How's it going? I can't believe nobody nobody's told me that the music sounds bad
But I just walked into another room with my phone on and that's tough
So we're gonna take that note and we're gonna improve next time with that being said
Fun fact that song exactly 3 minutes and 33 seconds long did not plan that but shout out to the Rolling Stones
My name is Aaron D. God's not my last name
This is curated by dust labs a bi-weekly Twitter space where we talk about web 3 stuff
Last time two weeks ago. We started talking about membership experiences online
Want to continue that conversation and even invite up
Community members even if you don't have a project would love to hear from you this week and just hear about some of the better
Interacting with various communities online
So we do have dino dash up here with us dino dash you guys minted recently
Congratulations, welcome to the stage. How are you guys doing today?
What's going on guys it's Gavin behind dino dash tonight and yeah, we recently did mint we minted out
It was a quite the experience, you know, we had a collection fully sell. I believe it was on Saturday
We hit that metric and we just recently had an all-time high sale that went through at 700 manic
Which is pretty big for us. So we've got a lot planned
We've got a lot coming up on our community space this Friday that we're ready to share some exciting stuff about us
Those of you that haven't heard about us. We are a p2e game
We have a PFP project attached to it that allows you to earn without even touching the game
So we have a lot of different things developing a lot of different things that we're doing and we have brought some
Just lab utilities to our ecosystem and we plan to bring some more which we'll touch on a little bit
But again, thank you Aaron for letting us be up here. We're excited to talk with you guys throughout the night, of course
Thank you so much for coming super excited about what you guys are up to. I'm a gamer born and bred
I remember back in middle school
Somehow I was able to convince my mom to like let me skip school when call of duty would come out
I was like mom. I got really good grades. I promise it's all good
And you know, I was perceived within 24 hours
So I'm all about the gaming culture Ian and the audience, you know all about that too. Shout out these tables
You know, I love blockchain gaming
We also have Sean up here Sean. You are the leader of
007 now for those of you that may not be aware of what double-o seven is
It's pretty pretty major community group in the Utes Sean. I'll let you kind of tell people
You just caught me brushing my teeth, let me come back to you in a minute
That's all right guys you hear that you youth community leaders have dental hygiene is important
It's absolutely bullish to hear that Sean, please continue brushing your teeth do the happy birthday song twice. I think that's the rule
But yeah, I also see Dougie in the audience Dougie get up here, man
I mean it we're not gonna act like I didn't DM you about this space right before
So I'm gonna expect you to come up here as a speaker and start talking about all the cool stuff
You're doing with the golf to let's go. I just guilted him into that request. That was tough
While we wait for him to connect I also invited a couple other people
But I do want just any community members to come up. We're gonna start this conversation about membership experience
And I think honestly, it's gonna kind of become pretty clear why we're having this conversation pretty soon. Maybe even tonight what?
So Dougie welcome to the stage Dougie. We've been talking a lot lately
I feel like in some ways I might even be annoying you at this point, but how are you doing?
Never that never that appreciate you having me up. I'm doing good. Thank you for having me
Yeah, we got a lot going on at the golf
I don't know if we're ready to spill all the beans, but obviously the big four tour
So we are going to be going to four cities that the big three basketball teams are gonna be playing at they are going to be
opening weekend in Chicago followed up by New York followed up by
Charlotte and then and Miami for the semi-final yet Miami
And then other than that, we're also hosting three other golf outings. So one of them is going to be
Rare Evo in Denver, Colorado at the end of August and then we're gonna be doing
An LA meetup golf outing in LA and we're actually gonna make it a whole weekend
so we're gonna have the golf outing on Saturday, then we're gonna have a
tailgate for the Rams first Eagles games because
D golf is from Philly. So obviously we got to come out there and show love while we're in town
So it should be fun and then we're gonna end the year running the Country Club classic back in Miami for our puzzle
So we got a lot on the schedule and we're very excited to see you all out there
Wow busy busy guy and that's why I wanted you to come tonight man
I mean when it comes to just like membership experience
Going to one of these golf outings has got to be
Toward the top of of what we can possibly do
It's really fun to be working with you on this and like you said
I think a lot more information is gonna come pretty soon. So that'll be pretty fun
I do want to welcome Ian to this day's Ian. You are the founder of third time aka
Photo finish live for those of you that don't know the premiere horse racing game in the metaverse, baby
How are you doing Ian? I'm good, man. Thanks for inviting me up. I always enjoy your hosted space
So hopefully you can hear me. All right, I'm here man here to chat talk about everything for sure
You sound great sir. You sound great
I'm super pumped that you were able to come today because we had a big long call last night actually the the destabil's cabal
so we're super pumped about just like leveling up the the experience of like all of our members and
Really just excited for all the work. You guys have been doing on the platform. It's it's been a lot of fun
So appreciate you coming and excited to pick your brain a little bit
Dude, are you done brushing your teeth, man? Like what's what's up? Are we are we chip Skylark up in here now?
Like what's the deal? We're good. We're good
How's it going? Oh, it's going good, man. It's going good
Tell me tell me about double or seven just a little bit in case somebody in the audience is living under a rock and doesn't know
So we are the whale club for for you
Seven or more youths or a one-of-one you can join double seven
We had just over 200 members before major car rubbed our verification. We're back to like 165. I think right now
So like a pretty sizable percentage of the collection
Yeah, we've got lots of the go. We've just actually
put in place a ton of functional leaders to do things like
Partnerships club liaison new member welcome
And then we've done like we've done a couple things sort of like following along some of the great stuff x plus has been doing so
Sort of the branded visa cards, which was a pretty big success
I'm rocking the youths black black card lately so I can spend my my crypto and flex youth wherever I go
Thank God, I think I think we were we were lacking ways to flex so I'm glad
That's good. Hey Sean. Did I catch did you start to sentence with we've got a boat?
