April Town Hall Recap
A look back at what we’ve accomplished, where we’re going, and our role in the future as a web3 entertainment brand!
On Friday, April 22, we held a Town Hall for The Society of the Hourglass community. If you weren’t able to attend or listen to the recording, your’e in the right place! Since launching our main collection back in January, we have accomplished a lot together, with even more on the way, so let’s get started.
What We’ve Accomplished So Far
✅ We sold out Chapter 1 in January!
Chapter 1 represents 2,222 characters from our total supply of 8,888. The response from the NFT community was incredibly exciting as we watched thousands of new characters be minted and brought into the world, and we’re just getting started.
✅ We completed Phase 2 of the Writer’s Room.
Our community came together over the course of a 7 week process to propose, discuss, and vote on a number of foundational narrative elements based on weekly prompts, led by our studio partner Jumpcut Media.
We established things like Nigel’s role in the Society, what The Competitors are doing, how time travel works, main characters for the animated series, and more. The outcome was a critical foundation for world-building and storytelling, culminating in our narrative handbook.
✅ We launched our first game, Texas HODL ‘Em!
Texas HODL ’Em is a draw poker game set in our Wild West era! Holders are able to play daily to accumulate in-game chips. These will tie to a much broader rewards strategy you’ll start to see implemented with our Chapter 2 game, Degen Run. For now, stockpile!
The Society characters you own provide unique in-game perks to increase your odds of winning (for example, Oldys can peek at the deck five times). We’ve also been integrating honorary collections! Holders of Deadfellaz, Dreamers, Dreamloops, ZenAcademy, 333 Club, Little Lemon Friends, CryptoMories, Doodles, Mystic Wizards, Cranky Critters, and Top Dog (or Cat) Beach Club will have additional perks at their disposal.
Launched first as a holder-exclusive experience, Texas HODL ’Em is now free-to-play for everyone, though you’ll need to be a Society holder to earn chips and appear on the leaderboard.
✅ We began production on our illustrated seek-and-find book.
The book is one of the things we’re most excited about bringing to life, and artwork is well underway! We’ve finished the first spread (set in the Wild West) and let’s just say that if you were a fan of Where’s Waldo, you’re going to love our book!
As a reminder, all holders will be eligible to claim a free, special First Edition copy of the book for each Society NFT you hold when the time comes. We’re making history together, and this is a great opportunity to hold a piece of that process in your hands!
✅ A few other accomplishments:
Those of you familiar with our team (we’re all fully-doxxed, by the way) know by now that we are builders. In addition to the headline progress above, we’ve been working hard to continue expanding on the value proposition for our community. Here’s a quick rundown:
- Hashku (our team’s custom-built NFT creator tool) is lining up major partnerships and making great progress overall. We’ve made major strides and connections with some big teams in the space, and are working on something that you are not going to want to miss out on.
🚨 Alpha Alert: holding multiple Society of the Hourglass characters is going to benefit you when this launches…)
- Nifty Gateway signed us on as a launch partner for their new wallet-to-wallet feature, another huge step towards making the purchase and trading of NFTs more accessible for everyone.
- We have begun work on a brand new web experience that goes beyond being a hub for information, and will serve as a resource for holders and community members to interact with and build your characters’ stories.
What We’re Working On Now
🎉 Chapter 2 mint is open now!
We’ve already seen lots of new characters join The Society, with more consistently rolling in. While the market is in a different place than it was in January (something we continue to keep an eye on, and will adjust our strategy if it becomes necessary), we have several months of runway from the Chapter 1 mint, and are confident in our ability to secure the funding we need to continue building.
🔥 Minting is live on our website!
💻 We’re building a new web experience.
Our website has two jobs moving forward. To serve as a hub of information for people new to our brand, and to house the character world-building resources we’re developing for our community of holders.
The new site will be a dramatic upgrade from our current landing page, and will have lots of new content on book and series, vision for brand, our arcade, and more. Additionally, it will become a true resource for holders who want to co-create with us.
The new character gallery will feature robust sorting/searching/filtering options, as well as things like the ability to name your characters, add backstory (which will update the token description you see on marketplaces, so the story follows your character!), download full-res images of your characters, and more.
📖 We’re continuing to make progress on the book.
We learned a lot throughout the process of developing the first spread, so we’re updating our flow a bit, balancing the need for consistent and steady progress with the importance of mental health and avoiding burnout (we’re a small team!). We’ve re-engaged our team of production artists to assist our Lead Artist, Mike, and we’re super excited about what they’re already bringing to the process!
