A former YouTube and Pinterest employee turned Orchardite, Michael Ortali has been helping The Orchard drive its technology forward for more than two years. Over the past few months, he has taken on a new challenge on the side: helping creatives better showcase their work and find new opportunities. His project, Fllio, launched a few weeks ago in beta and The Orchard is proud to be hosting their first Meetup at our offices this week! Join us on Tuesday, May 3rd at 6:30PM to find out more about this great initiative and get to know the man behind it all below.
Michael, tell us how this all started?
Growing up in France and studying in an art school, I was surrounded by artists who wanted to live off their passion. Being around such energetic individuals increases your own creativity, and the school ends up being an incubator of ideas and a place where you can start from nothing and end up with an astonishing project.
Unfortunately, as soon as you leave the school, a lot of challenges arise. Finding the creatives that complement your own skills becomes challenging. Moving abroad also increased the challenge of finding collaborators. So I got the idea to build a network that contains everyone’s portfolio and information, and connects them with new opportunities. That’s really what Fllio is all about.
So, it’s for all creatives?
Indeed! When you think about an art school, you always find a mix of disciplines. At Les Gobelins, we had fashion designers, photographers, UX / UI designers, filmmakers, motion designers and many more. So whenever I needed some animation for our end-of-year project, I knew exactly who to talk to. Or if you were planning on doing a fashion photo shoot, you could reach out the right people in no time.
The concept behind Fllio is to be an inclusive network. As a result, you will find a broad range of disciplines: painters, musicians, singers, art directors, fashion designers and many more. We even have florists, like Cyrill Tronchet, who have been working on large events like Fashion Week.
Sounds exciting! How long does it take to get started? Is this already available?
Yes, It’s already available at www.fllio.com! It takes only a few seconds to join the platform. If you run into any issues, feel free to drop me an email at [email protected], always happy to help!
The features available are numerous: you can manage your portfolio directly on the platform (uploading images, adding embeds from YouTube, Vimeo and SoundCloud), you can find job opportunities, and you can follow other users. If you are into blogging, we have a space that’s dedicated for that too.
A profile you would like to share?
Actually yes. A best kept secret at The Orchard is our annual Battle of the Bands during our year-end party. It’s an opportunity for our employees to showcase their mad skills and astound us with their incredible talent. So here is Ryan Whitman, a neo-soul R&B songwriter and singer.
Ryan joined The Orchard in October 2014 as an Account Coordinator, right after working for Frolic. You can discover his latest project on Fllio: The Ascendance. More will come, so if you sign up, make sure you follow him.
That looks like a fantastic initiative. How can we help?
There are plenty of things you can do to help out! The first things that come to mind are definitely to sign up and talk about it with your friends. If you know anyone who is looking to hire creatives, mention our job listing section. But as importantly: if you sign up and run into issues, or if you would like to see some awesome features being added, I’d love to hear from you.
You got it! We look forward to seeing how Fllio grows and to cheer you at your first Meetup this week.