What did you say it all you said did I miss it I couldn't
We're gonna vote. I do you actually own a boat across all the youths. That would be great
We do have the yacht club, which is a club in the the D umbrella
They one of them at least has a yacht and they have events in Miami. So that that is a thing
I don't know Sean. Let's let's make it happen. You'd yacht
You'd y'all party I'm down for it
Go ahead and get pizza came so we can get the private chat. Oh
Dude, imagine that I don't know if a keem would want us to ruin his jet, but we'll convince him eventually
And then this is a perfect segue to into God your name is just terrible on Twitter, man
I'm sorry. I gotta I gotta just give it to you straight here
What are you doing, man? What are you doing with with this name with this username up here?
I'm assuming you're coming on behalf of X Plus, but for good God, you're giving all the hosts across the board a tough tough job
How you gonna have this search the brand like that
Honestly, I just saw I'll represent X Plus, but really I just saw you guys chilling sites came off to say hi
You know the brand look everyone hates on the one four three four three four three nine eight and they hate on it
Right, but you remember it every time I come up on spaces, you know people forget about Billy Bob 69
But one four three four three four nine eight nine and they remember that shit
So a little branding lesson, but yeah, I just saw you guys do in space. So I figured I come say hi
Well, you you're always welcome because like you said you are very memorable. So glad you're here, sir
But I am pumped to dive into this conversation
We've got two projects up here essentially, right? We've got photo finished. We've got Dino Dash both of which are games
Which I totally did not plan but let's roll with it
We've got some community groups up here, which is a bit of a different enchilada
But still kind of in the the same realm because we are talking about that that membership experience
And so I would love to start it off with Dino Dash because you guys so recently minted
I mean, how have you guys seen the the maybe shift in the community and and kind of
You know the the membership experience where you are now
And how you want to grow that especially considering, you know building around gaming
I mean, it's kind of organic right like the groups form people make friends, which is what's so beautiful
But how are you guys going to support that within your community?
So after a minute, of course, everything slows down a little bit which was a nice breath of fresh air because we got out everybody
Cluttering the server all the chaos and now it's people that actually care about the project
I actually want to want to see us succeed long term
So it's a completely different, you know switch up and I'm sure everybody's experienced if you are a project owner
And you know, you've seen a new influx of people and so we minted at about 20 manic
We're above floor at about 29 matic right now. We recently had our highest sale, which is it okay?
I've been something up real quick. Sure pin away sir
Awesome. I was gonna pin our most recent sale at 700 matic. This was a one-of-one. So that was awesome for us to see
We also had a behind the doors
Little transaction that went through which which kind of sucks that didn't go up on Magic Eden
But somebody apparently traded a one-of-one for three Alphas
So again, that was huge for us seeing that somebody found so much value in that one-of-one
And so, you know, we're out here building we have our our demo up with three maps live
Our game will be coming out very soon
We added another developer to the development team in order to help us push certain aspects a little bit quicker
You know, we've been developing this for a long time. We've been here for a long time
We've been building our parent company Alphas studios for a little over 15 months actually
and so, you know, we really shaped the way that we were doing things we took a step back when the market took a turn for
The worst and focused solely on development to bring people a product before met and that was our demo
Which we had a tournament. We had a lot of communities involved. Shout out to the youth community who was involved and
Recently right after our mint. We actually gave away a youth
I was trying to get in touch with the 007 community to kind of show you guys that we would be giving away of
A you to one holder and as we gave that away this guy was ecstatic. He was blowing up our discord
I mean now that's his PFP on all of his social media as we were looking at it, you know
He was over the moon. So it was awesome to see that we, you know change somebody's week their month
Maybe even their year off of that
So it's been great on seeing our new community kind of develop and grow see the new faces come in who really support us
And want to see these new adaptations that we have
So it's it's really been refreshing to us rather than you know
It gets very toxic around men time in all communities where you have people coming in trying to flood
We have people arguing about sizing and meant price and it gets very chaotic
But you know, we took a step back
It's good to have minted and everything's going smooth right now
We have a lot of different utilities that we're gonna be bringing to light here very soon
We've hinted at them including the rarity Explorer that will be coming very soon
I know I was talking to Aaron about that today. But yeah, we're really excited to implement that. It's gonna be awesome. I
Love it, man. No, I I can't imagine the the stress of a mint like this and especially in this market
Too I feel like people just take a magnifying glass to everybody
And it is just a brutal brutal market out there
So congratulations on the successful mint and the big sales and I mean especially with building game
And I would love to hear Ian's perspective on this too
I mean having a game out there in the world
There's a lot of a lot of things people can give you feedback on constantly
And I'm sure that you know, it's it's both a blessing and a curse in many ways
And so Ian, I mean for those of you guys that don't know in the audience
They minted over a year ago their original project
But you know over the last month or so the actual game went live
So it's been in beta for several months and we've been playing it at D stables
Ian tell us about that switch that transition from beta to live version
Tell us about those feedback loops and what you guys are dealing with
Yeah, man, that's a great question
Just it is super interesting. I mean, you know for those that don't know me
I have been in the game industry for a really long time. I started when I was 19
On the Madden franchise and so I spent like, you know, the majority of my 20s and 30s
At EA Sports and and you had this sort of really tight feedback loop with those fans, which was yearly
You know, you always had a new game. You had the review process, you know, you've got a community that's crazy and
Often overzealous as we got farther and farther into the internet age
I got pretty brutal and and so it's not all that different, you know, you end up now of like, okay
Well, we did have to foster our own community. You've got these people that are playing they're super hardcore
They have no shortage of feedback and changes that they want made
The the difference I guess that's really unique is how
Invested everyone is, you know and and what that means to the way they
Feedback is real. Sometimes it's got financial motive. Sometimes, you know, there's just like a lot more of sort of nuance to that
That a lot of it can be a lot more protective to maybe not long-term health of a game
Yeah, I think when you think about the the feedback that everyone would want to see on Madden every year
It's just what they want to see on Madden every year. It's what they see on Sunday. It's it's what they play with their buddies
You know and now in this sort of web 3 world, it's so interesting of like no, there's long-term economic impact
You can't change too much with the game
You know some of those old games you did have a lot of like, okay
If I change this part of I don't know somebody's complaining. There's too many fumbles, you know
Then then that can have reaching effects into other things
but nothing like this where like literally everything's connected, you know, the economy's connected to the
to the actual ecosystem outside and so it's a little bit of a different thing to have like
You know, I really and I love the topic of this space. This is which is sort of like the
You know, is there a behind closed doors? Is there a membership?
