Hello fellow Steemians! I'm so excited about the power of decentralized social media networks and the potential it has to revolutionize our social structure. Not only is it a pleasure to discover this platform but I feel truly grateful to be among the early adopters! With the consolidation of centralized social media systems, it's high time for a platform like this to be that disruptive force that we need more than ever!
I recently joined this community and I’m happy to introduce myself. My name is Jeff Zavala and I was born and raised in Austin, Texas; the live music capital of the world and the home of South By Southwest. I feel a great affinity with Austin as I’ve paralleled the incredible amount of growth in the city seen in 37 years.
Before I jump into my story, I’ll just give you a real quick idea about what to expect from my presence on steemit. I’ve just entered a new chapter in my life that I’m really excited about and it has to do with Emerging Technology, Travel, Environmental Justice, Fashion, Cinematography, and Storytelling. You can expect some professional quality video productions coming from my channel around these topics and to get an idea of past projects you can visit my Vimeo https://vimeo.com/zcreativemedia and IG https://instagram.com/zcreativemedia.
The story below explains the journey that led me to this platform and the path I followed to become a full time filmmaker, media producer, world traveler and social justice advocate.
After graduating from Texas State University in San Marcos in 2008, I decided that my studies in graphic design was limited to a static image and that I wanted to explore a medium with more potential. Documentary filmmaking became that medium for me and I started the next chapter of life towards self-discovery and community involvement.
When I heard about some of the human rights violations happening around the world, in large part aided by my own government, I felt compelled to become a citizen journalist. The mainstream media wasn’t doing their job and the stories of human rights movements were either being under reported or completely misrepresented. I began video documenting the social justice movements represented by various organization in Austin and I started to learn about the power of media on society.
Over the last 10 years I’ve been working as a volunteer citizen journalist for Austin Indymedia http://austin.indymedia.org. Doing this work has taught me so many valuable insights on the story of humanity, how to shoot and edit compelling films and how to affect changes within our social fabric.
Having the freedom to fail fast at my hobby, allowed me to master a craft and become a full time producer for my own media startup. Although my journalistic endeavors never paid out in monetary value, the relationships, skill sets and impact I’ve seen develop over the years has become priceless.
As my career started to take off, I had less time to volunteer and was forced to shift my focus. My passion for making films with social impact remains steadfast to this day. The world of business had taken me away from my journalism work but I’m happy to announce that for the first time, I’m starting to get paid to do good! It’s been a long road to get here but I’m finally able to create films of social import. With financial support from the community, I feel like I can start to focus on that exclusively rather than doing corporate jobs. That’s the goal anyway. Maybe I can find enough support on steemit to make the films that need to be made.
And now I can tell you how I ended up on Steemit! I was fortunate enough to win a SXSW badge in 2018 while attending an event organized by The Austin Forum on Technology and Society. Simply by asking a good question, they awarded me a $1,500 badge that ended up being priceless! With full intention to make the most of it, I went all in for SXSW 2019! Going to more than 30 hours of panels and at least 15 activations, parties and events, I was up for days being educated and nights networking, absorbing a tremendous amount of knowledge and insights on the future of technology and society.
Alas, my mind was overflowing with information and ideas, so much that one way or another, I had to do something with all of it. One talk in particular with the Co-Founder of Wikipedia, Dr. Larry Sanger had a huge impact on me. The name of his talk was: How and Why We Need to Decentralize Social Media https://schedule.sxsw.com/2019/events/PP1128168. He made the case so well that it compelled me to make a film about it.
In the process of researching for the film, I discovered the “declaration of digital independence” https://tokencommons.org/A-Declaration-of-Digital-Independence.html. One night I was discussing the ideas with my friend @victorsavelle and he told me about steemit but I didn’t realize at the time just how developed the tech and community had become already. Thanks brother!
I absolutely love the fact that the future is happening right now and that this community is building it everyday. Again, it’s an honor to be part of this journey, to learn about your journey as well and forge a new story together!
Look for my contributions, follow me @zcreativemedia and I’ll do the same!
Thank you!
Hi @zcreativemedia, great intro and welcome to the STEEM blockchain. Don't expect to get rich here, and you will be fine.
I'll give you a vote and a resteem to help you along a little.
