Javier Cobas

The Short Version

I'm a communication professor at Miami Dade College, a video producer with credits at HBO and AWS, and the founder of COVEN, a company that builds digital infrastructure for businesses.

I grew up in Miami. First-generation Cuban-American. My dad has been in video production since the nineties. He shot political ads for Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Marco Rubio before most people knew their names. I was in one of those commercials when I was five. The camera was always around.

First in my family to leave home for college. Started at FSU, realized the program had me waiting years to touch a camera I'd been using since high school, came back to Miami, got my AA at MDC, finished at FIU. It wasn't linear. Few things worth doing are.

The Cigar Shop

When I got back to Miami, my dad had just opened a cigar shop a block off Miracle Mile. I started working there on Fridays and Saturdays. One night I'm watching a video about not wasting your twenties, and I look around and think: we close at 10 on a Friday, there are bars everywhere around here, and people are going to want a cigar at 11. So I started staying open until midnight.

Two weeks later, a guy walks in at 10:45 PM. We start talking. Turns out he runs a production company. I show him a video I made in high school because it's the only thing I have. He can't believe a kid made it. A month later, he's bringing me on shoots. He took me under his wing for the next four years. Through him, I got connected to a production house, and through them, I got to HBO.

My whole career happened because I decided to stay open two extra hours on a Friday night.

What I Actually Do

I teach people how to communicate. In the classroom, on camera, on stage, online. Communication isn't just talking. It's the foundational skill that makes everything else work. Business, relationships, leadership, content. All of it starts with your ability to get a message from your head into someone else's.

At MDC, I teach SPC 1017 (Intro to Communication) and SPC 2608 (Intro to Public Speaking). My students don't just write essays. They build podcasts, shoot video projects, give presentations. The assignment arc goes from text to images to live speaking to audio to video. By the end, they've created in every medium that matters online.

Outside the classroom, I build things. COVEN is the company. Video production, website development, AI-powered digital infrastructure. It all runs through the same thing: communication technology and where it's headed.

How I Think

I think about the four elements of the internet: video, audio, text, and still images. Everything online is one of those four things, or a combination. Once you understand that framework, the way you approach content, marketing, and communication shifts completely.

I was podcasting in 2017, before it was a thing. I understood what NFTs meant for content ownership back when most people were still calling them JPEGs. I'm not a futurist. I just pay attention to where communication technology is headed instead of where it is right now.

My title is Communicator. Not producer, not professor, not founder. All of those are real, but they're just different rooms in the same house. The house is communication.