Because we've wanted to foster that
We have a thing called the photo finish jockey club, right?
And you know if you own PF fees, then you're kind of in and and the whole idea there was
You've got special access, you know, you're behind the curtain with me. You know, you're able to talk with me and the team
But it's like that's a that's a wild one because now if you don't own one
You're out of the loop. You're not hearing as much stuff about the game
You know, so now there's like these insiders and the outsiders and obviously you wouldn't see that level
Where in this case, I mean, this is you know thousands of people that are
On the inner circle. I think when you think about traditional game dev there might be like a group of community people
Some you know beta testers what have you but you know, a lot of these things if they could find out early or they're in the club
You know, they're able to find out major decisions before you know
Other people are if they're if they just happen to be in a chat with me or in a Twitter space like tonight, you know
So that part's just really interesting to navigate. I don't think it's a good or a bad
It's just something that I think is so new where you've got this like kind of
You know exclusive membership you want to provide I think when I think about what you guys have done
So well with the gods and everything
It's just like this place that people want to be in and even when I first started getting into NFTs
It was like, oh, how do I get behind those doors? Like even when I?
Thug now discord or whatever thugbirds
There were no channels open and I'm like, ooh, I wonder what they're talking about it
You know, I kind of want I kind of want to find out, you know, it was probably who knows what it was
but it's like there is something pretty cool and magical that but when you mix that with a game if they're sort of like
Making decisions or they're you know, they've got a direct line of the devs
It can be problematic just as much as it's also pretty cool and fun to have on our side
So I don't know. There's lots of think about there, but it has been
It's been unique. That's for sure. I mean, yeah, we minted in September of 21 and
I was sort of doing the laugh emoji when Dino Dash said oh, it's good to take a breather
It's like I'm still waiting for my breather
I'm just waiting for the heart palpitations to stop and all that here any day now
Yeah, we haven't given you much black have we the photo finished community is quite passionate. I would say
Yeah, nothing better than that, you know, it's like which would you rather have, you know the apathetic or the crazy passionate, you know
obviously go with the ladder, but yeah, I just it means that
I've yet to figure out how to take any time away from it because it's just like it's always on 24 7
And you know, I'm I am passionate about building the game and I'm passionate about building games for fans. I love it
It's what drives me. So it's like it's great, but it's also like at some point somebody else is gonna do a little bit of something
Obviously, we're hiring all kinds of community people to help and everything
But there's just nothing quite like it for me that you know
You can be in there and directly interfacing with the people that are really enjoying it
You know that you're entertaining and I did that on Madden, you know back in the day and it was so toxic
You know walking into some of these spaces that were just line stands and they would docks me or threaten me or you know
All this other crazy stuff, but it was just like I really liked
That compared to the put my head in the sand
Launch a game and you know August and then have everyone yell at us, you know, it was better to sort of make
You know even even if it's softening the blow ahead of time so people know what's coming. I always preferred that
Then the sort of like surprise here's this huge change and you probably hate it. Maybe you don't I don't know
Yeah, no, I mean I I love it. I mean just from a gamer perspective, right?
I mean, I've played games my entire life and
The difference in web3 is like the fact that you're here, right?
And and like there is this level of access and this level of communication that is frankly unheard of right?
Like like I remember back in the day getting angry at different game features when when Call of Duty came out
I was my game growing up and it's like dude activism doesn't care about me
You know, like Activision doesn't actually care about what I have to say
You know Ian might and and I might be able to work with the in to create cooler things for our community
Which is you know what we're trying to do with these tables and and I think
Building systems like that is what's actually makes web3 gaming more interesting because it's like yeah
You can make money you can have assets and all this stuff
But like having almost like a hand in like really guiding the creation of these things is a really cool aspect
No, I totally agree. And that's what I try to figure out the best way to
Because there's there's like a community or an internet community is an organism that always sort of tends to
You know find itself moving into negativity and toxicness, it's just the nature of the anonymous internet
And that's kind of always the case and what I've found so compelling and interesting
About web3 is the fact that like no, we are all building the game together
You guys own horses. So you want us to have more races?
There's there. Our goals are absolutely aligned. We both want the game to be more and more successful
Whereas I think you know, what is the goal? What was my goal at EA?
