FBAIDailogues 2016 - A Morning Well Spent

I have been very openly skeptical about FBAI since it started a few years ago and viewed it as a bunch of bloggers going from restaurant to restaurant doing reviews. I did't see how it functioned as an association of bloggers or how it helped blogging in any way. And so I kept my distance.

Over the years I met Sameer Malkani at random events and gatherings and got acquanted with him and his wife Saloni who is also a part of FBAI now. My friend Rushina has been associated with FBAI for quite a while and told me about the FBAIDialogues, something interesting that was not about reviewing restaurants but was about conversations related to food, the various aspects of the food industry, and bloggers who wrote about these things. For various reasons I'd been unable to attend the earlier two sessions and after Sameer called me to invite me once again I decided I simply had to attend this one. And I am so glad I did.

The FBAIDialogues Season 3 started with a panel discussion on Ethical Blogging with Rushina Ghildiyal, Kalyan Karmakar, Nikhil Merchant, all very senior bloggers, and chef Ashish Bhasin, Executive Chef at The Trident, BKC, on the panel with Bhisham Mansukhani moderating. The conversation covered many areas of being an ethical blogger ranging from the importance of research, identifying your audience, responsibilities to your audience and writing constructively even when doing a negative review. The idea of a charter outlining basic blogging ethics was also proposed. A healthy and fruitful discussion followed by an interactive session with the audience made this session well worth my journey from Kharghar to Juhu.

There are many issues that dog the food blogging world and it was good to see many of these issues being acknowledged and discussed on an open forum with bloggers, journalists, restaurant owners and chefs in the audience - instead of being confined to private conversations in closed rooms. It was good to see a relevant and constructive discussion about issues that affect blogging and the food industry.

The next session had restaurateur and icon Rahul Akerkar speaking about the Next Chapter in the Indian Restaurant Business. To say the least, I was star struck!

Unfortunately I couldn't attend the subsequent sessions but my experience of that morning gave me great hope. Here we were talking honestly and openly about issues that affect the ecosystem of bloggers, food professionals, restaurants, and the entire food and hospitality at large. Dialogues solve problems and I was happy to see meaningful and constructive dialogues that morning.

There is hope after all and I have a positive feeling about the FBAI and its role in the future helping bloggers improve their game. 

2016 A Year of Learning. Hands On.

I try to have a focus for every year from the point of view of food blogging and this year it's learning. Exciting or interesting food so far has been mostly about chance encounters - a meal at a restaurant, a meal at a friend's place, a meal at a wedding, a pot luck somewhere, goodies sampled at a food event, food explored while travelling, recipes recreated in my kitchen, recipes developed for Katy's Kitchen, etc. There has been a randomness attached to my food experiences and I have enjoyed it thoroughly. But as I encountered food in this random fashion I developed a thirst to look beyond the immediate experience of eating and subsequently finding out the recipes. The way I was looking at food was changing, my questions were changing. I discovered a need to delve beyond the obvious and a need to learn more than the superficial.

My visits to Kolkata were the usual trips to meet family, have fun with the cousins, eat out at the usual haunts, check out the new joints, and shop for a predictable few things. A few years ago out of sheer boredom I went to wander around in produce section of Gariahat market instead of the usual shops that sell clothes, jewellery, cosmetics, etc. It was an experience I will never forget. I saw vegetables, fruit, fresh meat, fresh fish, household paraphernalia, accessories used in pujas and rituals, and lots more. I was looking at it all differently because I went with a camera. I came home with innumerable terrible photographs but the experience was a revelation - I looked at produce differently. I paid attention to the names, I looked at the appearance of the ingredients with more attention, I literally saw things with a renewed eye. I hadn't realised it then but a new journey had just begun.

Of course I had been to Crawford market a zillion times before, especially to shop for the business, but I never really looked at things. Not properly. Not with this kind of interest. No questions popped into my head. I have, since that time in Gariahat market with my camera, found great joy in markets. I have been lucky enough to travel quite a bit in the subsequent years and I have trawled the markets in Cochin, Guwahati, Shillong, Goa, Old Delhi, Gurgaon, many villages in the Konkan, and of course, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Navi Mumbai.

But the point was not in wandering around and clicking photos. The point was to look and to learn. And I did. The sheer variety of produce available in this country is mind boggling and I can confidently say I have seen new things, stuff I'd never even heard of before, in almost every market I have visited. The next obvious step was finding out about the new things - what is it called, how is it eaten, what does it taste like, where does it grow, and so on.

The curiosity about Indian foods, ingredients, and cuisines meant I was also looking for reading material and so I started buying cookbooks that focused on regional cuisines of the country. In no time I had a huge pile of new cookbooks frowning at me from the book shelves. So this year I will move the learning from my comfortable chair where I read these books and drool over the photographs (and props!) to my kitchen. There's no better way to connect with a dish or a cuisine than cooking it yourself. When you do it all from scratch, follow the processes, handle the ingredients, and ultimately taste the results, your connection with it is stronger, your understanding is better.

