Welcome to youPIX FWD!

Understand all the things that led to youPIX becoming the most relevant platform for creators in Brazil

Published in April, 6 . 2015

 

Very few people know this, but youPIX began in 2006 as a magazine. It was called PIX and offered a collection of the coolest things on the internet: links, jokes, people, behaviors. Back then, or more precisely, nine years ago, I was already head over heels with the power the internet gave to people: to create and distribute content freely. Before the web, we created, but distributing content was left exclusively to large media groups with major financial backing.

But in 2006 there was already a growing number of people creating and distributing content independently on the web and turning professional. Most were bloggers, already earning money and starting to change the way we created and consumed content online.

PIX magazine was about the size of a postcard and was distributed for free at cinemas, bars, universities and other points popular with the youth. It didn’t take long for this group to pick up on it, even creating a profile on Orkut (dear Orkut ?) to exchange their editions of PIX, almost like those World Cup soccer cards, you know? Readers began to organize meetings to exchange copies and chat about the web. Pretty cool, right?

And why did everyone love PIX? Because it discussed things on the internet without any pretentiousness. Traditional vehicles treated?—?and still do?—?the web like a zoo and the people part of this culture like some bizarre specimen: “nerds, what do they feed on, how do they reproduce, etc.”

But not PIX!

I was editor, I loved the internet and I thought the movement that was unraveling was incredible. I think that was the major difference: I spoke of the web like someone from the web and not like a mere observer that found it strange “but let’s talk a little about this growing nonsense anyway ’cause we need to fill the pages here at the newspaper”.

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BláBláBlá PIX

Over time, this web culture and its array of characters began to grow and we felt it was time to bring all these people together somewhere to discuss and celebrate everything they were creating and no one really had any idea where it would lead.

In 2007, we staged an embryonic event at Fnac Pinheiros called “BláBláBlá PIX”. The theme of the first event was “Women 2.0” and featured people like Clara Averbuck and Bia Kunze, talking about the role of women and their relationship with the internet. This is one of the most heated and important discussion on the web today, but we were already debating this issue at our events 8 years ago.

The 2nd event spoke about SEX and the Internet and included the participation of Bruna Surfistinha and guests. I created a playlist for anyone interested in watching. The clips represent the seeds of the youPIX Festival. You can watch everything here?—?I also included our “non-documentary” about Women 2.0.

 

The Web Shack

In 2008, ex-MTV VJ Cazé Pe?anha owned a little place called Espa?o Gafanhoto, a tiny house on Av. Rebou?as in SP where he hosted a few gatherings to talk about the internet. That year, thanks to our history in developing the world wide web, he invited us to join forces and share the space, which was then baptized Gafanhoto-PIX.

It was in March 2009 that we hosted the very first youPIX Festival. The event ran for three days and drew 1500 people. Three days of partying, talks and meetings?—?there were debates on monetization (the never-ending story), a meeting of web-celebs singing, a youtuber talking about this new creative space, live science experiments, international guests (2!), beer, and loads more.

That was also when we launched Memepedia (the 1st encyclopedia of memes in Brazil) and the Best of the Websphere, our award to highlight folks doing great things on the internet. It was the first award aimed at independent media, the best major media portals and projects. Our goal has always been to highlight the little guys on the INTERWEBZ and not the mainstream.

The meetings were such a hit that we hosted 5 events in 2009 and the little house became the official meeting point of web enthusiasts?—?in fact, because it was so poorly divided and cramped, it gained the pet name “Cafofo da Web”, or loosely translated, ‘The Web Shack’. Our Flickr account is full of fun photos from back then, click here to see them.

Just like PIX magazine, which carried an extremely informal style of language (very similar to the web) and spoke the same language as this group, youPIX Festival continued along the same line, proving early on to be way ahead of its time. We positioned ourselves somewhere between a (web) rock concert and a business conference. We were never afraid to debate and enjoy ourselves in the same venue?—?after all, the event was always a live reproduction of what people’s browsers were like on the internet: lots of open tabs covering the most varied issues, from funny to serious with a single click.

Besides the innovative format (widely copied by other events), youPIX was the only platform that understood and began to back, discuss, provide space for and award people who were building the independent digital content market in the country. While the mainstream looked to the ~people of the internet~ as “alienated youths that spend the day sitting in front of the computer in their underwear”, youPIX already championed the notion that it went a lot deeper and was a lot more powerful than that.

From the Shack to MIS

At the end of 2009, Cafofo da Internet could no longer cater to so many of us wanting to talk about the internet and we were forced to find a new home: MIS, the S?o Paulo Museum of Image and Sound.

