I was in a discussion with a friend last weekend at her swank new office. Suddenly we came across a point in social networking and SurfUnion popped up in my mind. If I ever come out with an autobiography there’s sure going to be a chapter dedicated to SurfUnion — a designers forum of which I was a proud member and an architect. Unfortunately the founding of SurfUnion is more interesting and worth discussing than the way we managed it.
In late 2003, five of my close buddies had wanted to do something worthwhile. We were at best designers with creative skills but worked out of home; some of them like me on a paltry sum. On the night of October 2nd, we launched a ‘designers only’ forum hiring some space on Buttclencher’s server. We decided to call it ‘SurfUnion’ or a group of surfing designers. The name took the imagination of all the admins as we liked to call ourselves and later we were joined by many. One of them was a geeky guy nicknamed Bane and was located in Colombo. Five of us – myself, Kreativea (Aadesh), Buttclencher (Raunaq), RanTen (Ranajit Tendolkar) and FlashKid (Isaac) operated from Mumbai. Thus we had a majority stake in the decision making process while LimeIce (Gursimran) located in Delhi and Ryche (Fahd) in Kolkata completed the admin lineup. The fabulous tagline of ‘We put the Desi in Design’ was suggested by Ryche in one of our online sessions. During our tenure, we arranged competitions and meetups that helped bring varied talents face-to-face.
At its peak when SU (as it was fondly called) was running, we had anywhere between 700-750 members, some of them from beyond India as well. In my role as the most active member, I am proud to have accumulated so many good friends that have remained with me even today. A sad gaffe on our part and a lag in attention forced us to shut down SU forever. The decision of not relaunching it was the most difficult and a tough one to take for the admins. It was an emotional setback for many of its union members who had made SU their second home. Graphic-Forums.com was the only successful community at that point in time and we decided to model SU on GF but make it the first Indian designers community. I am proud to say that we were successful in doing so.
Back in the early 2000s, social networking had not yet evolved like today. As technology progresses and social media acquires a new meaning, has the time come to start a new chapter for the union members? will a new look SurfUnion help promote design awareness, cater to the emerging technologies and look beyond just photoshop battles, to apply the knowledge in forging a stronger Indian design community? The answers beckon us and so does the fervor which has been glowing in my heart for a long time. It’s time to rise and think, all ye Union members!
Great idea Bhooshan. When is the launch party?
Elroy – I wish it would be that easy a solution. I wouldn’t have written this post in that case. It’s the erstwhile community that’ll decide whether they want SU to be revived. They will be the keepers and guardians of the content. I can just put my feelings across through this post.
Hey Bhooshan,
I am always in favour of SU. You know, the desi design is something, a whole new world can open up. For example, Mangesh over at aqshar.com has the taste in spiritual designs that perhaps no one else has and so on.
That kind of niche can certainly be favorite among the users worldwide. I would love to see the SurfUnion back online. But the thing is, to keep it fresh and alive.
Earlier when the SU closed, I gave you example of Stylegala. Look at it today. No fresh content, no active participation from the admins and stylegala is loosing the battle.
Would love to read more on this topic if some progress comes up.
Thanks
Bhavesh – I am glad there are people who want to get involved with an Indian forum like SU. The revival isn’t going to an easy task. As you’ve stated in the Stylegala episode, a similar phase came into SU and we stopped maintaining it for good. It resulted in the closure of the forums. It was a heartbreaking episode for everyone.
Just so that we do not face such a scenario again, I recommend we form a task force that can oversee, plan and decide on how the new forum should work and so and so forth. The task force should be a heady mix of like-minded people but from diverse backgrounds. This could be the first step towards setting up a permanent Indian forum on the web.
Yep. Right bhooshan. It would be a pleasure to help in whatever way I can. Let me know when you task force is taking shape.
Great news!! Bhooshan bhau count me in. Let me know the help you need.
dude! after reading this my mind has been racing to diff zones
did u just say social network or did u mean it, lets brainstorm, lets invest, lets do whatever it takes
for starters lets just start believing Surfunion aint dead yet !
Raunaq – to think that SU is forever living would be unjustified. Even while it was there we were engrossed in our careers. This is not to disparage the admin group but it was the need of the hour. It’s been around 2 years now and we have moved on from our earlier position and the nightmare of the fateful crash. Hopefully with lot more experience and maturity behind us, we can start to brainstorm on how we can revive SU.
I said “brainstorm” because there are several forums around the internet. To ensure that we have guests coming in at regular intervals we must offer something unique to them. The idea of SU perhaps was good enough for that time and age and it succeeded without question. Technology evolves and so do people and their wants. If we manage to notice those wants we can produce a better product.
true!
and thats why i said brainstrom first too
but at the same time do not forget SU was pretty much on impulse by people who were breaking into the industry with their own needs
we always will keep fading out of entities we create, we are too young to still call ourselves mature
but its never bad to start afresh with better ideas
lets just say Su lived its life as a message board
maybe the time demands something else now
so lets sit ideate and take a decision :)