Hummingbird604 is Raul Pacheco-Vega, PhD

Dr.Raul Pacheco-Vega is well-known in social networking circles as Hummingbird604. In his blog, he charms, engages and informs about issues ranging from the personal to the political. He sat down with Linda Solomon last week to talk about the power of networks and the nourishing qualities of good conversation between friends.

VO: How did you come to call yourself Hummingbird 604?

Pacheco-Vega: I touch type over 90 words per minute. I speed read and I have photographic memory. So I do things that are really fast and the fastest bird that you have is the hummingbird. If you see my behaviour online and offline, it’s like the hummingbird. I’m always in movement. And 604, we live in the 604 area. Ironically, my cell phone is 778.

VO: When did you launch your Hummingbird604 blog?

Pacheco-Vega: I started it in April of 2006 on a Blogspot blog. Finally in March of 2008, I moved to WordPress and never looked back. My blog started to become really popular after I moved to WordPress. At the time, the tracking incoming links, the back tracking and incoming links capabilities were far superior there than at Blogspot.

VO: Once you could see that, what happened?

Pacheco-Vega: I started linking to blogs that were built on WordPress and people who would come back and see that I had a link to them, dropped a comment and that started building.

In July of 2007 about a year and a half into my blog, I came across Rebecca Bollwitt’s blog, Miss 604. I emailed her and said hi and that I had heard about this Blogathon that she had mentioned. I said, “What is it and do you think I should do it?” On July 26 of 2007, Rebecca and I participated in Blogathon (our first). By 2007, Rebecca was already very popular in the blogging scene. I was nobody. But I think everybody said, “Who is this hummingbird604 guy that Rebecca is linking to?” She taught me a lot about blogging and WordPress and I’m really grateful for that.

Then in January of 2008 I met Rebecca for the first time and we hit it off. We got along really well, we've become really good friends. We have different personalities yet we get along famously. I’m outgoing, crazy noisy and loud, while Rebecca is more soft-spoken. She’s lovely. She’s adorable.

VO: And you both love communicating.

Pacheco-Vega: Yes, and we also communicate with each other a lot. When we first met Rebecca started encouraging me and giving me good blogging tips and advice. I call her my Blogging Jedi Master. I think we were talking on G-Talk, around March of 2008 when I said to her, “I bow to you Oh Jedi Master.” And it's stuck, I was her blogging Padawan and she has been my blogging Jedi Master.

The other reason I think for my blog’s increasing popularity was the fact that I joined Twitter in April of 2008. Then, I started going to the Blogger Meetups. April 2008 was, I believe, my skyrocketing month. I met Isabella Mori (who blogs at http://www.moritherapy.org) in January of 2008, she blogs amongst other things, about depression. In April of 2008, she said “why don’t you become the organizer of Vancouver Blogger Meetup?” I said “how about I become the assistant organizer for now.” I organized a couple of meetings and they went well. So I said “fine, all worked well, so I'll accept and become the full-on organizer” and that was that.

VO: I've just been reading Chris Anderson's book "Free: The Future of a Radical Price." He notes, "People are making lots of money charging nothing. Not nothing for everything, but nothing for enough that we have essentially created an economy as big as a good-sized country around the price of $0.00." Do you find “free” valuable?

Pacheco-Vega: A lot of my popularity has stemmed from the fact that I’ve done a lot of free work. I have given a lot to the community and in doing so, the community gives back too.

I no longer accept things that aren’t paid as easily as I used to. I think at the beginning I was very much a free spirit. I had funding, my savings and grants and was also working full time in the academic world, so I could do some work for free. Right now it’s not as easy for me to do things for free. Nor does it make financial sense.

VO: You couldn’t have been a social networking consultant if you hadn’t have done so much for free.

Pacheco-Vega: Right. I have built a reputation as a social media specialist. Why? I think it's because I’ve tested the tools and I've demonstrated their use. Sometimes I’ve given talks on social media for free. That is what has enabled me to demonstrate that I can do things in the social media space.

VO: That’s the fun of it, when you start engaging with people.

Pacheco-Vega: A lot of the things I’ve done for free have built me a reputation, definitely. And my engagement has helped.

VO: It sounds like you’ve built a reputation while you were having fun and doing what you love.

Pacheco-Vega: Absolutely. I love communicating and sharing my thoughts, and it's great that this has helped me build a reputation. It is important to build a reputation and then it is important to manage your reputation.

VO: So now you have made friends amongst your follows and followers?

Pacheco-Vega: 80% of my cell phone numbers are friends I made through the blogosphere.

VO: Are you a small town boy or big city guy?

Pacheco-Vega: I’m an urbanite. I’ve spent extended periods of my life in Madrid, Paris, and London. I've also lived in Manchester (England) and now Vancouver (Canada). But my parents live in a smaller city in central Mexico.

VO: How many kids are in your family?

Pacheco-Vega: Five, all boys.

VO: You were in a large social network weren’t you?

