Journey of Futz - My Flawed Documentation

When i came onboard, the decision to conduct an online workshop was already taken. The big news was 30K Rs were at stake and there was still no facebook page where the contest was supposed to take place. It also came across that there’s an App in making which will handle the second round of contest and that the first round of social media would be entirely based on Facebook and Instagram. Also, the aim of the contest was to test, debug and run the App which was supposed to be the ultimate product of Futz. 

A few things happened in the due course :

1. A Team of more than 20 interns from all across the country were hired and paid for each successful entry they were bringing in for the contest.
2. Chandramauli and Sparsh sat back to analyse the fair entries based on metadata and to select the entries. The entries would then have to gather social media attention.
3. Facebook Ads were used, Personal references and sponsoring.

The Team of interns worked well and got us good entries, it was also good because the reach was then not just Delhi but the different parts of the country. The sponsoring part got us talking to a few prestigious college photography groups and we ended up being the workshop partners along with Canon for Tasveer, the photography society of IIITD. We got to talk to the people who had attended Canon’s workshop for 10 minutes where we convinced them about our Idea (I don’t know Why but it was fun) and told them about the contest. It was all in pursuit of gathering organically interested people who are serious about photography. Both the workshop and contest had this similar purpose, form a community of genuine people interested in photography. The workshop was attended almost 50 people and I still remember bargaining a deal with IIIT guys to get us host their contest on our App which if the app was ready would have been a massive break.

The contest i recall gave us more than 500 entries, including not so legit entries. The people who cleared the first round were i guess somewhere around 30 (needs checking). The App was still not functionally ready and the debugging cannot be part of the plan when the hype around something is so huge - I recall a little frustration around that time and the result of the contest was also i would say, not so fair where the second prize winner was the president of Tasveer, a compensating and emotional decision by me and Sparsh. However, we got the hang of workshop and realised doing contest and incentivising photography enthusiasts for money is really a shortcut. We got ethically motivated and decided to conduct free and fair workshop in some College. We had Chandramauli who felt he could be the Steve Jobs to the photography kids. We got a deal cracked at NSIT and somewhere in August we managed to collaborate with Junoon, their photography society. The Futz workshop was our attempt to redefine how photography workshop must be done. However, i remember embarrassingly sleepy within a few minutes of the workshop. I would still confess, the ones who were really into Photography liked Chandramauli and his points, he used a lot of jargon and language i atleast couldn't understand - much like handing a Hindi Medium guy Resnick Halliday to solve Physics.

With the attendance of 70-80, the feedback was mediocre which is also because those fuckers conducted this workshop right on the day of Freshers thing and made these innocent freshers sit through Chandramauli’s glamorous rant of how physics and photography are close relatives.

I wont say the workshop was our moment of Nirvana but it gave me a feeling that we are still going for shortcut and not hitting the purity maybe because we were unsure of ourselves. The App until then was in the place to show some output and the tie we made with Junoon helped. Sparsh wanted the App to have education modules that are interactive and then teach the enthusiast enough to give them work, a problem that when came to solving opened our eyes wide.

We realised a normal workshop wont do and we need to do a workshop that’s different. The idea of the workshop went a little back and we pushed to make the App functional. The Educational module saw us visiting both IIITD and NSIT but we failed to create any video despite heavy incentive for one. The new year came with new energy and some revamped spirit.

WOW  and Futz 2.0

We wanted to conduct a workshop but the workshop couldnt be a classroom workshop. We wanted to hold something experiential. So the idea was -

“Find a coworking space in an area surrounded by view good enough for street, nature and architectural photography, probably HKV.”

Me and Manik did some recce, we went to CP and HKV but failed to find any place that was affordable enough for the workshop. Akshara Theatre was my favorite but they demanded 25K for a few hours which seemed unbearable. Lodhi Gardens, Habitat Centre had its own issue. A tired evening, the idea of hiring a bus and taking the photographers to places came to our head. 30 Photographers in a bus along with Chandramauli Sir, the Star and moving around city to capture events is a simple idea but took us all that while to be at. 2 months prior to the event the preparations began, selling of tickets through the database we had collected at IIITD and NSIT. We used Eventshigh, Facebook, Instagram, our previous networks and our minor breakthrough with LBB. The ticket rates fluctuated, while they went as low as 500, they went as high as 1600 which was twice the base price. Everything was new : from looking for events to booking of the bus with a screen to looking for meal. We fixed ourselves on three events : DTU ColorRun, ThrillZone’s Noida Half Marathon, Pragati Maidan’s Crafts Museum and NSP’s Fashion Show. All the three events located on distinct nodes in Delhi asked for different types of photography. The event took place on 25th March last year and was a major success. It was close to profitability but rather important factor was the creative satisfaction the workshop offered to the photographers and to us as organisers. We still remember the participants becoming friends over a photo clicked at color run where a couple was kissing! The workshop with ace mentor, good participants filtered well and at a better ticketing price, with events also paying back can be a profitable event organising deal i feel.

The workshop was eventually conducted to gather a loyal, desperate, enthusiastic and willing workforce in the domain of photography. The App would connect all these photographers and would lead to organic growth of photographers. What comes first? The Photographers or the jobs, the answer is photographers! The photographers would come to the App through workshops and other interesting artistic activites we planned and would stay on the App not just for jobs but for a virtual incentive similar to the workshop on wheels. They would get to mentor their own small workshops, they would get to visit more professional events in mini workshops and not just showcasing their work, the app must fill all the holes in instagram that makes insta good for the masses but really not so much to the creative photographers. All of this pursuit went missing. The App became just a place for the jobs while lack of not continuing with the workshop lead to the problem of slow growth of photographers. What became the chicken egg problem was not really a problem but a hint that our workshops should have continued, really!

The App in its job giving form worked for a little period of time with the active users reaching to a good number slowly. The app with it’s new interface to show the work was good but messy. The professional photographers who used the app found the opportunities not worth their talent and the newer photographers with their messy work proved too young to get into work. We had cases where we had to take up responsibility of a photographer who did a bad job while we just wanted to be the mediators, we had a case where we as a team got over involved into the work due to our desperateness. Both of living in the two extremes and lead to the ultimate demise of Futz. The App needed to be complimented by a working website which was missing and missing was the pool of photographers we could rely on for emergencies or for tasks that required really professional team. The idea has a lot of potential but needs a clinical treatment i feel. The App for photographers, The website for businesses and the workshop to find talent, all these combined can lead to great magic. It’s just that this would require setting up of a network which is work of few years and not few days, bringing in talent that would stay and in this process making enough money to flourish the network, otherwise this would result in us being over exploited which we felt we were at many points.

Everything was supposed to compliment the App, the App failed because we wanted to make it work like a website. We have to remember, when someone hears of Futz they arent going to go to the playstore but type this out on google. When someone downloads the App they want to get something fast enough for them to stay, the job givers are posting their requirements on photography groups, they need to get a very clear idea of looking at the talent in a glance over the app or website - that is our responsibility. The workshop needs to be complimented by the App. WE were never really sure if we are a tech startup vying in the creative industry or creative startup with a tech hangover, the clarity could have helped.