‘I’ for Internet…‘I’ for Imagination
(To read this article in Marathi Click Here)
This is how The Bun Maska Corner Blog was born!
We first published 'The Bun Maska Corner' on the auspicious day of Vijayadashami this year (2022.) As with any new project, we had our apprehensions. Initially, we shared the blog's link with only our close ones to gauge the response. To our relief, the blog was well received and we got a lot of love in the form of reads, comments, and calls.
With four authors, the blog was shared across four broad groups of acquaintances next. Universally, the first reaction was about the beautiful look of the website. Most readers complimented us on the design of the website and our style of content presentation. The obvious question asked was, "Who built this site?" Our happy answer was, "We made this site!" As four medical professionals it came as a surprise for everyone that we had built it all ourselves.
It all started because of our friendship. The four of us met somewhere in the year 2000 and since then we have had many memorable moments together. Our life in college really rocked. My best friend wanted us to have a hospital together, so that, we could live the rest of our lives just like our college days. As I look back today, I realise how awesome his idea was. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen quite that way.
First for post graduate education and then for life in general, we went our separate ways. With time, the distances between us kept increasing. But thankfully, we live in a connected world and despite the physical distance our friendship remained intact; as did the desire to build something together, to work on a project together. We were all good at penning down our thoughts, so a friends’ blog had been on my mind for a long time. The pandemic taught us how fragile life could be. It was an eye-opener that kindled a strong desire to start this project rather than just keep dreaming about it. So, phone calls were made, and everyone was excited about starting the blog.
We wanted to have our own website, not just a blog page. A website where we could update content whenever we wanted, on our terms. We thought it was best to build it ourselves. We did some research on YouTube. There are many guides and tutorials about building a website on your own and one of them lead us to ‘Squarespace’. Almost all the videos we watched suggested it as the most user-friendly tool to build a website and we decided to go with it. It's a paid tool but thankfully they had a fifteen day free trial. We started the trial by playing around with the templates. One particular template seemed to envision a complete picture of the future website. Amazingly, building a website on "Squarespace" didn’t require any knowledge of coding or other technicalities. All we needed was to visualise the website in our minds and modify our template as we went along with that vision. The process was so easy and enjoyable that in two days the basic website was up and running. As we accommodated our requirements and tweaked and garnished the site, in about a week’s time the site attained it’s current beautiful look (please forgive our creator's pride here.)
The content on the blog was all about the ideas popping up in our heads. We expressed those ideas to each other, discussed if anything could be written about them, chose images that would go with those ideas and consulted each other on many other things. This required a constant back channel talk amongst ourselves. We therefore, formed a group on "Signal" messenger (we feel it has better privacy standards than WhatsApp) and moved our discussions and debates to the "Signal" group. Many a times, an idea for a post would be borne out of these 'friendly' chats.
As the launch date approached, some important issues came up which could not be tackled simply by text. So, we had some virtual meetings on 'Zoom' where we could share our screens and discuss the finer details of the website. Once the blog was released and we started posting content, we realised how many things needed to be addressed in the background for each post. We needed to collaborate for editing and polishing the drafts, finalising the images to accompany them, deciding the titles and captions, generating content for social media etc, etc. Our Signal group and Zoom meetings fell short of achieving an effective way of doing this. It was time to move to a better collaboration tool that would let us work individually, but yet, in unison. We again turned to the internet and after some online research, we came upon 'Trello' - a platform for collaborative work. We now work on "Trello" and all our contents brew and bake over there together.
This is how 'The Bun Maska Corner' was born and continues to take shape. All of it was possible because of the era of the internet we live in. It was born out of our strong friendship; a friendship which could thrive due to easy connectivity over miles, letting us share our lives with each other virtually. When we felt the need to build the site ourselves, the internet was there to help again. Whenever we imagined something, we could achieve it with the help of the mass of knowledge and resources that resides on the internet.
What an era we live in? You have to just Imagine, and the Internet is there to help you!