From now on, I’ll be living in “the largest and richest city in the southern hemisphere and Latin America”, the emerging, chaotic, controversial and fascinating Sao Paulo. I’ve been hesitating to publish this post for a few days, trying to find words to explain this sudden change in my life, but I realized I just need to be as brief as one could and very straightforward.
I came to Sao Paulo to join Esfera, a company based in the House of Digital Culture in São Paulo. A little extract of their about page sums up the idea of Esfera:
Esfera is a project (in a very initial phase) by Daniela Silva and Pedro Markun, focused in communication, politics and new technologies. We want to see in politics the same revolution of practices, values and principles that new technologies have brought to communications. For this matter, we act in favor of transparency, openness and collaboration, by means of projects focused in empowering the citizen, of actions to forge a culture connected to these values and other initiatives.
It turns out I already had been in touch with Esfera before. I heard Daniela speaking in the last Campus Party edition and Esfera is behind the well-known case among Brazilian bloggers of the cloning of Blog do Planalto, Brazil’s Presidency blog. On the occasion, they had literally cloned the blog, by copying the articles and republishing them, because the original blog did not allow users to comment on the posts, which was a rather not-inclusive move from the government.
My stay in São Paulo is yet to be defined. Initially, I’ll be staying for 6 months, but I’m keen to stay for as long as it’s necessary. If I meet new and interesting people who help me model the person I want to be and give me support to achieve my dreams, I’m keen to move forward and do my way to be part of a global conversation.
I’m running out of words now, and as I don’t want to be redundant in this post, I’ll just end it here. Updates on my new life out of the comfort zone of my parent’s house will be made public as they occur. My hope is that good changes take place in my life, whatever the path I’ll be taking from this point on.
Photo taken in the garden of the House of Digital Culture