This blog post presents the video called YouTube Turns 5: My YouTube Story.
For me, all of this started when I was using a camcorder at the 2006 NFL Draft and interviewed my friend Oakland Raiders Legend and Stanford Hall of Famer Michael Dotterer as we were walking to 21 Club restaurant in New York City.
On the way, Michael said "you're a vlogger, You should start video-blogging" or words to that effect. He also mentioned an online show called Rocketboom. That was here:
Later that year I was lucky enough to attend Vloggercon in San Francisco, and met a lot of interesting people including Irina Slutsky and Schlomo Rabinowitz, who produced the event:
The stars of Vloggercon were Amanda Congdon and Andrew Michael Baron the founders of Rocketboom. While not YouTube stars, Amanda and Andrew's daily video news show with videos hosted on their own site, drew as much as 125,000 viewers a day, and over 1 million during their celebrated argument over control of the company. That happened just a month after this presentation:
While their argument was nasty and publicly displayed it served to shine light on the value of video-blogging and vloggers.
It was also an example of what was possible for me.
In 2007 I became a YouTube Partner, which means I draw a monthly check based on the views my videos generate. That set in motion a number of events, from being on the CNN / YouTube Democratic Debate and the "coin question"...
Which now-Vice President Joe Biden answered very well at the debate:
That started a major change in my life and led to to being on my first national TV show, and on CNN, and one of my favorite videos:
And later that year I met YouTube Founder Chad Hurley at the BizWorld Luncheon:
Then there was the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and CNN's Jessica Ellis found me to be their on the scene iReporter. Of course, YouTube was right there with me and Matthew Modine and Willie Brown:
As of this writing I have posted 942 videos on YouTube and heading toward my 1,000th. I officially joined YouTube in April of 2006, so I'm past my 4th year mark with YouTube. But what's changed is that now I feel like I'm part of the YouTube family:
YouTube and vlogging have made me a better, more confident, and more thoughful person. It's actually helped my game business Sports Business Simulations, and for me, now, I have two jobs that I have to figure out how to merge into one. Whatever it comes to be, YouTube will be a part of it.
And yes, YouTube fixed my Channel, Zennie62.
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