We spent 2010 at MIS, hosting two events. We launched another award (Best of Twittersphere), released a great documentary about the relationship between music and technology, we enjoyed the company of the CEO of I Can Haz Cheezburger, the founder of HypeMachine, David After Dentist, Guilherme Zaiden (how we miss him ?), TV celebs like Hélio de La Pena, PC Siqueira (the first famous youtuber in the country) and the whole Brazilian internet crowd who were already generating a buzz. Also, we were the Trending Topic in all editions and one of them unlocked the first Brazilian Swarm Badge on Foursquare, awarded to events bustling with activity.

Things kept on getting bigger and bigger.

In 2010 we also launched the pilot of something I truly love on youPIX: contests for new talent on the internet. At MIS we held a contest called Blog Talent Show, dedicated to discovering new talent from the blogosphere. We already had the Best of the Websphere for the top guys and we wanted to help give the newbies a voice and space within the web ecosystem. Hang on, ’cause I’ll go deeper into that in a minute. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of having created.

 

From MIS to the Biennial Pavilion

And so, in 2011, we moved again to a new home. From 100 people at BláBláBláPIX, to 1500 at Cafofo da Internet, rising further at MIS, until reaching Por?o das Artes in the Biennial Pavilion at Ibirapuera Park.

It was here that things really began to happen! In 2011, Youtube was already going strong, blogs were already at an advanced professional level and, besides the occasional web celebs (you know the type, here today, gone tomorrow, like Garoto Mamilos, etc.), youPIX brought together celebrities from the internet that already had captive audiences and highly engaged communities. With 5 stages running at the same time, a number of guest curators and hosting a live internet reproduction, the event quickly grew to surpass that small group from back at up at "The Web Shack".

It began going mainstream, just like the web was doing. I remember that in 2011 it was so huge that the fire department slammed the door shut on over 300 people, because the venue was already filled to capacity. It looked like a scene from The Walking Dead! I was desperate to get everyone inside, I managed to negotiate with Bob, the head honcho, to sneak people in through the back door. We let a few people come through at a time, every few minutes, until we managed to squeeze everyone in.

 

My view has always been one of inclusion.

It’s sort of philosophical, really. The internet is so democratic, giving a voice to the people, breaking down hierarchies, no division through geography or buying power. The web means inclusion! This is why everything we ever did was free. I’ve always insisted on letting everyone into events, not only those with money. This was also a huge differential factor for the event. Obviously, as youPIX Festival grew, so did the challenges in finding sponsors to cover the costs of everything. But we always managed to find ways of keeping youPIX free.

That’s why the festival quickly became one of the leading options for youth entertainment in S?o Paulo, because by combining fun and debate, we provided an opportunity to meet people who loved the same thing and spoke about the same stuff. “I come to youPIX, meet a few of my idols, drink a cold beer, have a good time with the crowd and also get access to content I love”. Any other entertainment option aimed at the youth was usually some type of music concert or festival that cost a fortune. They weren’t very inclusive.

Still on the subject, in 2011 we created more space for new digital content talents at youPIX and launched two more contests, along with the one for blogs: one for podcasts and another for video.

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Only at youPIX…

And it was also the year that we consolidated the wacky format of our event, bringing together people like Gilberto Gil, INRI Cristo, Senator Cristovam Buarque, PC Siqueira, Sergio Mallandro, Paulo Lima, Tonkiel, Rafinha Bastos, Rosana Hermann, Demi Getschko, Vitinho Sou Foda, N?o Salvo, Double Rainbow Guy, Rene Silva, Pablo Miyazawa, m00t do 4Chan (who even shared a memorable moment on stage with Rafinha, Caue Moura and N?o Salvo), Mandic, Caio Tulio Costa, Lucio Ribeiro, Pereio, Jovem Nerd, Serguei, Alexandre Matias, Tati Bernardi, Lia Kitty Kills, Janara Lopes… the list goes on and on, all under one roof, mixing mainstream with the web with serious folk with the eccentric with beer with colored peanuts with lacquer with performances with contests with awards with workshops with inclusion with… EVERYTHING!

And then came 2012…

In 2011, youPIX was already drawing over 11,000 people per edition. So, once again, we had to change venues, heading to the second floor of the Biennial Pavilion. And, besides the expansion of the S?o Paulo event, we decided to drop in on other cities and countries, too. We visited Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco (USA) and Madrid (Spain).

That year I was also invited to speak at MIT in Boston. MIT is one of the most important institutions for the study of new media and technology and I spoke about what makes Brazilians some of the most network-sociable beings on the plant. I also presented a few memes, viral videos and characters from our side of the internet. It was definitely one of the most important moments in my career (?) as an ~internet specialist~ and unofficial representative of the Brazilian web community. I spoke about the experience with Estad?o, you can read it here (in pt-br).