It was to make more money off of Madden that and that often would be
diametrically opposed to what a player would want, you know, I'm sitting here thinking of ways to
You know add loot boxes or what our Madden Ultimate team, you know, you're trying to monetize those players
Which can actually be the total opposite of what they want
But you know, maybe it works that you need revenue and so here though
It's like no, we actually all kind of want the same thing and maybe we disagree on the best way to go about it
But we all typically on the same team, but I think that with photo finish
it's been really hard to remind people that you know, it's still like a
Third time versus us and why aren't there races for me and it's sort of like we're working on everything and we're so small and
You know for me to be in the discord and on Twitter and answering thing and then I'm also coding all the time and doing a fundraising
You know, it's like we're stretched thin and we're trying to shore that up and get better at it
But it's like we and that all the majority of the people are reasonable, you know, and they understand
That but but I think that it is so easy to get frustrated in the internet sort of culture and then you'll lash out
And that shit hurts, you know, and I'm sure Frank has had to deal with that just as much, you know
Probably more than I did on Madden at this point the amount that he's going through
It's just like the sort of natural thing of like, you know what?
I just feel I'm annoyed and I'm in a bad mood right now
I'm gonna fire off the shittiest thing I can't and then I'm gonna go go on with my life
That really can sting, you know
And so I think that there's there's so much there that we try to remind people in this court of like no
I mean we we still are on the same team
Remember, it's not us versus you and you know, and I think sometimes it takes recalibrations, you know, just like hey
Let's let's all vent and bitch and let's let it out
Let's talk it through because I mean the key to everyone is they got to know that they're heard and that we're working on almost
Everything that they're talking about but to not lose sight that like, you know, this isn't adversarial
This is absolutely like here's the here's the checklist that we're going down
To knock out your problems and our problems. They're kind of the same problems and you know
That's where you kind of have to lean in on on as a developer
Being super communicative and telling them, you know
What's going on and you know, you can't you can't put your head down often and just sort of work and not report
That's been as I've noticed in web 3 that the attention span so short that you really do have to be like on top of that
Stuff for sure. Yeah, no days off. That's for sure
Yeah, I know dad. What's up? I
Want to build off what Ian said there a little bit. It's absolutely right
It gets extremely chaotic as a team member, you know as a developer where we did tournament
For example right before men's where our goal for the tournament was basically to get a lot of people in and testing
We had done beta testing alpha testing, but this was our way to really test out the game
We had about 1200 people come in the server the day of that
We announced the tournament within 15 communities
We were giving away a lot of prizes as incentives to get new eyes and then to just have people flood our game
And then of course, you know immediately people are looking for exploits people are looking for every single way that they can possibly
Get the fastest lap time without actually participating and then everyone in the server, you know
She's hopping on us on the dev team on just the team in general just super upset about stuff
We're like, hey, you know, we're patching stuff
We're fixing stuff the purpose for this was to find bugs
You know the iron stuff out on a mass scale so that we could have a ton of people in and then of course
Bring new eyes and so a lot of people have to realize that like these founders these team members, you know, these developers they have
In most cases, you know, they have your best interests in mind. They're trying to bring you guys a quality product
So you have to bear with them in that instance
You don't always have to take out all your frustration on them
And a lot of times we do see that in the web 3 space since you know
Everybody's technically cloaked by their appearance that they put out there not everyone is docs and so it does get nasty at times
But you know, we're all in this for for a reason, right?
So you just have to deal with those things and as Ian said
It honestly works best in your favor to be overly commutative
We learned that quickly in here where if we weren't explaining that we're pushing new updates and then patching bugs
People were flipping out asking why things weren't fixed instantly. So that was that was a quick learning lesson on our end
We do see that very quickly
Like it was amazing how many people came in with this tournament and within 20 minutes
Somebody had already found how to exploit the race
And so of course we had to get our dev team on patching that instantly it got chaotic quickly
But you know, it was a great experience. We ironed out a lot of bugs
We were able to give out a lot of prizes and bring in new eyes
But yeah, you always have to be very adaptive always have to be building and quickly
Responsive to the problems that the community brings because of course you want to bring the best
Product possible to your community. So that's also something you always have to look out for it
If you're someone out there that's looking at you know
Making a project of your own you kind of know if you haven't noticed already that people are gonna get really nasty with you
And you just have to kind of bear with it and adapt to it and then just find the way to kind of best
You know acclimate to your environment. So that's one thing that we really learned fast and I just want to build off what he said
But yeah, that's that's what I had to say on that. So thank you
Yeah, no, I love it, man. I appreciate it
I think I think also, you know in in the realm of gaming right it being so competitive by nature
I just can't even count how many times I've yelled at my TV, right?
And so it's like with with that much passion and excitement behind anything, you know
Everything is just gonna be taken to the you know, 10x, you know degrees
So totally get that don't envy else position
but I do I do want to circle back to what Ian mentioned about kind of
their their jockey club and like these different feedback loops because you know, we have
Sean here from 007 and you know 007 is a group where you have seven or more units
So it's kind of the the whale community of use and so I'm interested Sean
I mean, how do you see kind of the the experience and like the different feedback and the different ideas and the things that people are
interested in in talking about within 007 versus kind of the wider community because you know for us
I think as a team we we we use 007 and X plus as
I mean really great feedback loops because at the end of the day, you know
if somebody is invested to a much higher degree into whatever you're doing then
You know the vast majority of other people it's like they probably have a reason and so understanding like like what is that feedback?
Like like what could we change? What could we improve? What did they think we were doing right and wrong?
