0:00:00.515,0:00:01.595
(Applause)

0:00:01.833,0:00:03.222
A dream made true.

0:00:04.222,0:00:08.198
You'll notice in my voice,[br]as soon as I calm down,

0:00:09.229,0:00:13.222
that I have a somehow weird accent,[br]as I've lived in Spain for twelve years.

0:00:18.222,0:00:25.198
Twelve years ago I went to Paris[br]for 15 days to receive a literary award

0:00:25.222,0:00:30.222
and I met a Catalan girl there,[br]and I stayed to live with her.

0:00:32.387,0:00:39.222
Back in Argentina I had a job, a house,[br]and no intentions of moving whatsoever.

0:00:40.650,0:00:46.198
While in Spain I had nothing:[br]no house, no job, not even papers

0:00:46.222,0:00:48.222
to get a house and a job.

0:00:49.222,0:00:56.198
Even worse, after living[br]8-9 months in Spain

0:00:56.222,0:00:59.222
only because I was in love,

0:01:00.428,0:01:04.221
two horrible things happened in Argentina.[br]First came the 2001 crisis,

0:01:04.825,0:01:08.198
4-5 presidents in one week[br]and social chaos.

0:01:08.222,0:01:13.222
And, even worse, around the same time,[br]Racing won the soccer championship.

0:01:14.856,0:01:21.198
I am a Racing fan. It's horrible seeing[br]your team champion for the first time

0:01:21.222,0:01:23.198
while being away...

0:01:23.222,0:01:27.198
Far away from your land,[br]but in my case, from my father,

0:01:27.222,0:01:29.198
with whom we'd always thought

0:01:29.222,0:01:31.941
we'd see this event,[br]if it ever happened, together.

0:01:32.222,0:01:35.198
These two circumstances,[br]the economic crisis in Argentina

0:01:35.222,0:01:39.198
and my team winning the title,[br]happened at the same time

0:01:39.222,0:01:43.555
and taught me what I didn't have[br]the slightest idea could ever happen:

0:01:44.222,0:01:48.596
that pain and party,

0:01:48.620,0:01:51.197
tragedy and triumph are the same

0:01:51.222,0:01:52.979
when you're away.

0:01:53.247,0:01:56.910
Not being able to cry with your loved ones[br]when something horrible happens,

0:01:56.935,0:02:00.198
or celebrate with your people[br]when something wonderful happens

0:02:00.222,0:02:04.690
puts you immediately offside.

0:02:05.856,0:02:09.163
As I was in Spain sad and alone,[br]I had the idea to create a blog

0:02:09.189,0:02:12.198
and I started writing.

0:02:12.222,0:02:15.198
I named that blog Orsai,

0:02:15.864,0:02:21.276
that means in soccer jargon in Spanish[br]that you are offside, off the game,

0:02:21.301,0:02:24.222
that you're not allowed to play.

0:02:25.832,0:02:29.291
In those times I used the Internet[br]mainly to send emails

0:02:29.316,0:02:31.896
and to chat with my friends from Mercedes.

0:02:32.435,0:02:35.949
So what happened when I created[br]that blog was a huge surprise for me

0:02:35.973,0:02:38.528
and I imagine it was so[br]for everyone else at the time.

0:02:38.695,0:02:42.973
I started writing short stories,[br]sometimes as myself,

0:02:43.488,0:02:47.940
or disguised as different characters;[br]a housewife, a seer, a princess.

0:02:48.755,0:02:51.012
And little by little it started[br]to get crowded.

0:02:51.162,0:02:56.198
People from weird countries: Honduras,[br]Nicaragua,from Spain or from here.

0:02:56.222,0:03:02.222
And so Orsai turned into a kind[br]of involuntary community of readers.

0:03:03.222,0:03:06.198
I did nothing to gather them, I mean,

0:03:06.222,0:03:08.198
I didn't put banners in my blog saying:

0:03:08.222,0:03:11.198
"Come in, feel comfortable,[br]generate a community".

0:03:11.448,0:03:14.198
The only thing I did was[br]writing short stories,

0:03:14.765,0:03:18.198
I also read the comments[br]the readers made to those tales

0:03:18.222,0:03:22.198
and also, most of the time,[br]I chatted with them.

0:03:23.303,0:03:28.008
When that community got even bigger[br]because of word of mouth,

0:03:28.033,0:03:30.198
and specially became more fervent,

0:03:30.992,0:03:34.595
some traditional companies[br]related to culture and media

0:03:34.620,0:03:37.420
started to listen[br]to this babble of voices.

