On Google, the name Arturo Goga returns 279 thousand results and they all have to do with a 36-year-old Peruvian Nikkei communicator, who began a hobby for technology when he was a child, and which he has turned into a successful blog and a full-time job. , achievements that not everyone can have in the digital age. His interest began in the years of Atari and the new computers with CD rom readers, and has continued until the era of robotics and artificial intelligence, explaining these topics so that they are accessible to everyone.
“I remember that my parents and my uncle exchanged a radio for an Atari 2600 and that's when I became a technology fan,” says Arturo 1 with two smartphones, an iPhone and a Huawei. Then his father, Fernando Goga, a chemical engineer who loved technology (“he was always watching the latest radio or television that appeared”) spent a lot of money on a Compaq computer that he took out in installments, and that was his educational toy. His curiosity led him to take it apart, program it and repair it. “It broke down all the time,” he says, smiling.
This same self-taught learning through technology has been transferred to other stages of his life, such as English. “I learned this language before they taught it to me in school with an Indiana Jones video game. At that time I needed a dictionary at my side, but when I got to school I took a test and they exempted me from the course.” If technology is an advance that helps us live better, Arturo was ahead of the digital trades when in 2006 he opened a technology blog to help those who had problems with these devices.
From blog to videoblog
“At that time there were no media specialized in technology, except for PC World magazine, which only published press releases but did not give you an opinion,” recalls Arturo, who decided to study journalism and advertising by opening his first blog on Wordpress under his name. “My university budget was only enough to buy the domain and hosting,” he says, remembering that in those years there were no digital journalism courses.
Soon his blog began to have enough traffic to generate his first income. Many of its readers were in Mexico and Spain, where Internet penetration is greater. Also in Colombia, where he attended his first conference as a technology blogger. "At first it was a hobby, I wrote for an entertainment magazine, but when the blog took off and I had significant income from advertising clicks, I decided to dedicate myself to it one hundred percent."
From those years you can read topics such as “Essential applications for Linux”, “Try Office 2007, without having to install it” and “Opensource templates, free templates, to create websites”. Now, the blog is divided into categories such as Apps, gadgets, games, mobile phones and startups, but above all its product reviews and tutorial videos are well known. “I am a digital native but I grew up looking for information in search engines, now many prefer to watch a video,” he comments.
From video blogger to influencer
His YouTube channel has more than 26 thousand subscribers and more than seven million views. One of Arturo's keys was to make frequent posts on his blog (sometimes up to seven or eight a day) and on his channel he is in charge of editing the videos and hosting, which involves going to many conferences, presentations and trips. . In six months of 2019, he has already left Peru 15 times to visit places where innovation in technology is taking place, especially the United States, China and Europe. Japan is still a pending issue.
Among his latest coverage is the launch of the new ACER laptops, for which he traveled to New York , his visit to China to see the Huawei facilities and his presence at the opening of the Copa América 2019 in Brazil , invited by the firm Mastercard to learn about advances in contactless payments. “Here, even to buy popcorn at the stadium, they have bracelets for payments, money is no longer needed,” he says.
Without a doubt, the popularity of his blog and his channel has led him to be highly sought after by technology brands, which has led him to be considered an influencer, that is, a person whose opinion is highly valued by his followers. This, you know, can also have negative consequences. “Many young people have gained a lot of popularity on social networks and have not known how to handle it, I consider myself a blogger, I don't recommend what I don't like,” he clarifies.
From screen to life
If technology has changed the world, Arturo Goga has several ways to attest to it. One of his oldest videos, for example, is the creation of his logo through a website called Logoease that now looks very rudimentary. Then there was the startup fever in Peru, which in recent years has mutated into business incubators within business and financial groups. He has seen the evolution of smartphones and cameras, as well as connectivity in the country.
“In Peru we have fairly economical data plans compared to others in the region, but technology advances so much that it always seems to be a few steps ahead.” In San Francisco, he saw self-driving cars, which are connected to each other and to traffic lights, reducing the risk of accidents and traffic; new facial recognition systems and flexible screens.
He has seen how in his parents' house, whose parents in turn came from Okinawa, one of the most traditional islands in Japan, that radio that they exchanged for their first Atari has been replaced by Bluetooth-connected speakers so that his mother, Rosa Ytokazu , who is a member of the Okinawan dance school Ryuseihonryu Ryuseikai, can enjoy music anywhere.
In his field, he has seen the emergence of more independent technology journalists, although those from traditional media still have an advantage when it comes to overseas coverage. In thirteen years writing about technology, he has written for El Comercio , has had a technology block on radio Oxígeno and maintains a parallel version of his website on the blog of the newspaper Gestión . The future? Continue writing and making videos, trying to ensure that technology, that hobby turned into a job, continues to surprise you.
Sunglasses with built-in speakers , light bulbs that turn on via Bluetooth without the need for electrical wiring, and robots that care for the elderly (it measures vital signs, reminds them to take their medicine at defined times and “thanks to the fact that it has emergency, it is capable of knowing when we have fallen or collapsed and automatically call Emergency” 2 ) make us think that your blog will continue to be useful for thousands of people.
Grades:
1. Watshoitv, " Nikkei News - Interview with Arturo Goga " (YouTube.com, July 12, 2013).
2. Arturo Goga, " The Robots of CES 2019 " ( Management , January 11, 2019)
© 2019 Javier García Wong-Kit