They give really great feedback and so interested Sean
I mean, what are your thoughts around, you know, just like the the feedback and and the perception being in
007 versus kind of the the wider community as a whole and do you feel like you're able to give us as a team more?
Yeah, it's an interesting question for sure the
I'm thinking inside actually around the shit that Frank sometimes takes or all the time takes
It's like orders of magnitude different, but starting 007 initially like specifically to the feedback issue
I don't know if everyone recalls this who's in the audience, but like maybe two three months ago
Frank publicly committed to doing like a regular cadence of a maze with both X plus and 007 and
I remember there was a bunch of uproar from the wider community and I ended up hopping in its bases
to talk about the perception of it at that time, so like
similarly to that I think that
You certainly I mean part of the part of the value prop of joining either of those clubs if you're in either community or both
to Kevin and you and Frank and sort of the rest of the team and like getting the opportunity not so much to like
Get early alpha but to provide feedback on ideas and iterate on that across the board
I think it's enormous like those sessions
Hopefully they provide value to your team and like the Frank specifically on like how people would respond to to certain things
But also there's a lot of fucking smart people who are founders and entrepreneurs
Whether it's in web 3 web 2 or you know some IRL business who have lots of really great insights on stuff
And so I think for us like there's huge value in
In the access, but also I think it's reciprocal and there's value for the team so I
Do I do suspect that it's probably like something of a
source object for the wider community in some cases and maybe more so in Utes because
There are so many incredible clubs
Doing like wild stuff like Noun's is doing incredible stuff
The crowns Club is really doing some amazing stuff. And you know, there's so many more who are who are bringing
Together a lot of community members in unique ways to provide value who maybe don't quite get that access
so one of the things we've tried to do to resolve that or at least likes partly is to create an opportunity for leaders of
Those clubs to basically be in the 007 discord and attend those those talks with with the team or with Frank
And then do like just just VCS together with us in there
And at least then they can go disseminate that information or like communicate and get feedback from there from the clubs that they're running or leaving
I think yeah, but overall I think it's like a net win by by a wide margin
Yeah, no, I appreciate that man and I know it is it is a bit of like a taboo thing to talk about in the community
But I mean it truly for us it really is operational, right helps us make better decisions
It's not even just talking to clubs because I mean while we talk a lot to x plus double seven
We've talked a lot to micutes and and every club under the Sun as many times as we can
And then on spaces publicly right to just like everybody to really I think it's it's it's just a game of feedback
Because you know if you do this in a vacuum if you if you start trying to build a community in a vacuum
Like where are you gonna get the people from you know what I mean?
And and it just makes more sense to you know as cliche as it is build in public when it comes to these things
Because that's how you're going to understand if you're doing something right or wrong
If you make an announcement about some sort of community thing that you're doing and everybody hates it. Guess what?
That's that's great data like don't don't do that again, right like try something maybe different
And so I think it just makes sense in in all respects though
and you know we as a team are definitely trying to be as available as we can to all types of feedback and
Constantly making changes to to make sure that we're available for it
But it is it's a tough tough thing to do
And you know we don't even have to deal with you know a game platform that people are using on a daily basis
So I can't even imagine the levels of complexity it adds man
You know there's bug reports and like feature requests because we're literally one of them on photo finish, so sorry
But I am interested because Sean what you what you mentioned too is like
I mean the fact number one is you self-organize
But then number two is you've kind of taken it upon yourselves to try to you know
Bring this this value add to other clubs other leaders in the community
Which is which is amazing, and I love to hear that
I think you know we're very blessed to have that kind of vibe and drive just permeate the community
But in all reality. I mean it takes those types of people to help build this community
It takes people like Sean and Dougie, which is now who I want to ask a question to
Dougie I mean with with what you've done with D golf right
I mean you've built D golf from the ground up
And you've created something that is now a recognizable brand not only in our community
But you know much wider in web 3 than I I imagine you ever thought it would be and so I'm interested
I mean, you know being a non-traditional community. I guess in web 3
How do you think about the way people interact with you as not only a founder, but then D golf is a brand?
Yeah, absolutely, and I love that question because
When we were formed in D golf it was kind of like what kind of approach to me want to take with this
I mean with dowels and clubs in general
I mean it's it's a good idea because you have the automatic community behind you
But like you said you're kind of building in a vacuum
so you're kind of limiting yourself to just that central audience of who has your trade who wants to
Be in your club and stuff like that so
We thought if you want to grow and have mass appeal to a broader audience
And you need to have a product that affects and appeals to a much larger community and groups of people
So we listened to Kevin on one space before and he said if you want to expand your community
You always have to think about how can I add plus one like how can I add one more person one more community?
So for us we kind of take this in a two
Fold kind of approach. So our first one is obviously through in real life events
So offer special benefits to our community members like youths and D gods
Obviously, they're our number one community who we are most about
situations like Chicago where holders get
Get the cost of the event paid for they get to come for free
But also have opportunities to introduce other people other projects to your event
So things like the country classic you didn't have to be a you or a D godholder to come you got to come
meet new people you even got to bring people that weren't
NFT holders so you can introduce them to this community. So and then the second way is through content
Web 3 we want to break into the minute warm like
Mainstream audiences and the golf is the perfect tool for that. So you look at things like barstool sports
They have a their foreplay podcast and their foreplay golf. They just they're the now the number one golf media brand in golf
You look at things like good good golf and Bob does sports. They just got like a million dollar
Sponsorship deal with Callaway, but none of them are
NFT focus none of them are web 3 focus
So we really have like an opportunity to do something big here
But also tied into mainstream audiences who love golf people that are watching good videos
But we also have the opportunity to bring in the web 3 audiences
So our idea is we're gonna be doing something that we call the go touch grass tour and what that is
It's 2d golf players will play against two other players in a head-to-head match play golf tournament
Our first match is against board apes
So obviously their community is going to be watching it rooting for them our community rooting for us
And then everybody in the general public who just loves golf is going to be watching it on YouTube when they just randomly stroll through
So it's an opportunity to gain exposure not only as a web 3 brain, but also as a golf brain
And so just to bring it twofold and back to the main point
I think if you really want to get your name out there and get your brand out there
Then you kind of just have to think outside the box and how many possible communities can I bring in? I?
