more time, is that the website is your calling card. It's what gets me a lot of my work. It doesn't mean it's the best design website. It doesn't mean every single bit of content is so good. It just overall represents me, like I'm satisfied. So that's one thing, like resume to hell with it. Website, yes, right? But we know this, so old information. I've also figured out in all this, first of all, I should never be called a war reporter because I don't have the balls to be a war reporter. I am somewhat spineless, so I like to go to the place after the war and then teach people things. This is both slightly safer depending on where you go because Afghanistan is a little confusing, but I really like doing this because it's actually much harder in my opinion because you actually have to teach people who are, they wanna learn. God, what can I do here? Hello? Okay. You have to teach people who may not have access to the education. You know, a lot of, Afghanistan has one journalism program that I know of and it's text-based. If you wanna do video audio, you need someone with experience to come tell you what's up. All right, all right, this one's, no? Now this is the other mark. Thank you very much. I'm here. What was I on? The other guy? Oh yeah. So what I figured out is, my role among other roles is, I'm a post-war reporter. I go in after everybody's gone and I try to look for reasons why the conflict happened, reasons why things are getting better or not, and the stories that are not being reported. I mean, Kosovo, for example, is one of the least popular news stories out there today. That's where I'm going. That's where I wanna dig up what's going on because you can't look to the mainstream to do it, you know? Sometimes I look to see if I spell shit, right? We know this, right? It used to be in 2004, 2005, I said to somebody, oh yeah, I do a podcast, and they would look at me like I was really sick and dying, and they, and now I sit with journalists. I have a friend, oh, I won't name names as best I can, not. Okay, I have a friend that hosts a show on public radio in a country, and he said to me recently over lunch, he's been hosting this show for years, and it's apparently very respectable, I like it, and he goes, yeah, so what's it like being a freelancer? And I said, it's fine. And I said, why? And he goes, oh, nothing, the public media outlet in that country, name your country. It's making everybody become freelancers. And I was like, oh, I suddenly realized we're all in the same boat. The podcaster who has no job security is now together with the host of the popular public radio program who also has no job security. So as it turns out, we've all met in the same place together. I feel fine, I'm more used to it than he is. But that's the weirdest thing. We used to think that going down this road, even for a text blogger, is full of insecurity, and it is. But as it turns out, all of our jobs are full of insecurity. If you're working at the exception, good, you know, obviously, I mean, that must be good for you. But I very much feel like the world has caught up with us, or we have caught up with the world. You know, money is still evil. I'll probably say that till I'm old, unless somebody dumps some on me. Then I'll still say it's evil with my new iPhone. You know, money is still a problem. Wow, I made it really big. It's haunting me over my head. You know, there's lots of discussions, especially here, but in a lot of places about how to make money, doing what you love on the internet, be it journalism, be it a talk show. Whatever it is, it's still a problem for me. You know, since it's a retrospective on 2004 to 2011, the good news is just when you think shit's going wrong, the next, do you have a coat comes up, and then suddenly you're off somewhere else getting paid to do what you love. So money is an issue. There's lots of theories as to what to do about it, but I'm just telling you that it does continue to haunt me, but it doesn't discourage me from going forward with what I'm doing. And I mean, I'm interested in this whole, it's an old discussion, but it's gotta carry on about crowdfunding, you know, in these flatters and the Bitcoins. I don't know anything about Bitcoin. Oh no, now I'm gonna get emails. Bitcoin, Mark! All right, I look forward to it. But I'm interested in all these things, but most of all, I'm interested in a cultural change that doesn't so much mean here in Germany, but definitely back in my United States or in my Portugal, which is my other country, a cultural change where people think about what they love, right? The program they love, the software they love, especially from small producers, from independent producers, and they pay something. And even the word pay is a little bit annoying. They give a thank you every year or every month. And for me, this is a cultural change, and it doesn't come at this level. You guys are too old, I'm sorry. You're not that old, you look great, but I think that it starts more in school. The same places where we learn to use money and how we go to the supermarket or credit cards, whatever. I think that this is a cultural, what is it, education that needs to come when you're young. And it may happen, it may stick with us. I'm feeling it in my own work. I used to take so many things for free. Let's not even use take. It's to use a lot of free stuff. And now I think about the person who produces it, and even though I don't make a lot of money, I give them a