Gigwalk: First paid gig

A couple of weeks ago, friends brought up how they had signed up for Gigwalk (http://gigwalk.com/). My wife chimed in and mentioned how the company behind this had actually been on the news recently since it was slowly picking up steam. Here is CNN’s report on this concept.

I’m a veteran, honest, Foursquarer, so I’m familiar with the treasure-hunt appeal of these sorts of applications. But unlike Foursquare, this platform actually paid you to visit establishments. So I figured that I’d give it a try and signed up to be a “Gigwalker” via their iPhone application.

Unlike FourSquare, where you simply signed to a specific location, and you were done, Gigwalking is quite involved. You really will earn whatever they pay you.

I tried out my first task, called a “gig”, while I was waiting in the parking lot for Sunday mass. We arrived at church early so we had time to kill. I played around with the gig finder on the Gigwalk application, and discovered that there was a gig literally within walking distance. So I figured I’d zip in and zip out of the gig . . . and just learn how to use the application on the fly. Apparently not the wisest of ideas.

Gigs follow a template that the Gigwalk application lays out for you. When you start a Gig, you follow step-by-step procedures that you have to accomplish before you submit to Gigwalk for evaluation. The steps, however, are optimized for individuals who take the time to read through the whole procedure . . . and not rush into things the way I did.

For one thing, the Gigwalk application isn’t the only thing you will need to accomplish the Gig. You need the Microsoft Photosynth application, which you have to download separately, to take the 360 degree views within the establishment that the gigs require. Because I rushed in, I didn’t realize until halfway through the gig instructions that I had to download Photosynth. With only minutes till mass started . . . it felt like was one of the longest downloads ever.

Once I had Photosynth installed, I had to figure out how it worked. It’s pretty simple to operate really. But as with all things under time pressure, it felt harder than it actually was. I eventually figured the app out, sorted out my Photosynth account settings, took what I thought were acceptable (which they weren’t, more on that in a later post) photographs of the establishment both inside and outside, then made mad dash for the pew.

Sadly after all that . . . that gig eventually got rejected. As I would later learn, there was a lot more to the panos than I originally thought, so this effort was doomed from the start. A rejection looks like this, and arrives a little less than a week after submission. You will get notified both on the Gigwalk app, as well as via email.

I had better luck with my second gig — hence this celebratory blog entry. It was for an establishment that no longer existed and had been replaced by another. This paid less than for regular gig, $2 instead of the usual $4.75 to $7, but it still made for good practice so I went ahead with it. The pano I took in the first gig were actually better than for this one. So when my first gig got rejected, I figured that the second gig would be rejected as well. But it turns out that acceptance criteria for closed businesses was less stringent and panos were not required. The acceptance notice appears below.

I still need practice. But with a paid-for gig under my belt . . . less Paypal’s $0.36 transaction fee . . . am now ready for more.