Research & Design
Building a United Regional Street Dance Community in South-East Asia
Project Type: Self-initiated, Grassroots Initiative
Role(s) Performed: Community Manager, Business Development, Web Administration, Designer (Web and Brand Identity)
Project Timeline/Duration: 2002-2008
Tools: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premiere Pro, Dreamweaver, JavaScript
The Challenge
To develop a vibrant and self-sustaining breaking community by developing an online social network at zero cost
The Thinking Process
Introduction
In 2002 my computer was being formatted, so I uploaded video footage of local breaking events online. People in the breaking scene found my website and started to request more footage. I added a forum to the site and asked the local dancers on another site to move over so that we could have an online space of our own. Thus, AZNBBOY was born. I led its expansion into a vibrant regional artist community.
This was the early passion project that sparked my interest in the potential of technology and design to bring people together and foster collaboration in the arts scene.
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Early screenshot of AZNBBOY in 2004
Site Design, 2006
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Screenshot of one of the later iterations of the site design
Strategy
Mutual Trust and Confidence
This is crucial to everyone in the AZNBBOY online community working together in real life. It is important to be perceived as being actively involved in the scene, and to be relied upon to provide quality footage after every event. Maintaining friendships with all the major crews facilitates open communication, feedback, and trust that I am acting in their best interests.
Seen here filming on location at a breaking event.
Developing the dance industry, together
The fledgling breaking scene needed a sense of unity and common purpose. Many dancers were starting then and just wanted a cool new hobby. We had to show that there was a future to be made and that we could work together to promote our craft and get commercial support to sustain breaking as an industry.
Regional expansion based on local knowledge
I realized that keeping the community focused on Singapore unnecessarily introduces limits to the scope of events we cover and the geolocation of members who would be interested in the site and its contents. Initially I only catered to the Singapore street dance community, but I figured why restrict myself only to Singapore when there are dancers all over South East Asia, Asia and Oceania. With Asia as our home turf, we have the advantage of knowledge of local markets.
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Bboys from Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia in Singapore for Floorskillz Asia 2006. AZNBBOY was the official media platform for this event.
Staying Authentic
We needed to develop the industry while maintaining authenticity and preserving the essence of the breaking culture
Action Plan
Any action plan should build on network effects as a competitive advantage. Having this platform allowed me to act as an enabler and a connector for members of AZNBBOY to mobilize collective resources and promote their events. It meant that even small-scale grassroots events were able to attract an audience and participants from neighbouring countries.
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Archive photos uploaded by AZNBBOY members
I realized that the major breaking sites at the time focused solely on the craft, art, and showmanship when bboys and bgirls take the stage. I wanted to showcase a side of the art form which is rarely represented on footage, which is the dancers’ personalities. It might include backstage and off-stage footage, or general socializing. This allowed the audience to relate personally to the people in the footage. The people in the footage were more than just dancers, they were influencers as well. Dance is an integral part of life, and many friendships are forged here. AZNBBOY captures these core memories over the years as trusted partner of the dance community.
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Event photo from Monster Battle Korea, uploaded by one of our moderators living in Korea
As a student, I had to do all of this on zero budget. It was cost-effective for me to bring the world to Singapore. However, this introduced limits on how far I could expand the community abroad. Therefore I had to find workarounds by recruiting overseas moderators.
Execution
Videos uploaded by AZNBBOY forum members.
The site itself was first designed off Proboards, a free forum service at the time with extensive customization capabilities via JavaScript. We moved everyone to a server which supported PHPBB in 2006 when VerveParade sponsored our servers and domain name. The base PHPBB installation was customized with JavaScript mods and plug-ins such as Live Preview to allow users to see what their posts looked like before submitting. At the time, MegaUpload was the platform of choice for users who wanted to drop their footage onto our boards. To gain access to exclusive content, visitors had to register as members. This was before I learnt coding, the key here was to improvise and adapt using whatever tools I had to deliver a functioning product.
I found that Live Preview increased the frequency of members posting, and that direct image upload to a 3rd party hosting site encouraged members to upload profile pictures. This is because seeing their post formatting instantly facilitated creativity, and they did not have to leave the site to upload profile pictures and then copy the image link. At the time, my analytics tracker could not measure the changes before and after, but I could see these differences by observing user behaviour.
It was before social media was common, so promoting the site was tedious and required reaching out to other websites to exchange backlinks. Another method of growing the site included 10 second introductory clips before the dance footage as well as watermarks with the AZNBBOY website address. When people shared these, they knew how to navigate to the website and community to view more footage and post their own footage. Footage is often shared within geographies where featured crews are located.
Chillout, Shoutout! series featuring other aspects of the dance life.
I reached out to other dancers throughout the region via their connections to Singapore. For example, some dancers from Melaka or Sarawak wanted to promote their events for Singapore dancers to attend, and some dancers from Japan have family members here in Singapore.
Through these connections I built a team of about 50 moderators from all over the East Asian region, giving them a platform to promote their local dance scenes. While other websites based in Europe and the USA only reached out to well-represented major cities (e.g. Seoul, Tokyo), we were able to reach out to organizers in localities with developing dance scenes such as Melaka, Sarawak, Jakarta and Bangkok. This allowed us to be the platform of choice to promote events such as Battle Of The Year South-East Asia in Bangkok and Cypherz Kingz Jam in Melaka.
It was important to always get the best angle when filming an event. For stage or floor battles, this is typically the front row, in the middle. I will have to set up my tripod ahead of time to do this. For cyphers (dance circles), it is a bit tricky to capture but most dancers will give way to allow me to get a good angle.
I produced the Chillout, Shoutout! videos as a series of outtakes featuring the dance life and camaraderie enjoyed while offstage. For Chillout, Shoutout 3, I lent my video camera to Floor Techniques Crew, the winners of the O’ School dance competition, as they journeyed to Japan for the Freestyle Session World Finals. I produced a travelogue based on the clips taken on their journey.
All event sponsors would be featured prominently in footage, free of charge. This will incentivise organizers to feature their events on AZNBBOY to maximize the reach and effectiveness of their promotional efforts.
Brand Identity
The Result
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Step It Up! – event produced and promoted using the resources and reach of the AZNBBOY platform. This was the first event in Singapore organized independently by dancers, for dancers
Gradually it grew into a vibrant community of over 1650 members including dancers, event promoters, studio owners, DJs and emcees.
AZNBBOY became the catalyst for community-organized events such as Step It Up. These grassroots events were entirely organized by dancers for dancers without the involvement of corporate entities. Through AZNBBOY, the community was able to mobilize resources such as emcees, DJs, event officials and an improvised stage setup. The list of tracks played was posted on AZNBBOY after the event so that dancers can obtain them elsewhere for their practice sessions. AZNBBOY became integral to the success of community-organized dance events across the region as the primary means of promotion and the official media channel.
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Floorskillz Asia 2006 judges panel
AZNBBOY also provided the means for online registration for dance competitions and workshops such as the Korea-Singapore Dance Project before Google Forms was available.
Servers were sponsored by VerveParade Urban Entertainment group, where AZNBBOY became its official online media for its dance events including Floorskillz Asia. If you wanted to promote a dance event in the region, you had to post it on AZNBBOY. All this was accomplished with zero budget and zero capital.
I started AZNBBOY by accident in secondary school. I am grateful for the opportunities and lessons it has provided me in life and in business. It was the project which kickstarted my interest in UX design and product management.