little something, because I use the tool. The Hindenburg crashing software, it doesn't crash. The Blimp crashed, the software doesn't. I give those guys money, right? Because I use their tool. And I know they're working hard up in Denmark. So I still think that there's a cultural change that has to happen, and we're not gonna see it. Well, maybe when we're old, we'll see it. The results. Some things haven't changed in media, some things have, right? There are a lot of the same old names that still are quite powerful. There's also a lot of unlikely names that have risen. And that's one good thing I can say, be it a blogger, I mean, Huffington Post is kind of an interesting example. But then like Huffington Post sold, or was bought by what, AOL? And who wants to be owned by AOL? Being owned by, I don't know, something old. So a lot of the old players are still around. Some new, formerly independent grassroots projects have risen, and they become a force in media. And that's interesting, but it's still a game dominated by the big names. I went to the BBC today. Still useful, that hasn't changed so much. That's kind of what stays the same as well, so I'll skip that. What I like a lot, and that's why I come here, and that's why I take a lot of these opportunities to, that's why I go to Berlin so often, that's why I go to Philly so often. I love hanging out with people who make media, not necessarily exactly like me, but it could be like me, because I get ideas. There are podcasts, there are video blogs, and there are text blogs, and there are activists and nerds of all kinds that teach me a lot, sometimes when I don't even expect it. And so I take their tips, I take their advice, and I use it to make myself better. So the beauty is, when it comes to being like a citizen journalist or an independent media producer, we learn from each other, and that's for me one of the best things, the best aspects of what I do. I wanted to do like an advice thing, and this is halfway advice for myself, but it's also advice for anyone. It is to try more and to do more. It's so simple and boring that I'm gonna change the slide really soon, but I don't do it enough. I don't submit enough, I don't push, I'm not a pushy person, and I'm real, I send an email requesting an interview, and I get no response, or I get, I'll get back to you, and then I just let it sit for a week. Like I need to, you know, they're like, no, I'd like to talk to you this week, another email. So my advice for anyone, including myself, is try more. If there's something you really want to do, and it looks difficult, try it anyway. Submit more, don't be afraid of failure. Fear of failure I think is something that controls a lot of people. Fail gracefully, enjoy your failure. I've been doing it for years. There are a few things I was wrong about. Let's go to one major thing, and I'm surprised, well, am I surprised? World peace through independently produced media is not happening. I'm really bummed. I went to Georgia, right? Time for this, yeah, yeah. I went to Georgia and I said to some Georgian friends, we'd all been drinking a bit. They really like to drink wine, yay. And my Georgian friend, they're answering any questions I have, and I said, so you guys kind of hate Russia. That's the impression I get. And he goes, no, Mark, but I mean, you've worked there. The Russians are a problem, huh? And I'm like, no, my Russian friends are nice. You know, like they don't, you know, and he goes, no, they want to control us. And I said, no, no, I hung out in Siberia. Nobody wants to control anything except the weather, the weather, I'm sorry. And then I said, well, isn't there some kind of project where say, silly me, somebody makes video blogs or content from Georgia and it's messages for Russians and Russians are making messages independently of the newspapers where they say, this is what life is like in Russia and we're not out to control your country. And then the Georgians go, well, this is what life is like in Georgia and we're not out to take control of any non-governed regions. And he says to me, no, to my knowledge, no one's doing that. And I'm like, oh, so like, is there violence that may happen? And he goes, oh, it's possible. I was like, but we have the tools, but it still doesn't bring the understanding. And maybe you understand completely why this is. Maybe you said, that's human nature, but I'm surprised, I was wrong. I thought world peace was at hand. I'm not gonna give up. I'm just surprised it's taking so long. I've been reading this like Jared Lanier, sorry if I butchered his name, I'd love to meet him one day. He's one of the founders of the internet. Him, Al Gore, Mickey Mouse and me. We all invented the internet. And I think I just insulted people who invented the internet. Why not? And he's writing about his regrets about, the way I understand it, about how the internet works and how we design web pages and how we behave on the internet with anonymous comments where we accuse people of going to countries that don't exist and being shitty journalists. And one thing I started to realize was, yeah, that's kind of true. On my website, it looks kind of like other websites, right? And a lot of the content that we create online, we sort of follow each other. And I understand we're inspired by each other. So you could spin that for the positive. But one thing I still believe, and I don't know if it's gonna come from me, not probably not. But I look to other people