Thank you so much! I really appreciate the welcome, vote and resteem! You're so kind! :) Cheers!
Welcome to Steemit @zcreativemedia!
I wish you much success and hope you find Steemit to be as rewarding and informative as I have.
Here are some links you might find useful.
Your stats on SteemNow
Your stats on SteemWorld
Your stats on SteemD
How does Steemit actually work?
Oh yea, I have upvoted you and followed you. Many blessings!
Welcome to Steemit! I used to be involved with indymedia way back... about 15 years ago! I didn't realise it was still going.
If I had any advice to give a new Steemian, especially one who is used to producing high-quality work, it's that Steemit is all about community. I've seen a lot of new Steemians get discouraged because their work doesn't immediately make an impact, but it's often about getting the attention of the right groups who resonate with you and can promote your work. I've noticed that you were featured by @ocd, which is a great start.
Thank you for the welcome! That's so cool to meet a fellow indymedia person! What was your experience like with the org? I was keeping Austin Indymedia alive as much a possible but it is pretty much out of steam now since it was all left up to me.
Thanks for the advice. I really appreciate it! Are there any particular groups you'd recommend for travel, fashion, social/environmental justice, etc?
Thank you!
I loved Indymedia at the time. It was around the time of the Iraq War, which I really objected to, and it helped me find local peace campaigning groups. I can't remember why I drifted away from it - maybe just because there were more groups appearing online to distract my attention, and also I'd been working from home as a freelance, and I got a full-time job in 2002, so I had less time for online browsing.
On Steemit, when I write a travel post I always post it to the Steemitworldmap.com. Just go to the website and it gives details on how to attach your post to the map. Your post will then get mentioned in their daily TravelDigest. You can also include #Travelfeed as a tag, which is another great curation stream.
I'm not aware of groups for fashion and social/environmental justice. Try doing searches under various tags for those subjects and see what comes up, or if you know of other Steemians who write on those issues, look at how they promote their work. Joining a generic group, like qurator, can be very helpful. You could launch your own curation trail too!
Wow! Amazing first post. You will do well here! Now following and looking forward to see what you do!
Thank you so much!
Hi and welcome here! When I started on steemit, my biggest problem was to find interesting people to interact with. So, to help newcomers getting started I created a directory with other interesting and or talented steemians to follow or interact with. Feel free to check it out at https://www.steemiandir.com I am sure it will help you find like-minded people. Enjoy your stay here and do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions!
Thanks for the welcome! I'm getting a lot of value from your directory. Thank you!
Welcome zcreativemedia!
eSteem is the application that improves your experience on Steem. You have full control over your data and content, unlike some apps we don't use our users to promote our application or services.
We have Mobile application for Android and iOS users. We also have developed Surfer Desktop application that helps you to gain new followers and stay connected with your friends, unique features - notifications, bookmarks, favorites, drafts, and more.
We reward our users with encouragement upvotes as well as monthly giveaways rewarding Spotlight top users and active Discord users.
Learn more: https://esteem.app
Join our discord: https://discord.gg/8eHupPq
Welcome to Steem zcreativemedia! Partiko is officially the fastest and most popular mobile app for Steem. Unlike other Steem apps, we take 0% cut of your earnings! You can also be rewarded with Partiko Points while using Partiko and exchange Partiko Points for upvotes!
Partiko for Android can be downloaded here on Google Play and the iOS version is available here on the App Store.
If you have more questions, feel free to join our Discord channel and ask @crypto.talk, we're always here to help!
Thank you so much for your interest!
Congratulations @zcreativemedia! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPVote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!
This post has been voted on by @acropolis introduceyourself in collaboration with the project @templo.
Hello Jeff, welcome to Steem! :-)
Thank you so much!
Congratulations, your post was discovered and featured by @OCD in its daily compilation #306!
If you give @ocd a follow – you can find other Gems!
With this nomination you will be able to use @ocdb - a non-profit distribution bot for whitelisted Steemians. Check our website for the whitelist, queue and delegation info. Join our Discord channel for more information. We usually add everyone nominated at the end of the week. :)
We also have a witness. You can vote for @ocd-witness with SteemConnect or on Steemit Witnesses to help support other undervalued authors!
We strive for transparency!
Welcome and wish you a great journey here :)
Feel free to ask if you have any questions!
