Everyone is a creator

Velera Foundation

Dec 28

I was once at one of those exclusive westside parties, somewhere in a nice penthouse, where I met a really nice Irish man. I have his number saved as “Irish brother westside”. We were just chatting about life and he said something that caught my attention. He said ‘everyone in this world is a creator’. I didn’t think I was one. But as the Irishman explained, even though I was just working in IT but I was actually building systems and that was also in a way being a creator. I quickly realized that this was again a problem with ‘labels’ that get lost in translation. We are all actually creators in our own right.

I have built websites before, but Velera’s website was another animal. We spent two years putting our heads into so many technical aspects, that it became hard for us to come out of those shoes. We started working on the website early this year and we tried really hard to figure out how we can simplify such a complex technical solution of a re-imaged internet. We had so much of knowledge and understanding after our R&D that we wanted to share this knowledge with the world. It was hard. After about 25 iterations, we were not happy with the outcome.

Time to call in the big guns. Enter Naini Todi, a UI/UX expert but a creator at heart. She had multiple sessions with us and helped bring out the heart and soul of Velera. She gave us the first direction we needed to express what Micah and I had created. I think we loved it so much that again, we thought that everyone should be able to understand this complex world of internet that I am sure most academic students of computer science or engineering fail to grasp.

Time for a public outreach to confirm that people really understand the current problems with the internet that Velera is trying to solve and also understand our product and services as a brand. The reaction was mixed at best. We had a lot of tech experts understand it but the non-tech people did not ‘get it’.

In these out reaches, I had the fortunate of meeting many great people and all of them gave us great feedback. But one particular conversation with Lexi, an advocate for mental health and strong experience in marketing pointed us in the right direction. The key words were “demystify” and “relatable”. Light bulbs went off in my head particularly. We weren’t communicating from our heart and soul.

Back to the drawing board and after another 10 iterations, Micah and I were so impressed with ourselves, we were like we finally did it. Proud of our messaging, I took the results to our design lead, Naini again. I was expecting a pat on the back, but she wasn’t impressed. We had the content now but the content structures, hierarchy, readability was way off the mark. She r- designed it and we finally had a wireframe that was ready to be developed. Expecting the website to be live early next week.

Creation is a process. And, when you are creating something for everyone, it needs creative inputs from a collective force. This is the heart of Velera. We believe everyone is a creator. We need a platform for every human to be able to express themselves with complete freedom. Sometimes you need help in that process, but that doesn’t mean you have to be exploited. We hope Velera can help in the last part.

We are actively working on - building a open, safe and inclusive internet called Velera. You can join our discord or checkout our website.