Session No. 6: Behind the scenes at Break Konnect
We got a look at one of the fastest growing start-ups for the breaking scene and what’s planned for 2024.
Hey y’all, welcome back to the Breaking Newsletter.
If you’ve been to a major jam in the last year, there’s a good chance you’ve used Break Konnect. The service modernizes all the jam logistics that used to be done on pen and paper for event organizers, from sign-ups to prelim brackets.
It’s got some nice user features too – I like to search through the 6,000+ members list to see if my dumb ideas for b-boy names are taken and it’s also been a blessing to see if you’ve made it out of prelims right from your phone rather than waiting for announcements.
I’ve run into Break Konnect’s creator Felix Stekolshchik a few times at practice and peppered him with ideas, and I know I’m not the only one. Well, he’s actually starting to implement some of those, in case you missed this clip he uploaded at the beginning of January:
I caught up with Felix to chat about some of these upgrades he’s got planned, and the perks of being a Break Konnect supporter on Patreon. Our conversation was condensed for clarity, hope you enjoy.
Before we get into Break Konnect’s future, tell me about how this all started.
I don’t know if you went to early UDEF events, like back in 2018. They had a sign-up process, and every time I went to a UDEF event, I had to do this process over and over again. I just thought, “There has to be a better way.”
It was me being frustrated that breaking was so analog and nobody was doing anything about it.
The first UDEF event used it at the end of 2020, but that was a trial run. It was a small event in San Diego, and it was a Seven to Smoke so it didn’t require much. July 2021 was when it was actually put out there and people signed up and I started to gain members.
It feels like a running joke for disorganized jams to be a part of the breaking scene. Why take that away?
Making things more organized isn’t taking anything away, it’s actually giving back. Have you ever been to [REDACTED JAM BY REQUEST]?
That event is so insanely disorganized. I am tired by the end of it – not from all the dancing, but just tired of being there, because it’s so freaking long.
How many professional sports competitions do you go to, that by the end of it, you’re like, ‘I just wanna go home, I don’t want to do anything else.’
That’s how breaking is, and I want to be able to go to a jam and feel good about going out.
How many jams are like, ‘the after-party’s at this time,’ and like nobody’s going to the after-party, because everyone’s fucking tired, this shit was way too long.
You’ve been self-funding Break Konnect for so long. What made you decide to start up a Patreon?
The whole point of the Patreon is not to pay me, it’s purely to fund the building of Break Konnect.
Right now, the money is going straight to development. I pay for server space, I pay for developers, that’s pretty much all it is.
The one big thing that Break Konnect wants to do is create an economy. Every month I’ll have a monetary goal. If that goal is reached, and I have excess funds, those excess funds will be put away to be given to an event the next month.
Let’s say after paying developers and server space, which costs about $1,500 to $2,000 a month, I have an extra $500 left over.
The next month, I’ll take that amount, plus whatever is in excess from the next month, and I’ll give it to an event on Break Konnect.
And the Patreon donors will get to vote on where that money goes.
So there’s two tiers on the Patreon, at $3 a month and $4 a month. What do supporters get?
$3 gets a thank you and a badge on their profile and their name on the Patreon page, which still has to get built out.
If you are in the $4 tier, you actually have a say in the features we build out. I’ll do a call once every two months with my patrons and I’ll say what I’m working on and ask what they would like to see first.
You showed me the road map for the updates that are coming. I know we started this conversation talking about how breaking events tend to be way off-schedule. What’s the timeline looking like for your updates?
The goal is to finish everything that’s in green by the end of this month – so that would be map view and calendar view.
Everything that’s in yellow is planned for the next six months.
After that, whatever else I can fit into the rest of the year. It depends on funding.
We have 12 patrons so far – the majority of them are in the legend ($4) tier.
It doesn’t matter which tier you choose, the more people join the Patreon, the faster everything gets built out.
Some recommendations:
I heard this mixtape from Mav-One at the first practice of 2024. One of those mixtapes where each track was better than the last one that came on. Definitely gonna be on repeat for a few more sessions:
This band has been popping up on a few breakers’ Instagram posts lately. They’re from the United Kingdom and do mostly covers of classic hip-hop beats. Give them a listen, it’s good stuff.
Editor’s note:
It’s been a minute since I last published, but I wanted to take a personal break and reconfigure my approach to this newsletter. Keeping a regular schedule of weekly posts and maintaining the level of quality that I wanted was becoming incompatible, and I really wanted to prevent this newsletter from feeling like a job.
There was a point where I didn’t have any posts lined up and I considered doing a compilation listicle from a handful of jams that weekend just to make a post. I had it ready to go but I wasn’t proud of the draft and asked why I was even working on something that didn’t bring me any joy.
Thanks again for reading, I’ve got some pieces in the work that I am excited about, so please stay tuned!