Great job on the introduction post!
Posted using Partiko Android
Thank you!
Nice introduceyourself blog @zcreativemedia. I like it. Keep up Great Work. If you need some Free SBD. Check out my Quiz : https://steemit.com/quiz/@livecam/guess-the-age-and-earn-some-free-sbd-quiz
Welcome to steemit @zcreativemedia.
Welcome the new steemians. Have a great day!
Excellent introduction post Jeff. Welcome to Steemit.
I really enjoyed reading about your skills and passions, and viewing your photographs as well. I think you will fit right in here, and you might be surprised to find out, that we have quite a plethora of different front-end applications and browser based frontends (like Steemit) that interact with the blockchain in virtually the same way as Steemit. I don't want to overwhelm you with too much info, but I'm sure you will pick up on things quickly enough.
Really great to see you here Jeff, don't be shy to ask for help should you need it. There is much to learn :)
Welcome aboard! 😎
Thank you so much!
Hello!
This post has been manually curated, resteemed
and gifted with some virtually delicious cake
from the @helpiecake curation team!
Much love to you from all of us at @helpie!
Keep up the great work!
Welcome to Steemit!
Manually curated by @futuremind.
Hi, welcome to Steemit, I joined this year and love it ! It takes time to get used to it here, but one thing I have found is it is good to post consistently and make comments on posts that interest you. hope you have fun on here, good luck !
Thanks for the welcome and advice! I really appreciate you!
Great first post and welcome to the Steemian Community! It's a great community to belong to as well as getting your work out there. I'm following you for more on your work. I'd give you an upvote, but out of mana to vote right now.
Posted using Partiko Android
Yay! I'm excited to be here! Do you build tiny houses?
Welcome to #steemit @zcreativemedia.
Thank you!
Welcome to the Steem blockchain
That’s the sweet spot, Jeff
You will find the support that you deserve on the #Steem blockchain.
Here are some Steem visual DApps that might interest you.
• @DTube
• @APPICS
• @SteepShot
• @DMania
Looking forward to your videos.
Resteemed.
Posted using Partiko iOS
Welcome to steemit 😁
Welcome to steemit 😁
Hey Jeff, great to see a fellow creator on board... Hope to see much content from you.
Yay! Nice to meet you too! Really excited!
Congratulations @zcreativemedia!
Your post was mentioned in the Steem Hit Parade for newcomers in the following category:
I also upvoted your post to increase its reward
If you like my work to promote newcomers and give them more visibility on the Steem blockchain, consider to vote for my witness!
Thank you!!!!
You're welcome @zcreativemedia
BTW, feel free to vote for me as a witness if you like my work at promoting newcomers
u r welcome
Posted using Partiko Android
Hello and welcome! As a plankton posting an #introduceyourself post within the past 7 days, I am giving away @steembasicincome shares if you meet some simple requirements. See: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@joshman/1-sbi-share-for-the-first-twenty-planktons-who-meet-the-requirements
I'm a filmmaker. Did you have 2 camera drones, one in the front, and another in the back of that one photo of yours on the beach with those guys? That's awesome. Upvoted. Resteemed.
Hi @joeyarnoldvn! Nice to meet a fellow filmmaker! We actually had a telephoto 70mm to 200mm on a tripod to get that shot but I've been playing around the the insta360 one x and I really love the versatility to choose my subject and camera movement after I've shot. You can see some of the results on my instagram stories. Have you played with any 360 cameras?
I have not done 360 and that might be too much for me. I wouldn't mind experimenting with one for a video but it may not be my style.
I can t believe it that you really told the story of your life
Posted using Partiko Android
LoL!
Hey Jeff, welcome to the community of Steemit ♨️☺️
Posted using Partiko Android
Thank you!
What a great intro and welcome to the Steemit Community, I look forward to see your posts and I am sure you will enjoy your time on here it is a wonderful community
Thank you for the welcome! I'm really excited about being here!
My pleasure to visit
Love your introduction post. I am a newbie as well.
Welcome buddy. U will definitely like it
Posted using Partiko Android
Welcome to the community @zcreativemedia!
I love shooting macro-photography and learning about drones, so it's great to have you in STEEM!
You got a follower, look for your posts
cheers from Italy!
PS we will discuss about DJi soon!