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youPIX & The Interwebz

The fact is, this whole thing about being a type of representative of the folks from the interwebz sort of just happened over the years. The same way PIX magazine was ahead of its time and spoke candidly about the internet, youPIX (through its events and, especially, its website) also became the only platform to discuss and celebrate content and cultural movements created by youths using a network.

In 2012, mainstream media was already reporting on the world of youtubers and memes, but it couldn’t shed that outsider point of view and the need to present the web as something for the alienated youth, to kinda diminish the importance of everything happening there, which was taking on proportions a lot bigger than they ever imagined.

But it was already too late…

 

Photo: youPIX Festival 2014

 

Developing the ecosystem

2013 rolled on and we organized bigger and more epic events in S?o Paulo and Rio. We also launched a new initiative aimed at digital content startups within youPIX, called Content Talent Expo, basically a fair for new talents. Besides a mini booth at the event, those chosen could also present stuff up on the event’s main stage and win prizes. This fair and the contest have really grown and provided great opportunities to participants. I’ve heard loads of stories about participants who managed to arrange commercial partnerships, content partnerships, visibility, networking… For many of them, youPIX was fundamental to the growth and success of their content projects. We even launched a few talents that are doing pretty damn well today.

youPIX's mission has always been to develop and ensure this ecosystem of content creators continues to grow and turn pro. Both on the digital platforms and at the events, everything we’ve done has been to help convince people to take the internet culture more seriously. The protests that happened in Brazil in 2013 really helped in this sense, because they showed the world?—?and the people on the web?—?that they had a power far greater than merely being able to make a cat gif go viral.

In 2013, the internet was a bigger part of every one’s life. Smartphones, broadband, cheaper 3G plans, this all contributed to bring the web into the circle, something we had to make time for during the day, becoming something a lot more like electricity. We don’t even remember we’re connected, until the connection drops, that is.

With increasingly omnipresent connectivity in our lives and the obvious appeal with the young public, the web has become the very heart of this crowd’s culture and it characters are taking on the status of rock stars and exercising an absurd amount of influence on their audiences.

2014 arrived, we organized an amazing event for 18,000 people… and, finally, we arrive here, today.

 

 

youPIX phase 1: mission complete

Over the past 9 years, youPIX has had over 10,000 posts and drawn more than 30 million unique users on its website, handing out 95 trophies for the Best of the Websphere (and a Hors Concours prize), totaling over 2 million votes for the awards. It made Trending Topic in 14 of the 17 events organized, hosted 1680 speakers at festivals, 29 of which were international, brought together over 84,000 people and created openings for more than 100 new web talents.

youPIX has become the main meeting point between creators and their fans, the leading hub of discussions regarding the direction of digital content and this (increasingly professional) market. It has become a leverage point for this ecosystem and an important advocate for this entire movement.

In 2013 I was elected among the 100 most influential Brazilian companies in the country. This showed me just how much my work at the head of youPIX was expanding outside of the digital bubble, with an influence on the offline world.

Over the past 9 years, I’ve been on all the radio and TV programs, from Globo (largest tv channel in Brazil) to Piraporinha News, championing the internet culture and showing that it’s a lot bigger than a bunch of memes and kids speaking into cameras. I’ve written pieces for newspapers and magazines. And a number of columns on the youPIX website. I’ve talked at universities, companies and associations in an attempt to explain how this internet culture, a youthful culture, is transforming the world and breaking paradigms in a range of industries.

Over the years, these content creators have begun to influence culture and they have become real agents of change in our time: they have attitude, they are creative, they democratize access to information, have an opinion, discuss and teach things, many things, question the status-quo, inspire, entertain… and they do all this from an extremely human perspective. And this is why they have such a huge legion of fans and followers.

All these content creators are robbing TV Globo, Folha de S. Paulo and other legacy media publishers of their power to determine what information, entertainment, opinion and news is. This is an unprecedented behavioral revolution.

youPIX has always been ahead of its time in celebrating, leveraging and discussing this revolution. We help provide visibility for these characters and their creations. But the web is already mainstream… and has spilled out of the internet.

Even websites like Exame magazine’s (biggest business mag in Brazil) now have list of memes, your mother has probably already passed a meme forward on Whatsapp (even if she doesn’t know the term), youtubers have already made it on to certain television programs and published books that turned into best sellers in a matter of weeks.

That’s why we took off the start of the year, to reflect on the role of youPIX from this year on. Where is the festival going? What does each public want when turning up at an event? What is the role of our website within this new scenario?

While reflecting on the year ahead, something funny happened: I was working on an article about youtubers who became best sellers when, out of the blue, Vejinha nipped in before me. That’s right, Vejinha SP! This article, which would previously only have ever appeared on youPIX, made it to the magazine’s cover!

