The Story of My Life - Jeff Zavala at ZCreative Media

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!