Last month, we launched Adim to bring together creators of all backgrounds and skills to collaborate, create, and own an entire narrative universe. A whole universe that would begin in one room, over one weekend. Today we are excited to share that we have kicked off development of that universe with 100 creators from around the world inside our very first Creator Room, led by Rob McElhenney and Keyonna Taylor.

When we started Adim, we led with the hypotheses that 1) removing traditional barriers to the creative process would expand the voices, perspectives and value in the room, and 2) empowering community members with ownership in their creative output would accelerate the flywheel of creative innovation.

To begin, we set out to create a merit-based opportunity to join this community through a single prompt: Who is your favorite character and why? No portfolios or prior experience required.

In a matter of days we received thousands of submissions with characters spanning mediums, genres and generations. The responses were thoughtful, introspective, heartwarming and at times, heartbreaking. We learned about who and what our applicants value and how they think about character creation, world-building, and narrative design. Through all of these responses, we saw the foundation of our community emerge.

Initial Observations

The first wave of Adim Members and the 100 participants who joined our first Creator Room have already taught us a lot about what it means to build a story — and a community — from scratch. Here is what we’ve learned so far:

Creative Curiosity Takes Courage

Members are excited to come together to create and embrace the unknown. Despite a lot of newness (technologies, ideas, people), the notion of a more open way to access the creative process, and the opportunities that creates, seems to resonate with industry veterans and novice storytellers alike.

There Is No “Right” Creative Process

We are attempting something that’s never been done before: decentralized storytelling from the ground up, with characters as the focus. With a new process comes new techniques and ways of discovering how a character becomes a character. Everybody’s creative process is uniquely and unequivocally their own, and that’s the point. The way Rob would approach this is different from how Keyonna would. For example, in Keyonna and Jordan’s breakout group, they stripped characters down to the basics by having their room members speak about their favorite characters and pulling out their traits. The group then took it upon themselves to further explore the possible variations of these traits.

The people in those rooms may love their processes — and they may hate them. The beauty of this model is that there is no right way to do this, and there will be opportunities for new creators to spin off their own rooms and bring their own unique style and life experience to their processes.

Newcomers Are Open to Web3

Part of our goal was to introduce web3 to a new audience, and for many members of our community, Adim has been their first touchpoint in this space.

“I knew nothing about web3 and thought it was a pipe dream or a scam. I did some cursory research and found Adim, leading to further research and creating my own podcast. Now I believe web3 has a good chance of succeeding and that decentralization is necessary” – unreliable narrator

We started with a goal of bringing more people into the writer’s room and giving greater access and control to a broader community of creators. There are a lot of ways to do that, many of which don’t involve the blockchain. But we are optimistic about the promise of blockchain, web3 and metaverse technologies as the foundational elements for what we believe will be a more open, composable and immersive future in entertainment — with better alignment between creators, collaborators and fans.

“I had a notion of web3 through my company, but I didn’t really understand it. If it’s about storytelling, then I’m all in. And Adim has opened my eyes to all of it…immersive storytelling, world-building, artistic ownership, decentralized creativity…unearthing talent that is getting lost with a traditional approach to collaboration” - Ben Spencer

Next Steps

Just like a traditional writer’s room, Adim is a collaborative group bringing together talents, experiences and ideas to bring new characters to life. It is already evident that everyone has an eye for identifying interesting characters. Under the mentorship of established writers, they will learn the language to communicate what they already know, and along the way, we will learn what they need to make this process magic. They will have agency and ownership throughout. This is the beauty of web3. And in the meantime, while creative teams are hunkered down building characters, we prepare for new rooms and new members until this becomes a fully decentralized community.

So, how do creators get involved? Adim community members can come from anywhere. If you’ve got a story to tell, apply to join our community and have the ability to participate in future Creator Rooms — or even spin up one of your own!

If you’re passionate about building a more inclusive, accessible and ownable future for entertainment, we’re hiring for numerous roles.

See you in the Adimverse!

- The Adim Team