What an incredible time to
be alive, my friends!

And this was the final epiphany we needed to understand that, 9 years later, phase 1 of youPIX has been completed.

Welcome to youPIX FWD! \o/

Today we are inaugurating a new phase, youPIX FWD.

While phase 1 was fully dedicated to raising awareness about the internet culture and world of creators, phase 2 will focus chiefly on deciphering what this cultural-behavioral revolution means and discuss digital content and the creators’ market.

The market is already very professional, a gigantic business that generates billions of dollars each year, and there is no one analyzing this in Brazil except for youPIX.

youPIX phase 1 was pageviews, events for thousands of people, celebration, quantity, eyeballs going viral.

youPIX phase 2 is relevance, quality, engagement, community, discussion and impact.

But what does this mean in practice?

1) No youPIX Festival this year

youPIX Festival has become a huge fanfest (where fans only go to have their photos taken with their idols) mixed with a conference (discussions, debates, workshops about digital content and creators).

But it was the fanfest part that always drew the biggest crowd. Of the 18,000 there, almost 80% were more interested in the party than in the discussions. At youPIX FWD, our new phase, we are going to focus more on the ‘thinking’ part, the part that discusses the market. So, at this point, it doesn’t make sense to organize a huge event for fans.

Yes, we also love bringing together this whole crowd of people over 2 days with loads of partying and we also know that youPIX Festival represented a great opportunity for fans to meet their idols and get that perfect selfie. But don’t worry, we are thinking of other ways to organize meetings and we’ll have more news on that soon.

2) youPIX CON is coming…

This year we’ll be hosting a different type of event, only open to a few guests here in S?o Paulo, with the aim of discussing and providing a moment of immersion in the digital content and creators’ market.

This event, planned for the second half of the year, will bring together the most relevant creators, representatives of new digital media and brands to debate themes essential to the evolution of the digital content market. The program includes keynotes, debates, case studies and work groups with a focus on providing diagnoses and pointing out paths and trends in the world of Brazilian digital content.

At the end of the event, youPIX will produce a paper and mini documentary about the meeting and the discussions. These materials will be a portrait of the current market and outline proposals for its development, in accord with the discussions at this “internet summit meeting”.

It’s gonna be really cool and really focused!

PS?—?youPIX CON 2015 was a huge sucess. The 2016 edition is coming in September 20th.

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3) We've moved to Medium

The same way the most serious discussions lost a little of the limelight to the party that was youPIX Festival, our more reflective articles and columns have been lost on our website among the many lists of memes, tumblrs of the day and other more entertaining items.

Have you heard about Medium? Medium was launched by the same guys as Twitter as a publisher option that could save the internet from the flood of information and same old same old texts that proliferate on the internet. Their slogan is “a place to read, write, and interact with the stories that matter most to you” and, in general, they deliver on their promise. With this premise in mind, the people that contribute (like actor Leonardo DiCaprio or Obama for example) generally tend to engage more in the quality of the texts and reflections, which makes Medium an excellent channel for new thoughts.

As youPIX phase 2 is focused precisely on reflection about the Creators Industry, we decided to use Medium’s own platform to do so. From today on, our publication will offer the best analyses and reflections on content and the creators’ market from savvy digital market professionals.

We’ve run a few test over the past few weeks, publishing a few older items on Medium and the results have been really interesting. I noticed just how much we are seen as tastemakers in this digital universe, receiving e-mails, messages and replies trying to understand what our recent shift to Medium means and what we thought of it so far. That’s what we want to do! We want to make people think about these deeply entrenched models, we want to provoke the market and force it to evolve.

Where are we going? We still don’t know! But click the follow button to find out whenever we drop new content.

PS?—?youPIX was the 5th publication in the world to get a customized URL, and the first outside the USA. This move made Medium Brazil grow from 500 new accounts per week, to 8,000 new accounts.

 

4) And there's more…

Besides youPIX CON and our new website on Medium, we are also working with partners to bring you other discussions, like the web series we did with the guys from BitFilmes during SXSW with 4 episodes focused on content. Check it out, press play:

We will also keep using all our intelligence and expertise in digital content, creators and millennials acting on other fronts, like consultancy, talks, in-company activities, classes, business networking meeting, content strategies, tailored projects and other great tips.

Through all this, we feel that youPIX FWD is once again looking ahead and leading the debate about this world. We’re already sidelining concepts that are outdated, like pageviews, to charge full-steam ahead with what we believe to be essential in this new age: conversation and communities.

A few close friends that are in on all the latest news said we were pretty bold, but none thought we were going crazy or on the wrong path.

We’re moving forward!

Wanna come along? ?

 

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