Exponential Journalism
Amenaza Roboto: Latin American and global tech news for the Spanish speaking world
You can’t imagine how strong is my desire—my need—to write en español. I am afraid that I won’t be fair to you with my broken English, dear reader, nor to my new journalistic endeavor: Amenaza Roboto. But I’ ll do my best.
REWIND. I come from Uruguay, a tiny country between Brazil and Argentina. Uruguay is not the typical South American country: Uruguayans cannot dance, we embrace laicism and we have the highest suicide rate in Latin America. This forgotten piece of land that people tend to confuse with Paraguay is also a highly urbanized country that stands out in the region for its high per capita income, low inequality and low poverty. I’m telling you, I come from an odd place.
My country has a tradition in progressive politics: in 2012, Uruguay became the second country in Latin America (besides Cuba) to legalize abortion; in 2013, Congress approved gay marriage and in 2015, Uruguay became the first country in the world to legalize the sale of marijuana. If all this ain’t strange enough for you, let me share one last thing: Uruguay is part of the D7, a network of the world’s most advanced digital nations, with a shared goal of harnessing digital technology and new ways of working to improve citizens’ lives (the other members are Estonia, Israel, New Zealand, South Korea the United Kingdom and Canada).
STOP. But things aren’t peachy in la República Oriental del Uruguay. An aging population is another distinctive feature of Uruguayan society. We have a small, conservative market: Uruguay’s population is 3.4 million (slightly smaller than that of Panamá and half that of the city of Bogotá). The sum of these factors makes Uruguay the land of the Nos and the Nots. It’s hard to pitch new ideas and develop projects. But with my partners and peers —in Spanish I would say: mis compañeros de ruta—we chose to ignore what can or can’t be done in Montevideo and Uruguay, and we developed leading radio shows, TV shows and digital platforms.
PLAY. I founded Dobcast almost three years ago. When I started this company, the markets’ feedback was apocalyptic. We were supposed to fail, but instead I ended up running a network of podcasts that is profitable and has listeners from Uruguay, USA, Argentina, Spain, Mexico, UK, Brazil, Germany, Ireland, Colombia, Guatemala and Chile.
At Dobcast (www.dobcast.uy) we produce five podcasts (one of them for Cuonda) and three video shows (one of them for Vera+, the digital channel of Antel, the largest telecommunication company in Uruguay). The first stage of the plan was to build a community for our audio shows: Montevideo No, Vera Basket Audio, Perché Mi Piace and Deep Sh*t. And we did it —without an advertising budget.
The second stage was to develop video shows for our YouTube channel. And we did that with success.
Now, at Dobcast, we are ready for the third stage: Amenaza Roboto. We have effective distribution channels and a great team.
We are launching a platform that will provide Latin American and global tech news, podcasts and videos for techies and business people who need to upgrade from analog to digital.
I co-founded Amenaza Roboto with Eduardo Mangarelli (CTO of Microsoft Latinoamerica) and the Spanish-Argentinian-Uruguayan journalist, Salvador Banchero (former host of huge radio and TV hits like Justicia Infinita, Direct TV´s En Escena and Pop TV & Sun Channel’s Pasajero en Trance). The Editor in Chief for this new media outlet will be Natalia Arralde (a great journalist who studied at NHK-CTI Tokyo, she is the former news director of the Servicio Informativo de Televisión Nacional de Uruguay. She has worked as a producer for CNN and Al Jazeera in Uruguay, and she used to write for El Observador and El País). We are also working with an awesome team of graphic designers: Martín Azambuja and Fran Cunha.
The CEPAL’s (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) publication, The technology transformation and its impact on the labor market, highlights the following: “Until now (In Latin America and the Caribbean) the new technologies are mostly used for personal consumption rather than production” (2017: 14). In that statement lies a niche and a necessity.
As the UNESCO states: “Investment in science, technology and innovation (STI) is essential for economic development and social progress. Research and development (R&D) can foster sustainable development by building greener, more inclusive societies”.
The Latin American tech communites need to:
a) Introduce themselves to the traditional entrepreneurial world.
b) Know what’s out there: competition landscape, key players and policies that may vary from country to country.
c) See the advantages of every market and be open to collaborations
- Chile has one of the most solid start-up programs in LATAM
- Paraguay is replicating this model with Paralell18
- Uruguay has become an astonishing software incubator
- Argentina, with its Palermo Valley, is the cradle of several waves of new giants like Mercado Libre and Globant
- Mexico has Guadalajara as its Silicon Valley, and
- Colombia is doing outstanding things in Medellín.
Latin American tech news websites tend to translate what is published in the U.S., but our markets needs more regional information. And also we need to analyze the impact of Asian, European and American tech companies in the south, in a way that everybody can get it: in a friendly, non-boring way. That’s the mission of Amenaza Roboto.
In April 9th we will launch www.amenazaroboto.com
We will share interviews, in-depth features stories, two podcasts and a social video news show.
You can listen to Roboto News on iTunes, CastBox, TuneIn or SoundCloud at Dobcast channel.
I invite you to follow Amenaza Roboto on Twitter and Facebook.
If technology grows exponentially, so must journalism.
