22 March,2018 08:54 AM IST | Mumbai | Shunashir Sen
It was sometime in 2008. We had been sitting with a bunch of friends at one of their houses. A Jethro Tull album was playing on the computer, when one of them said that there is a fantastic live version of a particular song. "Do you guys want to watch it?" he asked. "Watch it?" we thought, wondering, "What does he mean? Does he have a CD or something of the live concert?" And that's when he logged on to YouTube to play the video for the track he was talking about. We had only heard about the nascent online platform until then, after it had just been launched in India that very year. But then what our friend did that evening is, without any exaggeration, change our world.
Now, 10 years later, YouTube has of course metamorphosed into the sort of corporate giant that shapes content across innumerable platforms. And once a year, Google, which owns the website, organises YouTube FanFest in various cities across the world. The basis for it is simple. Popular content creators - or "YouTubers" - are brought within an arm's distance from their fans, performing live across a range genres, be it music, comedy or dance. And in the process, the local and international performers also pick each other's brain, trying to find avenues where they can collaborate in order to increase their number of followers.
Glimpses from the Hyderabad edition of the YouTube FanFest
Take Collins Key for example. A magician who came into the limelight three years ago with America's Got Talent, Key has now evolved into a YouTube star with almost 11 million subscribers. He's in Mumbai at present for the FanFest that will be held in the city this weekend, and the Californian says, "I am excited to join forces with some really big Indian creators around, as well as about performing live before 10,000 people. We have seen an enormous amount of Mumbai in two days, while doing some street magic that we plan to build content around. I am surprised to see the number of fans I have in India."
Collins Key
Fans, he adds, are in fact the source of many of his video ideas. "The shift I made [from being just a magician to someone who does other videos as well] was primarily fan-driven. I was constantly asking them what other type of content they would like to see outside of magic. And a lot of them said, 'Hey, we would love to see you do something with food.' Or, 'Hey, we would love to see you jump into a pool with $1,000 worth of slime.'"
That sort of online engagement will now be played out at a more physical level at the FanFest, which will also involve meet-and-greet sessions. "We have something called a Creator Camp too, where all the performing artistes give other YouTubers tips on how they can enhance their content. It's like a tutorial," Raashi Sanghavi, one of the organisers, informs. She adds that one of the biggest challenges was to ensure that the Indian edition of the event matches the standard seen in other places around the world. "The quality that you have elsewhere is not that easy to find in India. And this event is not like one of our indigenous music festivals, which is completely our own. We have no reference point for them. But that's not the case here. So meeting those international standards is something we had to constantly think about."
On March 23, 7 pm
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