0:03:37.445,0:03:40.325
"Look, there's a guy who writes[br]and people are there."

0:03:41.016,0:03:43.710
And so my phone started ringing,

0:03:43.734,0:03:46.934
they offered me to work with them.

0:03:47.597,0:03:50.087
The publishing companies[br]proposed me to make books

0:03:50.112,0:03:52.584
with the stories I wrote[br]for free on the Internet

0:03:52.609,0:03:56.100
and the press invited me to write[br]columns in their newspapers,

0:03:56.125,0:03:58.674
similar to the kind of stuff[br]I wrote on the Internet.

0:03:58.841,0:04:03.198
I know this now, I didn't know back then.

0:04:03.682,0:04:07.065
I think I made a rather serious mistake.

0:04:07.605,0:04:09.967
I went to work with the industry,

0:04:09.991,0:04:13.748
I ended the direct communication[br]with my readers

0:04:14.454,0:04:19.197
and I let them put me intermediaries,[br]an agent, a publisher

0:04:19.221,0:04:23.198
a manager, a content editor.

0:04:23.651,0:04:28.197
All those people lined up[br]between me and my readers.

0:04:29.979,0:04:36.047
The publishing companies also asked me,[br]for the publication of my first book,

0:04:36.072,0:04:40.198
to take away all those free articles[br]from the Internet so they could sell them.

0:04:41.000,0:04:45.198
The situation got a bit tense there[br]because I told them immediately

0:04:45.222,0:04:48.428
I couldn't do such thing for[br]I had given those texts as presents,

0:04:48.453,0:04:51.705
and I couldn't go house by house[br]asking every reader if, please,

0:04:51.730,0:04:54.285
I could get the gift back[br]because now I wanted

0:04:54.310,0:04:56.079
to sell it through white collar guys.

0:04:56.556,0:05:01.579
But it became worse as books[br]and time went by,

0:05:01.604,0:05:05.858
that permanent feeling[br]that the publishers were robbing me.

0:05:07.166,0:05:10.558
One time they closed the sales[br]one of my pocketbooks.

0:05:10.582,0:05:14.198
It's an anecdote I always tell[br]and I think it's descriptive.

0:05:14.600,0:05:20.198
they stated to have sold about 900 copies[br]in Argentina of a pocketbook

0:05:20.876,0:05:24.198
and I knew, because I'm a close friend[br]of a bookseller from Mercedes,

0:05:24.222,0:05:28.673
one of the three bookstores in Mercedes,[br]I knew that 750 had been sold

0:05:28.698,0:05:30.197
in a small bookstore

0:05:31.262,0:05:37.198
of a town of Buenos Aires province.

0:05:39.332,0:05:43.808
And it wasn't just the feeling[br]of being robbed at gunpoint,

0:05:43.832,0:05:47.118
the impossibility of checking[br]sales and printing.

0:05:47.142,0:05:51.198
I also started receiving a lot of emails[br]from readers of the blog

0:05:51.222,0:05:54.198
telling me my books were not available[br]in their countries.

0:05:54.595,0:05:58.578
The industry distributes books in Spanish[br]only where it is profitable:

0:05:58.603,0:06:03.236
Argentina, Spain, Mexico,

0:06:03.261,0:06:06.896
but if a Salvadoran or a Peruvian[br]wants my book,

0:06:07.602,0:06:10.598
they have no choice...[br]They will never get it.

0:06:10.622,0:06:13.702
With the press I was going through[br]something similar.

0:06:14.094,0:06:17.070
They asked me articles 400-words long,

0:06:17.095,0:06:19.197
but if there was half a page[br]of advertising,

0:06:19.222,0:06:23.536
the editor called me to tell me that[br]this week my column was 200-word long.

0:06:24.020,0:06:27.198
When the European economic crisis came[br]and the companies

0:06:27.222,0:06:30.236
stopped advertising in newspapers,

0:06:30.261,0:06:32.847
I thought "Now I'll be able to go back[br]to 400 words".

0:06:32.872,0:06:36.198
But no, they removed a sheet[br]from the newspaper and left me with 150.

0:06:37.213,0:06:41.987
Last year, when these issues[br]started to get worse,

0:06:42.012,0:06:46.198
I got very tired and publicly broke up[br]with the publishing companies

0:06:46.222,0:06:48.564
Mondadori from Italy,[br]Plaza & Janes from Spain,

0:06:48.588,0:06:51.911
Sudamericana from Argentina[br]and Grijalbo from Mexico.

0:06:51.935,0:06:54.005
I also publicly finished with[br]the newspapers

0:06:54.029,0:06:57.011
La Nación from Argentina[br]and El País from Spain.

