Vlog International: collaboration across borders · Global Voices
Juliana Rincón Parra

Vlog International is a project bringing together Spanish speaking vloggers: people submit their ideas, one is chosen and everyone records their piece, someone edits them together and they are published on their site. They began in 2006, when a group of friends got together to do a video homage for a vlogger friend [es]: it was through his website that everyone had met, and they wanted to recognize that fact publicly. The next project happened organically: the friend who had organized the first collaborative video was going through a rough spot in his life, and everyone else decided to record a birthday wish on video: they recorded themselves singing happy birthday, playing the song on instruments, dancing and sitting in front of cakes with candles, and that video can be found by following this link[es].
They began calling these experiences “Sancocho de Video“: sancocho is a name that refers to many different soups from all around Latin America. The latest video by the Vlog International group is about a walk around the block. Vloggers in Colombia, Israel, Canada, Germany and the USA all shared their surroundings. You can see it by clicking here or by pressing play on the following video.
Vlog International already has 31 collaborative videos up on their blip.tv page and they are always hoping to add more video bloggers to their site. All that is needed is for the person interested to make a 1 minute video: 30 seconds explaining where they are and who they are, and 30 seconds recording the following “mission” video, then uploading the video and emailing them the link. Instructions in Spanish can be found here.
These videos have all been released under a Creative Commons license, and you can share in on the process by reading their wiki. Browsing through their different episodes is a great way to get a global perspective on the same issue. On the following video[es], the Vloggers take us on a tour away from the supermarkets and into the different traditional marketplaces of France, England, Italy, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, the USA, Chile, Spain and Colombia.