Love it, man. I love it. And I think like honestly
I'm gonna speak for the whole stage here and I'd say that's probably a shared sentiment because there's I mean both
Ian and and the team at diodedash have had great examples in their their respective platforms of just collaborating with other communities
And I think you know at the end of the day no matter what you're doing at least what we found is being
Valuable is just focusing on the the actual just the person right like the person on the other end of the phone the person
On the other end of the computer the person on the other side of the tee box
You know what have you right and if you just focus down very granularly to the individual
And say how can I make sure as many individuals have a great experience a great time make a new friend?
Have a have a fun time playing this game or or talking to someone in the community
That is actually just the most powerful mechanic you can have especially if that's repeatable
And so it's you know building systems to just make that happen as much as possible is
is where I think is is where we've seen a lot of success and just building our own community because
We have so many different events, and we're hitting them hard as has Doug you mentioned
We got a lot of a lot of golf events coming this year
We got a lot of killer threes events come in this year
But really the the entire idea around all of that is just like if you get people with similar interests
Into the same place they're probably gonna have a good time. They might make some friends
They might make some memories, but it's like that's all you have to do
And it's actually that simple like 90% of the time so Ian would love to hear from you
Yeah, I was just curious to kind of pin you guys that have pulled off some of these things a little bit more
Than than we have in terms of the real-life things. You know I'm always worried or concerned about
You know everyone's so spread out and how do you rally everyone to one spot when I think you know here
You talk about these golf tournaments. I'm like hell. Yeah, that's awesome, man
There's like tons of golf courses here in Orlando. We could do something like that, but I'm just
It just it feels like what is attendance like I mean
I'm assuming you do the best at an NFT conference, but have people been able to do successful events just out
You know like at a random mid-February in
Arizona or you know how are you choosing how to even place?
And where to go with with as many spread apart you know of course our half our communities in Australia and stuff
So I'm just curious what you guys think about that you know
Yeah, I mean for us obviously the easiest way to go about it
Is just to find events where people are going to be centralized in well once us vote tnyc la la
Our basil stuff like that, but we're also hosting event out in LA this year in October
So there's no events going on but we know that that's where a main focus of our holders are so there's a big demand
For an event out there already
So it's kind of I guess just finding a central place where a lot of people are or a demographic where you know
It's heavily concentrated, but yeah, I agree
It's hard to just try to convince somebody to come out for a one-day event where it's gonna be a six-hour thing to
Meet other people so it well the way that we've taken our approach to that is for example like this big three thing
We're having a golf event the morning of the game so that after after the golf event everybody can go to the game together
Just really gonna travel for a golf event and for that so sunny from you athletics is putting on a
Basketball tournament on Saturday, so kind of making it like a full weekend of event
I could really dedicate the time and the money and it's worth it to go out there because
I'm gonna get a lot out of it in return
That's a good. That's a good way to think of it
Like so we've been talking about just and this has come up in a couple of the chats
so the Breeders Cup is the next you know, obviously there's there's still the Belmont stakes coming up for horse racing in New York, but
The Breeders Cup is sort of the next big one and you know the Derby we were there
But we were working and it was really late notice, too
Well, maybe next year we'll be able to have a full-on like get all of our holders to the Derby
You know, we have a whole of a week in Louisville. Good luck getting people to Louisville, of course
But regardless that that's what's going on and then but anyway, the Breeders Cup is out in basically in LA
You know, it's out in Santa Anita in November and
I thought okay. Well, you know, why don't I just rent a house and
the first ten people that can come
You know can come and then we'll go to the Breeders Cup and we'll have a good time and then
You know because it's starting with just a small nugget and maybe it'll get bigger from there
And I bet there's people in SoCal and I bet there's people in San Fran, you know
Whatever that would make the journey people in Vegas that would come do it
I think I just I typically just get too stuck of like, how do we make this huge perfect event?
Whereas it might be just fine to have like eight people
You should send it. I think I think that's a great idea because you'd be there
Dude, I mean you hit it right there at the end is like you actually don't
Need to do like huge crazy large production events for like people to have fun and
Obviously people enjoy those right? I mean when you look at what we did in New York
We definitely had some events where we spent a lot of money
Some events where we didn't right like we had a pizza party at a Joe's Pizza
Which was much much much much cheaper than the basement party at the public hotel
But you ask a bunch of people right and I would venture to say there's there's probably
A non-zero percentage of people that had more fun at the pizza party
And really it just comes down to getting people into the same place
Not even just like the same hotel like we kind of went a little overboard for New York
Um, but just like the same city, right?
And so dougie, I mean you hit it on the head with the killer three stuff because
I mean we we have the killer threes team. So we have a basketball team that's touring the country
So that's one event that's going to happen regardless of whether we do anything for it or not
So we were like, well, let's do it, right?