and that is original content, of course, creative content, pushing the boundaries, not within Facebook, not to pick on Facebook, but that shit is so in the little fucking blue boxes. And life is beyond the blue boxes. And the fucking live stream or what is it called is ridiculous, I think. And so even though we've got a lot of independent media producers doing a lot of important work, we get to meet a lot of them here and here in the hallways and such. I still think we need more. We need more creativity. If you're sitting in the crowd and you're thinking, this guy's entertaining, that guy's not, that's interesting, that's not, I would look to you. What are you creating? What do you love to do? Because I'm looking for more creativity, more originality. We have to be careful that we don't all just follow the same, what is it, crowd mentality, crowd logic, you know, whatever's funny on Twitter is funny on Twitter. It's all, yeah, I'll leave it at that, yeah. And so that's what I'm looking for. In my own work, I'll do what I can and I'll gladly listen to people who wanna yell at me or constructively tell me things. But what I'm looking for is reporting, storytelling, information, especially between people who maybe have a disagreement that needn't exist, that needn't turn to violence, you know, we know a lot about that in this part of the world. I'm looking for people who are doing this kind of work. I'm looking to be one of these people when possible, but I'm also looking for it throughout the internet. And so that's my thing. I want creativity, rebellion, experimentation and originality, that's my one hope. And that's it, really. I mean, seven years is not that much time. So if you want the extended version with the back flips and the fireworks, we'll do that at 10 years, all right? In the meantime, I wanna say a big thank you for all the years that a lot of you and you have supported my work and have also created your own content and have in whatever way been there, I wanted to say thanks. That's also why I'm standing here. That's it, I'm gonna retire, I'm old. I'm not retired. We have time for questions if you'd like to for about 10 questions. This has been happening to me a lot. Oh, there is a question. Oh, shit. Mark, thank you for your talk. I have another reason for your last appeal. If we aren't rebellious enough and inventive enough and courageous enough, we know the alternative. We know how AOL is trying to take a path into the future by buying off post. And we know the other models that are being played by Google, by Apple, by Der Spiegel, by Bildzeitung, by anybody. And yeah, we know that they will fuck up. Yeah, they will. Not always. Not always, but they will have quite a few iterations before they have the model that is using everything that web media is providing us with. Yeah, I wanted to add one thing, and I should have done it before. First of all, your comment stands on its own, it's very good. Mainstream media, alternative media, independent media, all of this kind of talk. I think what I forget to say sometimes is I write when I can for the Guardian, just as an example. And I see some of the workings in the Guardian, not a lot of the workings, but some. And I see the good and the bad. And I still see value there. That's why I do the job, not just because it does pay. Truth, truth. But I see value there, because there's openings, they're open to people who aren't of their club, because I am most definitely not of their club. There are some good examples, and they are slow, and they are well thought out, and looking into the future. But yeah, it takes us. Yeah, takes us. Right? Hi, Mark. Hello. I have a double question. How would you characterize your audience and did your blog create some sort of community around it, or would there be some kind of community of citizen reporters? Okay, I'll try and hold all of those in one. Let's go from the last one. A community of citizen journalists, or independent journalists? Yes. The problem and the beauty is that it's so big that in the next 20 minutes, people will come up to me, and they'll say, have you ever heard of so-and-so? He, she does a lot of stuff like you, and I'll go, I've never heard of them. And then the day I meet them, it'll be fantastic. So yes, there is a fantastic community. I get to meet a lot of them during these trips, because people are doing similar to me, sometimes self-funded completely. So I do meet this community. They're not writing for me. I never went into the creating a community through my website. I think a lot of you are my community, as I'm laughing because some people look like, you know, let's get the fuck out. But, you know, I think that this place is a lot of my community. I have no illusions about that, or do I? Was there something else in there? Yeah, and how would you characterize your audience? You mean profile-wise? Who would you say? There is no occupations, interests. So I recently did a reader, listener, viewer, for all three mediums, summary, which was kind of scary for me, because I didn't, I don't know if I really want to know what people think might hurt, but no, it was painless. And what I learned was it's an extremely big mix in terms of what people are interested in. This is difficult for me, because I love audio, but I figured out that 50% of my audience doesn't care, they like text, and I write a lot. Turns out I make a lot of my money from writing. So even though I love audio, I gotta respect my