This year it's time to cook. And learn.

Food Blogging. Quo Vadis?

Another popular food blogger got caught plagiarising.

A beautifully styled blog, well written posts, lots of attractive photographs, a wide variety of recipes and cuisines, and of course, a new post every couple of days - it isn't surprising that this blog caught the attention of many. 

A new blogger, just a year into blogging, she was under so much pressure she said, that she did the unthinkable. But it wasn't a single instance. There was so much plagiarised content on her blog we got tired of looking. Stolen content that spanned recipes, food styling on her photographs, 'How To' posts, quotes, and even a personal story from another blogger - and not a hint of credit anywhere. The thievery was not limited to the confines of the blog. A magazine was given plagiarised content, a DIY dessert kit was being sold using someone else's recipe. The rot was so deep it was appalling. 

Predictably, once she was caught there was a severe backlash and this blogger is now in a lot of trouble. As she should be. 

Many bloggers debated and outraged over this incident on a closed group on Facebook and over private messages that blazed for two days, as the plagiarist tried desperately to save her self, her blog, and her reputation. 

We all know plagiarism is wrong, we all frown on it, we all outrage loudly when someone is caught but most of us also wait for someone else to blow the whistle. We also look the other way because we don't want to be the one to make a scene. We worry about the plagiarist's reputation, family, children, and everything else. Sometimes I wonder if we're looking for excuses for the plagiarist. But no, we're not. We're just not motivated enough to get off the couch and do something about it, just like we are lazy about a million other things that should be changed but we rather someone else did the changing. 

In all the debate one question kept coming up - what's the hurry? Many of us have been blogging for several years and we see the blog as a personal diary or chronicle that we allow the world to read. It's all about passion, and dedication, and love, and warm fuzzy feelings. Because when we started blogging, that was all there was to it. You wrote what you liked and felt happy if anyone stopped by and actually read what you wrote. There was no Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Pinterest or StumbleUpon, and if they existed they were nothing like what they all are today. There was nowhere to broadcast the fact that you had written something on your blog. Your blog was not accessible to a zillion people at the click of a mouse. 

Today the scene is very different. Blogs earn incomes. They are marketing tools. They are platforms for selling opinions, information, advice, anything! A blog is supported with a myriad social networking tools to give it a larger audience. If you're successful at leveraging all this to your advantage and your blog begins to get noticed the fame and the followers grow, invitations to events, restaurant launches, product launches, etc., start pouring in. And let's be honest, it's bloody hard to resist all this seduction. You might even land some paid writing or photography gigs if you're good.

And this is where the temptation to grow fast comes in. You see others who have made it big and you want the same for yourself. And you want it fast. But for that you need the numbers. Followers on your blog, on the Facebook Fan page, on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, G+, and every other platform you can think of, and you have to write keeping SEO in mind. The pressure to post more builds up because you're worried about Google and Alexa ranks. And your worry is justified because you are looking at numbers, numbers which will convert to income eventually. Or a whole lot of fame, fans and freebies if not real cash. 

But all this takes dogged hard work, sometimes of impossible proportions. Let's take that Google ranking thing - you have to put up 200 posts in a year to get a good site rank. (See Addendum) That translates to four posts a week. If you're a recipe blogger that means you have to select what recipes you're going to blog, shop for all ingredients, cook the dish, sort out props and styling for the photographs, set up the shots, take photos, edit photos, write the post, add photos, publish the post, clean up your kitchen, put away your photo equipment and props, promote your latest post out there on social media which means Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, at the minimum, and as many food groups and blogger groups on Facebook that you can find that allow you to share your blog links. All this, at least four times a week.  And you still have a regular job, a family to look after, a life to live. 

Is it any wonder that you soon start looking for ways to make it easier? And before you know it you are stealing content. Blogging has changed from a personal hobby tool to an industry. Maybe it's not a job for one person anymore. And certainly not if you have a full time job. 

Think about why you blog. If like me, you blog because you like to and are not too concerned about followers and income, that's great. But you should consider growing and not stagnating. I've worn my refusal to grow like a badge of honour and I am ashamed of it. If you're blogging because you want the bigger things then think it through, plan how will go about it, think of the resources you can use (and no, I don't mean other blogs or sites you can copy from), and be realistic about how much you can do and how long you can sustain it. There's nothing wrong with earning money through your blog. But it is wrong if you are doing it by stealing someone else's work. 

We all have responsibilities as bloggers. There are many things wrong with food blogging today and they need to be set right. New bloggers need guidance and mentoring and older bloggers need to accept and learn the new ways. We need a community and a support system. We need to deal with the rot. Ignoring it makes us equally responsible for it. 

*** Addendum - I misunderstood Google ranking criteria to some extent. So it's not 200 posts literally but you have to really populate your blog with a ton of content so 200 posts a year is the sort of goal many bloggers blindly set themselves in a bid to get that high Google ranking. But prolific posting on your blog is not enough by itself. There are many other factors that in combination with prolific posting will get a blog a high Google rating.