0:06:57.035,0:07:01.883
In 1400 words in the blog, free,[br]I told them to fuck off.

0:07:02.472,0:07:03.614
(Laughs)

0:07:04.462,0:07:05.720
(Applause)

0:07:13.475,0:07:15.685
As I did this,[br]and after a year of silence,

0:07:15.709,0:07:18.650
I started communicating[br]with the people from my blog

0:07:19.531,0:07:21.724
and I told them I had a new idea.

0:07:22.327,0:07:25.798
An idea that could be really fun[br]and especially risky

0:07:25.822,0:07:28.856
but that had the secret goal of proving,

0:07:28.880,0:07:32.435
also and specially to myself,

0:07:32.697,0:07:36.958
that the famous crisis of the industry[br]is not an economic crisis

0:07:36.983,0:07:40.198
but a moral one, it's a crisis of greed.

0:07:41.543,0:07:43.820
The idea was of making[br]an impossible magazine

0:07:44.295,0:07:47.294
from my backyard, in a town in Catalonia,

0:07:47.318,0:07:50.889
without any offices,[br]and with a staff integrated

0:07:50.913,0:07:53.197
only by my family and childhood friends.

0:07:54.081,0:07:57.198
A magazine that would be called Orsai,[br]just like my blog.

0:07:57.668,0:08:00.250
One night with Chiri,[br]who's my dear friend,

0:08:00.274,0:08:02.607
we wrote a kind of decalogue

0:08:03.233,0:08:07.726
a sort of promise to the readers.[br]This happened exactly one year ago.

0:08:08.313,0:08:12.198
We promised the magazine wouldn't have[br]any advertising, not an inch of it.

0:08:12.518,0:08:14.668
It wouldn't have[br]private or state subsidies.

0:08:14.970,0:08:17.983
We promised it would have[br]the best graphic quality available

0:08:18.007,0:08:20.700
in any of the countries where distributed.

0:08:20.970,0:08:24.158
That it would do without[br]any possible intermediaries.

0:08:24.183,0:08:28.198
That it would have a paper version,[br]and a dynamic version for iPad and iPhone,

0:08:28.222,0:08:33.198
for BlackBerry and, besides,[br]a free PDF ten days later,

0:08:33.868,0:08:37.198
so the magazine can be read[br]regardless of the cost.

0:08:38.477,0:08:41.349
We promised those to write[br]and draw in the magazine

0:08:41.374,0:08:44.398
would be only people me[br]and Chiri admire a lot.

0:08:44.422,0:08:48.198
That it would be quarterly[br]and have more than 200 pages.

0:08:48.222,0:08:53.198
That it would cost the equivalent of[br]15 Saturday newspapers in every country.

0:08:54.777,0:08:57.999
We stated at the 8th item[br]that we were to put the money,

0:08:58.024,0:09:00.761
and that we were going to make it[br]even if it didn't sell.

0:09:00.936,0:09:05.198
The 9th item said that we would be happy[br]if we saved the investment.

0:09:05.769,0:09:10.300
and the 10th, that if we didn't save[br]the investment, we didn't give a fuck...

0:09:14.553,0:09:16.101
(Applause)

0:09:21.422,0:09:24.468
At that moment an amazing thing happened

0:09:24.492,0:09:26.998
within the community of the blog.

0:09:27.022,0:09:28.544
Something we hadn't foreseen:

0:09:28.569,0:09:32.075
the readers of Orsai spread the idea,

0:09:32.252,0:09:34.486
they told their friends

0:09:34.511,0:09:38.224
there were some men in their forties,[br]in a town hidden in the mountain

0:09:38.248,0:09:41.398
that wanted to make a[br]magazine of popular

0:09:41.422,0:09:45.472
literature, of chronic[br]narrative, with long texts,

0:09:45.496,0:09:48.650
just in the middle of the paper crisis.

0:09:49.222,0:09:52.396
Before even telling them[br]what the magazine was going

0:09:52.420,0:09:54.944
to be about, the readers[br]started buying it massively.

0:09:56.515,0:10:00.930
People put a faith that I hadn't seen[br]in a long time

0:10:00.954,0:10:02.554
in a cultural product.

0:10:03.206,0:10:07.614
It was bought by 10 000 people,[br]I repeat: without knowing its contents,

0:10:07.638,0:10:09.618
in pre-sale, before it was released.

0:10:10.341,0:10:14.389
And it was an expensive magazine:[br]16 euros in Europe, 12 dollars in America.