Pacheco-Vega: Yes. I learned the value of having people on your side

My grandfather was in the military so, in many ways, my dad thought through the military lens. He sort of trained us as soldiers. My mom shared this view which is interesting. She agreed that we needed to be well-rounded people and my dad believed in rigor, discipline and perfection. Anything we did had to be done to perfection because we were talented, smart and we had a very solid family structure, so we were expected anything we did to do really well.

VO: What happened if you didn’t perform up to par?

Pacheco-Vega: They wouldn’t punish us, but they would encourage us to do better. Because we were trained that way from the beginning, we were competing with each other from the beginning. Our parents said we had to be good at four things: we had to be good human beings, good scientists, good sportsmen and good artists. We had to do all of them and do them well. That was an expectation.

VO: And did everybody succeed?

Pacheco-Vega: I have two brothers with PhDs from American universities and two brothers with Masters (from Canadian and American universities). And then there is me with a Masters and a PhD, having studied in Canadian, American and British universities.

VO: What did your parents do?

Pacheco-Vega: My parents are lawyers. My dad does family law and a little intellectual property. My mom does civil law and has a PhD in political science, and now she is a professor of political science at a university.

VO: What was your perspective on the world when you lived in Mexico?

Pacheco-Vega: I was exposed to multiple cultures ever since I was a kid. My parents told me from the very beginning that we would transcend the borders of Mexico, and I always wondered. Having lived in so many other countries, when people ask if I go home to Mexico, I almost never refer to Mexico as my home. Vancouver is my home. BC is where I thrived. BC is where I blossomed. Of all the cities where I’ve lived, this is the city where I’ve lived the longest. I have amazing friends all over the world, including Mexcio, but my life is here now. While I see myself as a citizen of the world, I see myself as a global Vancouverite.

VO: How many years have you been here?

Pacheco-Vega: On and off for a decade.

VO: Do you think Vancouver is a global city?

Pacheco-Vega: Vancouver does have some very small town characteristics, but not in a bad way.
I can bump into people in Vancouver. I get stopped on the street and asked “are you Hummingbird604” and I’m like “uh... yes”, which comes to demonstrate that this city is really small and the world is really small and I love it. Even when I’m disconnected people tell me they read my blog or follow me on Twitter. I say, “Have you ever talked to me?” They say, “I read you on Twitter.” Then I respond “that’s not the point, talk to me!”

L: Are we shifting into people that communicate through our fingertips and computers?

R: Possibly, but I will admit that I am a phone freak. I love talking on the phone. The rates for my cell phone are really inexpensive on the weekend and I walk everywhere, so I pick up the phone and I think, who haven’t I caught up with among my friends? And then I call them.

Do I still use the phone? Absolutely. Do I love it? I do love hearing a person’s voice.

VO: You don’t think people have lost the art of conversation?

Pacheco-Vega: No, and I actually think I’m pretty right on the mark about that. Last year, in 2008, I was invited to an event, the Gastown Dialogues on the Future of the Web, organized by Kevin Grandia and Evan Leeson. These are roundtables where you get together a bunch of very diverse people to talk about internet and society.

At the first Gastown Dialogues, I said that 2009 was going to be the year of testing the tools. We were going to continue testing the use of tools like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Viddler, Blip.fm. 2010 is going to be back to basics. “Back to basic” to me is back to the conversation. I would like to believe that I am the poster boy for online and offline conversation.

Social networking builds relationships. That’s where I think I’ve been the most successful, which brings me to the first thing we talked about. I continue to be fascinated by networks. And the thing that separates me from others is that I understand and I can model the behavior of my social networks. I can (more or less accurately) predict the behavior of my network. I'm very analytical (the academic in me I guess) That is the key to any successful social media exercise.

For example, after you publish this interview, you will tweet it and I will re-tweet it to my network. My network is an extensive network of people who trust me. When they click on that link they will learn a lot about me and they will see interspersed in the conversation names of people that they may trust or that they see I trust, or both.

I am helping in building trust (in you and others). I am adding to your trust value, whether you ask for it or not, whether you want it or not. I am building it because I am trusting you and I’m passing on that trust.

VO: You’ve done all this for free, and I’m doing this for free and yet we’re creating tremendous value.

Pacheco-Vega: This comes back to the issue of free. Yes, you can read the interview, but you won’t have more in-depth access to me (and my insights) beyond what you've read. That’s what you pay for in a consultancy project or my speaking fee. This is an interesting balance. I do like giving away stuff for free, but I also like making a living!

VO: It’s an interesting balance and it’s the line we’re going to be walking all the way into the future.

Pacheco-Vega: If someone asks me “how to do a blog, ” I will direct them to my blog and what I've written about. But if you want me to come and you tell me “I want you to do a diagnostic of my social media strategy”, then that is going to cost you. It's only natural to make a living.


Dr. Pacheco-Vega has conducted independent research on waste water governance, comparative environmental policy in North America, urban sustainability and environmental NGO mobilizations. He is also a member of the Consultative Group for the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (NACEC)’ North American Pollutant Release and Transfer Registry. To read his blog click here. For his research blog, click here.

Photo of Raul Pacheco-Vega by Linda Solomon