TheCuso – 2009

Ah…It’s over, 2008 was the best year with you guys so far, I enjoyed every second of it and so did my cards.

So many good things happened that I won’t be able to recall every moment but I’ll try to sum up what I would consider to be the highlights of the previous year.

TheCuso.info experienced a daily growth of readers, commenters, contributors and subscribers, with an average of over a thousand hits a day. It clearly established itself as the leader blog in the field.

A lot of people tell me that my site is not a blog anymore but I always have the same reply:

TheCuso, as opposed to a forum or a magic store, selects the best news and videos that appeared in our communities from the point of view of an experienced card artist, and try to filter the millions of meaningless threads and content-devoid videos that flood us these days.

TheCuso doesn’t try to sell you anything, I get close to zero profit for doing this other than the joy of creating a good archive of cardistry news, videos and tutorials for the future, meeting amazing people and being respected by the ones I used to admire back when I was starting out in this world.

The fact that every single day I get emails and private messages from starters and strangers from all around the world telling me how much they like what I’m doing, and asking themselves how did I managed to turn that little free domain blog into what it is now. That’s the best motivation to continue.

The feed counter was trying to reach the five hundred mark and I bet this year we will beat it and maybe a couple of hundreds more. I can’t be thankful enough to my email subscribers, RSS readers and Twitter followers, who get my updates sooner than anyone and make me proud of being able to join the different sides of the art in a site where we judge people for their talent, skills and style no matter which group or team they come from.

The site design has changed again to a more professional and 2.0ish look with a videoblog wordpress theme that is easier to navigate around and retrieve back some good old posts.

My YouTube account continues to grow as well although I haven’t been posting as many videos as I have used to in the past. With over three thousand subscribers, it is one of the most famous cardistry, xcm or flourishing channels on the internet. It scares me to think how many people talk about TheCuso at the other side of the world, belive me when I say it’s scary.

In 2008, I made my first two card-related trips around Europe and got to meet the pros.

In September, I went to Paris to meet up with Scenacle, the frenchies, and we sessioned in the Louvre Museum, an awesome day that I will never forget.

In October, I went to Lund, Sweden for the Magic Weekend convention were I finally could shake their hands and hug the guys whom I’ve been talking to all this time over the internet. It truly was a blast.

I have also released some footage of my new material and surprised a lot of people that didn’t know I was still active in the shadows, improving everyday. The reactions I got were way above what I have expected.

As I have said, I can’t write about everything in a single post but I can tell you that this is just the beginning, I have some aces up my sleeve and projects and plans for the near future with some big names but you’ll be informed when it is time.

As a little teaser, I will tell you that I’ve just won an auction for a Canon HV30, so expect a few videos from me as soon as it arrives.

Well, I wish you an even better year this time and I encourage you to keep it up for the sake of the art.

Happy 2009,

Alejandro Portela Torres.

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