0:10:15.437,0:10:19.198
They bought it from everywhere, including[br]Salvadorans, Costa Ricans, Peruvians,

0:10:19.222,0:10:23.198
Latin Americans living[br]in Thailand, in Japan.

0:10:23.222,0:10:27.198
Readers from every region decided[br]to distribute it themselves.

0:10:27.222,0:10:31.198
We decided that magazines wouldn't be sold[br]per unit but in packs of ten,

0:10:31.222,0:10:35.878
so that you could distribute[br]the remaining nine in your area.

0:10:37.204,0:10:41.069
This way, we also killed[br]the intermediary for distribution,

0:10:41.093,0:10:42.226
which is a mafia.

0:10:42.539,0:10:46.003
Distribution gets[br]the 50% of the sale price

0:10:46.027,0:10:48.611
of every publication we buy.

0:10:48.658,0:10:53.989
The author gets the 8 %,[br]the big stores, the 50 %.

0:10:54.750,0:10:59.228
The first day of this year,[br]the first number of Orsai was released.

0:10:59.252,0:11:01.815
And we did so every three months,

0:11:01.839,0:11:04.927
until we reached the goal[br]of the four annual numbers.

0:11:04.952,0:11:08.448
The fourth number went on sale[br]just one week ago.

0:11:08.472,0:11:11.196
Every magazine weighs about a kilogram

0:11:11.220,0:11:15.946
and it makes a visual impact;[br]it has no advertising.

0:11:16.222,0:11:20.613
More than a hundred invited authors[br]wrote through these four numbers.

0:11:20.740,0:11:25.198
Among them Juan Villoro, Abelardo Castillo[br]Nick Hornby, Agustín Fernández Mallo.

0:11:25.222,0:11:27.793
It was illustrated by 'el negro' Cris,[br]Horacio Altuna,

0:11:27.818,0:11:30.953
Miguel Rep, Alberto[br]Montt, among many others.

0:11:31.403,0:11:33.868
They were all paid in euros.

0:11:34.222,0:11:38.988
In the middle of all that we discovered[br]that the dream was only possible

0:11:39.012,0:11:40.928
if we talked with the readers,

0:11:40.952,0:11:43.177
and so at mid-year,

0:11:43.201,0:11:46.262
when we were between[br]numbers two and three,

0:11:46.401,0:11:52.197
we decided, in an also rather risky way,[br]to turn into a publisher.

0:11:52.869,0:11:56.224
The idea was to take a standard contract

0:11:56.248,0:11:59.939
from my former publishing companies[br]and write the exact opposite.

0:12:02.334,0:12:04.511
The idea was not to defraud the authors;

0:12:04.535,0:12:06.668
the rights always for them.

0:12:07.062,0:12:11.348
If you wanted to leave the next day,[br]"Good night, you can leave, all OK".

0:12:15.213,0:12:21.483
And specially, the author is receiving[br]the 50 % of the sale's price,

0:12:21.920,0:12:24.554
instead of the 8-10%,

0:12:24.603,0:12:27.760
And even more, the author[br]has the possibility of, with a password,

0:12:27.785,0:12:31.703
checking every sale and reader online.

0:12:31.728,0:12:34.290
They also have the email[br]of that reader

0:12:34.529,0:12:37.317
to thank them or tell them:

0:12:37.342,0:12:40.615
"I know you're buying my books[br]and that you're paying to me."

0:12:41.937,0:12:45.650
We noticed, as we moved forward,[br]that Orsai was not a blog anymore

0:12:45.675,0:12:49.198
nor a magazine, or a[br]publishing house,

0:12:49.222,0:12:52.309
but it turned into a project[br]of the readers.

0:12:53.222,0:12:57.435
Two months ago we thought[br]of opening a bar in Buenos Aires,

0:12:57.460,0:13:02.870
a meeting place for those who read[br]the magazine, we named it Orsai.

0:13:03.192,0:13:06.104
One afternoon I asked[br]the readers of the blog

0:13:06.208,0:13:09.492
if they wanted a bar to be opened[br]and I also asked them

0:13:09.517,0:13:12.888
if anyone would like to join[br]the project as an investor.

0:13:13.343,0:13:17.814
We received 204 emails in 24 hours,

0:13:18.702,0:13:22.758
with people that wanted to put[br]1000 or 10 000, a nuts offered 80 000.

0:13:23.405,0:13:26.384
There were also people who had no money,

0:13:26.408,0:13:28.893
and they offered to paint the bar,

0:13:29.381,0:13:31.746
or to help us with the permits

0:13:31.786,0:13:34.644
as they worked in some ministry, etc.

