Spanish Lessons

A Conversación en España with Global Relevance

Happy Friday Peaceniks! You ready to Tango?

My parents never really took us anywhere. We went to the shore. Cape Cod once. Never overseas. I didn’t even have a passport until I turned 30. My first trip abroad was for work, and I immediately became addicted to travel. As soon as my kids became old enough, our family traveled internationally together as many times as we could afford. Luckily, work allowed me even more chances to explore. But since morphing into the Media Cartographer, fortunately, my opportunities to see the world have exploded.

Recently I was asked to open the Iberseries conference - dedicated to video content in Spanish and Portuguese speaking regions - with a keynote presentation and a fireside chat with Raul Vazquez, General Manager of EGEDA Latin America.

Here’s a snippet of the conversation between me and Vazquez.

I love traveling to these conferences to speak. First, because I get to go to places I’ve never been - in this case Madrid, now one of my favorite global cities - and to meet amazing people like Raul who I never otherwise would have encountered. Importantly, these assignments force me out of my comfort zone to learn about different markets and cultures beyond the boundaries of my personal experience.

In turn, I get to share insights I’ve gathered from other markets and as someone who’s studied these different regions (and their data) from an outsider’s perspective - not as an interloper, but rather as a fresh set of eyes. There is so much to admire about the Spanish and Latin American Media markets, not least of which is the nuanced mosaic that is the global Spanish, Latino, and Portuguese audience. On the other hand, like many regions, there is much to be worried about in these territories and for their content providers.

And then, as is almost always the case when I dig deep into the data, the businesses, and the cultures, so much we actually share in common from market to market, from region to region, from culture to culture, and from creator to creator.

This fall, I have been on a world tour of sorts - Nashville, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, London, Milan, Madrid, Berlin, Quebec, and San Juan so far - with Cannes and Munich next week. People ask me if I ever get tired of the travel. Hells no. I can’t help but still see myself as that kid who never got to go anywhere. I think maybe I wound up as a “cartographer” specifically for the exploration. Honestly, I wouldn’t trade these travels for anything.

Below is the entire fireless fireside chat with Raul (who is a wealth of amazing experience and fascinating stories). It was a really fun and engaging conversation that in-and-of-itself would have been worth my trip - even if Madrid wasn’t a wondrous, magical place that I will return to for the rest of my life, which it was. Disfrutar!