Valentí Sanjuan

In the beginning of this class we were told that we would have two guest speakers. Both of which we should research ahead of time. With the first speaker being Valentí I didn’t hesitate to dive into his youtube channel. Upon visiting his youtube channel you meet a very inspirational even eccentric Valentí. The Valentí that made himself his own brand and has been profiting off of it and living life to the fullest ever since. I rightfully glorified who he was because of his youtube followers but when we met him in person we met a different side of Valentí, the human aspect of him if you will. Not to cause confusion, Valentí’s personality and kindness is very transparent through his videos but listening to him in person taught me something else that his videos didn’t. It taught me that he was just a normal person who has learned to adapt to his surroundings in order to stay afloat sometimes literally and is just as curious about where the world is going as we students are. This fact was refreshing in that we talked about this man so much yet he was humble enough to ask us what we watched and why most of the girls in the class aren’t his target audience. On that subject, in class upon being asked who uses youtube regularly me and maybe one other student raised there hands which alarmed Valentí. I however wouldn’t be alarmed because the demographic of the class is to blame for their lack of youtube use. Of course a group of 20 year old sorority girls is going to say that they would rather look at pictures on instagram or watch netflix than watch a youtube video but this is because of who they are and the abroad world they are living in now at 20 years old. Perhaps down the line in their professional lifes they discover how much information youtube has to offer through Ted talks for example than Instagram through pictures they will begin utilizing this tool, or not. Whichever the case this demographic in my class has never been Valentí’s target audience per say, I understand that his message of inspiration doesn’t have an “audience” but his action sports motive does and this audience is very alive and not going anywhere on youtube.  I look up to how he has made a market for himself and his ultramans on youtube, that in itself would be enough to follow him but he has also his digital storytelling team behind him helping produce content nearly everyday which is an amazing feat. One of my biggest issues with youtube is the amount of time a viewer has to wait until a channel uploads a new video but with content coming in everyday Valentí keeps his audience engaged on a daily basis. I’m curious to see where this road takes Valentí, I have no doubt that his creative and down to earth nature will forever put him in a position to be his own boss. Respectfully, I also hope he doesn’t worry too much about what he learned in class for the future of his spanish action sports channels success and market shouldn’t be evaluated through the opinion of 20 or so college girls. They may not be his audience now but somewhere down the road I wouldnt be surprised if they stumbled across one of Valentí’s videos and one video is all he need to gain someones interest.