0:13:34.668,0:13:37.292
Others offered to show[br]their paintings

0:13:37.316,0:13:40.190
or to play with their bands[br]once the bar was opened.

0:13:40.214,0:13:43.341
This occurred in early August this year.

0:13:44.002,0:13:47.748
The Orsai bar opened last Thursday[br]in the heart of San Telmo,

0:13:47.772,0:13:53.761
471 Humberto Primo, 2x1 beer before 10 pm.

0:13:55.137,0:13:59.787
There were so many people in the opening[br]we had to do it four times:

0:13:59.812,0:14:03.500
Thursday, Friday, Saturday[br]and last Sunday.

0:14:03.942,0:14:06.604
In March we will try opening[br]another bar in Barcelona,

0:14:06.628,0:14:10.010
using the same system of investment[br]of the readers,

0:14:10.034,0:14:13.418
and the goal for the next year[br]is to keep making magazines,

0:14:13.442,0:14:16.958
this time bimonthly, and besides[br]making a lot more books,

0:14:16.997,0:14:19.776
the goal will be to open a third bar[br]in Central America

0:14:19.801,0:14:22.544
to form a sort of Iberoamerican[br]triangle of culture,

0:14:22.568,0:14:24.568
or of the drunks who read, or something...

0:14:26.503,0:14:30.827
Two weeks ago we almost had[br]two and a half tons

0:14:30.852,0:14:34.537
of our books and magazines stopped[br]in Buenos Aires' customs,

0:14:34.562,0:14:37.418
due to a misunderstanding[br]with the Secretariat of Commerce.

0:14:37.706,0:14:42.198
It was a wonderful Thursday,[br]Orsai readers from all over the world

0:14:42.222,0:14:46.686
made a lot of noise in Twitter[br]with the slogan "Free Orsai".

0:14:47.400,0:14:52.198
And that was big, because 12 hours later[br]the Argentinian government heard us,

0:14:52.222,0:14:55.799
and the Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers[br]answered through Twitter

0:14:55.824,0:14:58.791
saying he would personally[br]solve the matter.

0:14:58.816,0:15:01.268
The magazines were[br]released by the next day.

0:15:01.292,0:15:05.198
It's the last story I will tell.[br]I believe that it means something.

0:15:05.222,0:15:07.997
I'm sure it's the beginning of something.

0:15:08.854,0:15:13.198
Cultural decisions are starting[br]to be more and more in our hands.

0:15:13.743,0:15:18.198
We no longer obey to voices in sole[br]speakers that tell us what to do.

0:15:18.222,0:15:21.198
It's us who communicate,

0:15:21.768,0:15:26.466
we are 400 million people[br]who speak Spanish.

0:15:27.133,0:15:29.566
Every one of us, every region,

0:15:29.590,0:15:31.917
has a different jargon[br]that makes us unique,

0:15:31.942,0:15:34.198
but that also enriches us.

0:15:34.883,0:15:40.175
We understand each other, the Internet[br]arrived some time ago to unite us,

0:15:40.200,0:15:44.986
to tell us we can do things together,[br]specially with culture,

0:15:45.010,0:15:48.198
which is the fundamental base[br]of the complexity of the mind.

0:15:48.222,0:15:54.459
Almost ten years ago I opened a blog[br]because I felt alone in a foreign country.

0:15:54.800,0:15:58.859
I felt in offside, I needed to communicate[br]with my people,

0:15:59.176,0:16:01.065
and so named it Orsai.

0:16:01.222,0:16:04.517
I am sure now that the cultural industry

0:16:04.541,0:16:06.741
are we, the readers and the authors.

0:16:06.766,0:16:08.197
And nobody else...

0:16:08.222,0:16:11.627
and that the other industry,[br]which is afraid of changes,

0:16:11.652,0:16:15.198
that tries to make us believe[br]that the Internet is a burden.

0:16:15.982,0:16:21.537
the one that scratches and hurts,[br]is dying and we'll watch it die.

0:16:22.037,0:16:25.198
Culture has to be free in every way.

0:16:25.998,0:16:32.198
I exhort authors and editors to,[br]every time you release a book,

0:16:32.222,0:16:36.122
upload a free PDF the same day,

0:16:36.146,0:16:37.746
because you will sell more.

0:16:37.927,0:16:42.198
We depended on a greedy industry[br]for years,

0:16:42.855,0:16:45.667
buying what they wanted us to buy.

0:16:45.691,0:16:48.816
Now suddenly, and more and more,

0:16:49.578,0:16:51.681
they're starting to be "orsai".

0:16:52.205,0:16:53.801
Thank you.