So now those are going to be some anchor events
So let's figure out what else we can build around those to just elevate that experience
And so that's where the idea of bringing on sunny and having him literally travel to all of these games
So that he can be our man on the ground hosting a happy hour doing some pickup games
And then for the weeks that he can dougie coming and doing some golf outings, too
Like he said, I mean it just makes more sense for somebody that maybe even lives an hour two hours away
To just like go for the weekend, right?
Especially when all their internet friends are there
And I think really what we want to do is is just like double down on that culture
And the idea that there should be meetups happening all the time everywhere
Because we're all already very much so connected even if you own a different, you know, jpeg than I do
It's like we're all here buying stupid jpegs on the internet
Vibing on twitter spaces when I when I explain to people what destabilizes at weddings i'm going to a wedding in two weeks
Um, they the the the way their eyes look it's just it's it's insane
And I love it because for us it's beautiful, right for us
It's normal and it's like when you encounter other people that have those similar interests that you can totally nerd out with about this stuff
So all you have to do is literally give them some free pizza and a street corner and nine out of ten times
They'll be happy. So ian i'm i'm all for it and
I mean when it comes to these tables, obviously
We're we're here to support you and we can probably get dougie to uh to co-schedule something for us, too
We might be able to have a horse slash golf. Oh my god, dude polo. We should do. All right
I'm gonna stop there. We're gonna we're gonna go to sean sean. You had your hand up next. What's up, man?
Hey, I think I lost my turn. I thought at some point in there
You were mentioning earlier this is a question for you actually erin you were mentioning earlier about the value of focusing on
The person behind the jpeg like really kind of dialing in on how do you
For that individual make sure they're having fun make sure they're having
They're enjoying the experience of whatever it is being in the community being in discord
like i'm kind of elaborating on that, but
I was curious if the if the feedback loop for the team
Has noticeably improved since since the focus of like hey, let's let's do these irl events. Let's do them everywhere
Let's do them all the time
And and i'm curious like because I know I know like just speaking personally I could i'm scrolling through this list
And there must be 25 people here now who I actually like I know their faces
And it's it's dramatically changed the way we interact with one another
In discord the level of conversations that we're having the way the deejans trade with one another
I actually got a fair deal done today with dope soul because we're friends in real life, which is awesome
Uh jokes jokes aside, but like i'm curious like how how has that impacted?
The feedback loops for for you
Great great question. I mean it it's done wonders, right? I mean
And I haven't been to all the events right? I mean, I was obviously at new york
um and even then right I wasn't really participating in the events because I was
you know working working behind the curtain more so but
Even so, I mean we we had so many opportunities to just sit down and talk to people
Like face to face people that we interact with all the time on twitter. We maybe have never met in real life
Um, it was the first time I got to meet pokey
Um, and you know, we're we're always, you know interacting on twitter. I love he's a funny guy
I feel like I know him yet. I had never met him before
um, and so it is it is like this this level of um
I don't know realness where
I think for me personally it makes me more excited to like do this job
Right because like it's it's one thing
To uh to like work for a technology company or to you know, do whatever
Uh, even if you work for you know, a cool nft company like that's that's fun
But like when you actually have people on the other end of this that that care
Just as much if not more than you do
And you have people like dougie out here literally creating a degolf brand from nothing
Because you wanted to and you have people like like shawn like you man. I mean doing 007. It's it's tough work
I didn't realize how much work decables was gonna be when I started it. Thank god. I have my manager shout out f-dog
I know he was in the audience earlier. I don't know where he's at now. I guess he ditched me
Um, but it's it's it's not easy
And so I think for me personally just being able to connect
So personally with so many of our community members has has like really helped me
Um, just like truly understand our purpose here
Because you know on the surface level we're we're trading nfts. We're we're doing whatever we're vibing on twitter
We're playing games, but like this is real
You know like what we're doing here is real in a lot of different ways and in a lot of different ways for different people too
Uh, and and these irl events is the only thing that proves that to me and I could have never imagined
Fucking crypto conference, dude
Like a crypto conference like two years ago. I I thought nfts like I remember hearing about top shot and stuff
I was like that doesn't make any like that's the dumbest thing watch the highlights on youtube
And then here I am working for fucking d gods, right?
So it's it is a beautiful thing and you can't make those those connections or really like feel that from people
Unless you're sitting across from them
And so, I mean we had so many
So many community members that came up to like our hq in new york
Hung out with us told us about what they were excited about what they weren't excited about got a ton of great feedback
Uh, and dude, it's just like it goes back to what I was saying earlier
Even from like just being a gamer right activism does not care
But like these nft projects they care about us. Well, at least the good ones do right?