📺 We’re hiring a writer for the animated series!
We’ve created a one-page series synopsis that Jumpcut is beginning to socialize with writers and other entertainment industry contacts starting this week. Interested writers will be sent a copy of our narrative handbook and invited to pitch their ideas for the series. We’ve already had a number of writers proactively reach out to us expressing interest, and we can’t wait to see what they come up with.
We have leaned into the decision to target the 5–9 year old demographic with our animated series based on what we’re seeing in the industry (and recent bouts of Netflix and other streamers cancelling a slew of animated content aimed at older audiences is a signal that we feel validates this decision).
Remember, The Society of the Hourglass is like our MCU. The animated series is not the endgame for us (pun absolutely intended), it’s just one way in which we’re bringing this narrative universe to life.
✍️ We’re launching the next phase of our Writer’s Room.
Whereas the last phase of the Writer’s Room was focused on establishing our narrative foundation and creating the narrative handbook, the next phase will start building on top of that through four primary ways:
- Hiring a writer for the series (more on that process in a minute);
- Soliciting community input on the narrative for the book, as well as more ideas for character interactions in the seek-and-find spreads;
- Proposing game mechanics for Degen Run based on character traits (more specifics will be shared on this, but the general goal is to take the idea of character traits impacting gameplay to the next level); and
- Building out individual character backstories.
The process for hiring the writer will be a significant milestone in this phase. After fielding initial pitches, we’ll invite a handful of writers (likely in the 3–5 range, depending on the quality of responses) to present their ideas to the community. After that, we’ll facilitate a holder vote to make the decision on which writer to hire. As a holder, you have a direct and meaningful voice in shaping our animated series.
One of our goals in making this series is to demystify Hollywood a bit, and our writer will engage the community throughout the process to share insight into their process, solicit feedback, and more. Specifics are TBD, and it’s important to note that we want our writer to be the expert. Our goal is to inform and learn alongside them!
Working on character backstories will be a community-process following a series of prompts, discussions, and guidance from the Jumpcut Team. It’s time to bring your characters to life!
🤝 We are pursuing a grant for additional funding.
This is a big one, and we are so excited about it! We are pursuing a grant in partnership with several major players in the non-profit and educational space that is intended to accomplish two things:
- Provide funding for the production of our pilot episode; and
- partner with a higher education program to create jobs and real-world opportunities for students to gain industry experience, establishing us as early leaders in the entertainment industry in Northwest Arkansas where our team is headquartered.
It’s early in this process, and there is work to be done, but it’s work we’ve done with people we’ve worked with before. We’ll share more details as things take shape and we have a better understanding of the specifics.
⏳ But wait, there’s more…!
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. We don’t have a roadmap, we have a vision—and we’re being both strategic and opportunistic as we work towards the future we’re creating together. Here are a handful of other things we’ve got in the works over the next few months:
- In talks with the Bentonville Film Festival (founded by Geena Davis) about a partnership opportunity that will expose our IP to major industry players, as well as an expected audience of over 150k people in a really meaningful way.
- We’re planning an activation at NFT.NYC. Several of our team will be in New York for the event, and we’ve got some fun stuff in the works. More to come… 👀
- We’re looking for a part-time community manager to help with engagement and outreach! This person will work closely with the team to expand on our already incredible community. We’re going to take the time to make sure we have the right person, and will be sharing more details (including how to apply) in the next couple of weeks.
So, that’s… a lot. 💪 We’re really proud of it.
We’re building this community differently—leaning into the values of collaboration, authenticity, inclusivity, and avoiding the pitfalls short-term thinking and manufactured hype. The things we’re doing will take time to build, but we’re going to continue working out in the open, keeping you updated all along the way.
It’s a difficult road, but it’s one we believe puts us on the path to be a major player in the entertainment industry for decades to come.
Immediate Next Steps
- Share the narrative handbook with our community this week.
- Jumpcut to begin circulating the series synopsis and handbook to the writing community.
- Continued development on our new website and holder resources.
- A slew of upcoming giveaways, collaborations, Twitter Spaces, AMAs with alpha groups, and more to promote our ongoing mint.
- Begin the search for a part-time community manager.
- Prepare for the launch of Phase 3 of the Writer’s Room (exact timeline TBA).
We’re going to keep showing up every single day, working towards our ambitious vision to create a truly community-driven entertainment IP that is primed for the masses inevitably coming to web3. Books. The animated series. Games. Toys. Merch. Stories. And so, so much more.
Let’s get to work. 🤝