own writing, because apparently someone or enough people like it. As far as who they are, all over the world, an interesting amount from Germany, and I'll tell you what's more, it's the German-speaking audience, even though I'm doing content in English, that supports me most. And it's not just money, it can be money, but it's also with invitations for things. A lot of this, the Russia connection came through a lot of German, or German-based people, which is amazing to me. But no, characterization is so hard in the English-speaking world, because so many people speak English, you can't pin them down. I get emails, you know, a lot of Portuguese somethings, like me, I'm Portuguese something, and they're in Canada, and they're in Japan, and they're in Brazil, well, Brazil. So definitely adults, and definitely people who like to think about problems, which leaves out the people that hate to think about problems. They're not into my work. Too stressful. All right. Here, questions from the internet? First of all, we want to thank you very much. Everybody thought your talk was very great and awesome. So first question, did you face any censorship and where does, do you see your work in five years? Okay. First on censorship. The first one that comes to mind, there's a friend of mine in jail, well, she's out of jail now, but in Thailand, motherfucking Thailand, I was not allowed to, during an interview, mention the fucking king's name. Fuck the king, now I'm not welcome in Thailand. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. But still, that's how I felt, you know, and I could have said it later when I left in my recording, before the Thai secret police found me. But I had to turn off the recorder when the journalist who I was interviewing wanted to explain how you can't talk about the royal family, which is kind of ridiculous. You can't talk about how you can't talk about the royal family in an interview. And sure enough, for all her precautions, she was picked up on that charge a few years later. So that was one example of self-censorship because of the way Thailand is. Any other censorship, I probably can't remember right now. People would remember better than me. Never one that really hurt, that's for sure. I do, my least favorite censorship is when I'm trying to write something for a newspaper or magazine and they tell me, keep it to 600 words, buddy, and I'm trying to tell a story about human lives and or struggle or war or, and I gotta keep it to 600 words because that's convenient for the newspaper. I hate that. Okay. I think stories take the space that they take and I'll try and not, you know, go on and on forever but I'll tell you the facts that are necessary without cutting everything out. Have you ever considered a life insurance or have to make kicks here? Or, and the second question, did you have to erase the pictures you took of the Afghan military base? No, no, I didn't. One of them was published in a magazine in Kosovo. While I was there, I went, okay, and there's a photo of a US military base, I won't name which one, and I'm in the helicopter over it, so there's like the shadow and nobody noticed. They can't manage their media anymore. There were two other questions. One was, where am I gonna be in five years? Oh man, I don't know. You know, Utah Phillips once said, he said so many great things, but he said, you show me, ah come on, you show me a guy, it could be a girl obviously, show me a person that is engaged and motivated and political and global and whatever issues and I'll show you a person that you can't find or you won't know where he is in five years. So I have no idea where I'm gonna be in five years. I'm way too in the moment as we are. And the other question was of, if you have considered your life insurance. God, so can you tell the life insurance salesman that I'm okay? I don't need snake farm to tell me what to do with my life. No, I don't really do the, I mean in Russia I had travel insurance which is another joke, right? So I've bought into a few temporary jokes but I have no ongoing joke of an insurance plan. There's other details but I can't disclose in regards to my family and this private. But no, no, and there was no kidnapping insurance. If I'm kidnapped I'm fucked, you know. Okay, good. Last question from the internet. Do you see a future for podcasting in mainstream media? Thankfully there are still people that like to listen to stories, real stories and fake stories, all of you. The problem is video and texts are more dominant. I know there are exceptions to that and I know there are very good exceptions to that but I think the mainstream follows the trends. Unfortunately, because I think we lose out because they follow what's popular and they think they know what's popular and they don't take risks. And I think at this point doing an audio program is almost like a risk because it's not as cool as video or the old text. I don't think it audio is ever gonna go away and maybe a good presenter or a good subject will bring the audience as it does. Like, you know, this American life in the US I think is extremely popular. You know, I like it. So in many ways it's, you know, maybe it's up to me as well to work on my content so that I can inspire people that aren't into audio. So I think audio is here to stay. It's just, it's a tougher racket. Do you have some last words? Nah, every time I try and quote somebody, I fuck it up. I'll see you all next time. Thank you very much.