I think I think everybody up here probably cares about their community and that's you know, why you're here
It's it's a big positive and I think more communities should should do more irl stuff if they can
But also like I think digital is pretty slept on too
Uh, I think we're gonna start doing more just like digital and virtual
You know private stuff and like discord and things
Um, because like it it's actually just so easy
And so it's like why wouldn't you have, you know, virtual things happening every week and then irl things happening every week
It's like it's actually there's there's so much opportunity here
Uh and people just want to connect with each other
So if you give them more ways to do that
I think they're gonna love it and to ian's, you know point earlier about attendance and making sure that you know
Enough people come to these things
but if you if you start small and you eventually work up then
I mean now we have mark colser in la who does a monthly meetup at the same, uh sausage restaurant
And like 40 people go like every month like 40 50 people go and people from outside the community come
But it started as you know, seven or eight people so you just gotta you just gotta start small. That's awesome
That's really cool to hear the digital thing. I just wanted to say like too that
We think back to this first, you know
Three to six months of the pandemic like how important that was to have your game night with your crew or something
because at least here, you know, we were stuck in and
Having a netflix party had just kind of kicked up and I think those have gotten all better now
And I I have wanted to do that a lot more with the community of like let's just yeah, dude
It's friday night movie night. We're gonna watch independence day
Just like goof on it for an hour
Um, those could be actually really uh compelling just because it is like with photo finish in the gaming community
You do get trapped a lot in the details of the game, you know, everyone's there to talk about the game
but so that's what i've been trying lately is to make a couple channels and there's a few in the
Pfl discord that I don't allow people to talk about the game. It's like let's just start
Let's just chill out a little bit in here. You know, this is like the whiskey we call it the speakeasy
the speakeasy, right and it's just something to
You know get your mind off the game for a little bit
And and yeah, maybe in there is where we start trying to schedule, you know
More regular events that are just literally social only, you know
And then of course everyone will get together and just start talking about photo finish, but uh
Yeah, and I mean you don't lose anything either from trying, right?
like that's the beautiful thing about the virtual stuff too is like
Relatively low cost to just like give it a shot and like it doesn't work out
You never do it again and like nobody remembers anyways
Like we have uh, we have the minds of goldfish and crypto and it's it's a positive and a negative in many many ways
Um, but dude, I I think you should go for it. I'm I'm down
Um, especially if we're not talking about photo finish
Uh, because I would love to run some psi ops on the competition. So, uh dino dash
I was gonna touch on what you guys were saying about um, how important it is to in real life events
I absolutely agree a lot of times, you know projects that are smaller smaller scale in comparison to utes and d gods
They kind of get scared away from the topic of in real life meetups or in real life events in general
Just because you know, we know we don't have quite the same reach that utes and d gods have you guys have amazing communities
You're the titans of the industry so to speak
And so a lot of times you are scared away from putting something out there like that because you don't want to
You know say you have this in real life event and then only you know five to ten people show up it
But what ian was saying, you know, I never even thought of it that way
It was such a good idea and something we will definitely be considering in the future
The idea of literally just you know buying it or renting an airbnb for the weekend or just renting out a house where you invite
10 top like 10 people in your community whoever can make it first gets to come that's an amazing idea
I think you should absolutely do that ian because it's so important to do in real life events
But it's a scary concept from the view of not having as large of an audience as these top tier blue chip projects
So like us not being a blue chip
We would be scared away from that idea just because the fact that you know
We don't have as big of an audience
It might be a lot harder to orchestrate like will we get those people that actually show up if we put it in place
And spend the money but what ian said absolutely fantastic idea
We're definitely going to look into something like that because I think it's so important to do in real life events
You know to meet the founders in person to meet the team in person, you know to shake those hands build those relationships
But on a smaller scale when you are on a project that you know is up there like youths and d-gods that you know
Have the space captive being those titans, you know, you have to come up with more creative solutions
And ian that was a great idea there. So we'll definitely be looking into that for sure
Yeah, man, I I love it and I would I would encourage you too because I mean most of our events that we have in our community are
Like they're actually just mostly not big things. It's mostly just like casual small stuff and I think
You know the the the thinking that
Because we're going to have an event. It has to be you know, something specific
Uh, there there's so many different kinds like for example, if there's six community members
In a city and they want to go to top golf. Sure. Let's make that an event and we'll invite everybody else, right?
Like to me that that that seems like a good a good value ad right?
It's like there's even a small group of people regardless of how many twitter followers a project has it's like you gotta
You got a handful of people in a city that are down to like meet up and like actually cultivate a real life relationship with each other
Support it. However, you however you possibly can and that's that's really what we're looking to do
It it actually doesn't start at those higher levels of like planning these these big events and stuff like that
It really starts with picking out community members that are already kind of doing it
And like this is literally what i'm doing right now. I I I handpicked we found uh, so mark holzer, of course
We've got sunny we've got uh bec who who does some events in austin
And frosted has been doing some events in uh in atlanta
And so I reached out to him. I was like, let's let's make this thing regular, right?
And like let's make this thing a system and like I don't care if you know
There's five people ten people forty people whatever like let's make it great for those people
And then let's scale that to more cities and then more cities and then more cities, right?
Because it's actually not that hard
Like it takes a big lift to build these systems
But what we've found at least is you know
You have these these insanely passionate people in the community
They just need a little bit of support and they can do a ton
And I mean we've we've got a couple of them up here right now
So I I absolutely love it. I I will be at everybody's irl events
Um, especially if it's at the kentucky derby ian. I was talking to the guys yesterday in the voice
We're gonna make it happen. I think we're gonna do a d stables event in the kentucky derby next year
I don't know what it's gonna be, but we're gonna do it and would love to uh to do that with you. So
Uh, thank you everybody so much for coming tonight. I appreciate the speakers that came dougie so much. Thank you
I'm probably gonna annoy you pretty early tomorrow
Ian thanks so much for your time. I'm probably gonna annoy you too in that discord ticket. We have uh, shout out
Uh sean, I appreciate you so much. I'm glad that your teeth are looking shiny
Uh and dino dash. Thank you so much for coming
I hope you find some rest after what I can only imagine has been a very stressful few weeks
So everybody that came to listen. Thank you
This was curated by dust labs a bi-weekly twitter space that we do just to talk about kind of whatever's relevant
Um, so thank you so much for coming. This space was recorded. So if you came late, you can go back and listen
Follow all the speakers. Have a great night and we will see you next time