Hurry Up And Wait

This is the first blog post of a three part series about my experiences as a presenter with fellow MCDM student Katherine Turner during the 2011 American Society of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico.  Part two Easy Like Sunday Morning

The Road Less Traveled

Last week was the second time I had been home in the last twenty years. Pick any excuse and I will tell you that’s the reason it’s been so long since I’ve been back to Puerto Rico. Truth be told it’s because I’ve been go! go! go! ever since I left developing a career as a visual journalist. I have documented small-town politics, the immigration debate in our nation’s capitol, the effects of the war in local communities, hurricane Katrina, the fall of Enron, and ground-breaking research being conducted by university faculty and students in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve photographed four U.S. presidents… but I haven’t been home.

My years of diverse experience have prepared me to react and adapt to the challenges of visual journalism in this ever-changing digital age and to laugh when I nearly drive off the road trying to photograph a middle-aged Vietnamese woman walking her ducks in the heart of Oregon wine country — leash and all.

For nearly a decade my work had been published worldwide on a regular basis. I always like to think that I am ready for my next challenge. Unbeknown to me, this challenge would be patience.

A Virtue I Don’t Have

Upon arrival in Puerto Rico I received an email indicating that “Ready, Set, Go!”, a short video Katherine Turner and I created, needed to be uploaded to a different site in order for it to be screened during the film festival kick-off of the 2011 ASLO conference otherwise it would not be shown.

No worries, right? Wrong.

Connecting via broadband for the first three days form the hotel room in Culebra was an exercise in futility. After alerting the hotel manager her reply was “I’ll let my internet guy know” and no expectations of resolving the issue was ever stated or implied. My sense of urgency was countered with “Eh, what you gonna do?”  My cell phone became the primary source of connectivity with the world. The only problem was Ithat  had little-to-no signal.

Don’t Stand So Close To Me

Puerto Rico has approximately 440 people per square mile (by contrast, the United States has 84 people per square mile according to the 2000 census). Everything takes twice as long. According to Internet world stats only 25% of the population use the Internet. In the last decade it has seen a 400% user increase. Mobile phones reign supreme as just a few years ago nearly 3,000,000 residents owned a cell phone, one of the highest penetration rates per capita in Latin America. For what I could see, lots of natives are on Facebook a with nearly 37% population reach. Broadband is a completely different story as the Puerto Rico Telephone Company is the only game in town.

Trying to upload a 35 MB video file and post to a blog via a mobile phone using sausage-size fingers — a disaster. I was alerted that the “panaderia” or bakery MIGHT have Wi-Fi and that I MIGHT be able to connect. I had tried to go to the panaderia earlier but they were closed. Hours of operations not posted. I asked a passerby when they opened and he replied “early.”

Well, Duh

I get to the panaderia early. The place is buzzing with locals getting breakfast outnumbering tourists two to one. I am in what it seems an eternal line as the counter seems further and further away. The airport bars on my Mac indicate full power … and I am connected! I quickly begin to upload and behind me a Puerto Rican woman asks, “What is that?”  I reply, “A MacBook.” Rolling her eyes at me, she says, “Well, duh. Why is your keyboard so strange looking?”  Embarrassed I reply, “Oh, it’s a shortcut keyboard cover for video editing.” As soon as the conversation begins I am surrounded by digital natives on their way to school waiting in line behind me from all sides. The conversation ping-pongs from every direction in the store in English, Spanish, and Spanglish about all things technology.

As the conversation progressed, I look up from the laptop and I am every emotion at once. Not because I might miss an important deadline, but because I am home.