Proposal: NFTNYC MetaFactory Popup / Digiphysical Launch Party

Official Eventbrite Link: MetaPhysical: Presented by MetaFactory

Official Vote: Snapshot

In order to make MF much more culturally relevant and showcase the launch of our wearables with a digiphysical metaverse experience. Essentially to act as a IRL manifestation of everything MF is about.

Here’s a rough overview of what it could look like, any of this could be adjusted / removed etc as we flesh things out.

We would also want to have the homepage revemp done by that time: Proposal: Metafactory.ai homepage overhaul - #12 by milfdad

Tentative Date: Monday June 20th (first day of NFTNYC)

Venue / Setup:

  1. Fashion Showcase (show all the dope new stuff from Berlin + our best historical products)
  2. NFT art installations on screens
  3. Live hands on stuff (heatpress, embroidery, merch customization, fabric paint markers, etc)
  4. Single event-exclusive item for sale
  5. Some cool photobooth type setup
  6. Virtual clone world
  7. Digiphysical interview booth (camera + unreal engine)
  8. VR Experience, walk around the virtual venue same time as the real venue with a Quest 2
  9. Wearables demo in AR / webaverse

Itinerary:

  • Full day popup
  • Chill party in evening with DJ + drinks
  • Streaming interviews/conversations throughout the day

Roles / Coordinators:

  • Production Team - Lume Studios will help us coordinate the production of the event, designing the experience etc
  • Artist collabs / NFT silent auction - IRLArt
  • Photographer - Lano
  • Party Coordinator (Book DJ, drinks, promote event to fashion kids, etc) - Ben
  • Metaverse Installation - VR Crew + Webaverse

Press / Marketing:

  • Vintendo voice over commercial
  • Reach out to Complex / PR people for coverage
  • Free wearable NFT + POAP for attending

Collab opportunities

  • Webaverse - get people to run around in cool webaverse worlds wearing MF wearables
  • KONG - Exclusive VIP area if you have a KONG chip
  • IRLArt - Silent auction, art installation, etc

Budget

  • $15k - Venue
  • $1k - Security
  • $2k - Drinks
  • $2k - DJ / Promo Host
  • $1k - PR
  • $1k - Event insurance
  • $3k - Misc costs

TOTAL: ~ $25k

2 Likes

Hey @METADREAMER! Ocean Exile will be at NFTNYC. Would MF like a recap video of this popup? Would love to collab with Lano again and continue to build together!

2 Likes

YES to an event for wearables
NO to pushing this venue

Why am I downvoting?

I see no solid plan, just ideas for a spectacle that may work, or may fail.

Strong themes that came through in preliminary discussions:

  1. Need for hard deadlines
  2. Celebratory vibe
  3. Blurring the line between digital and physical
  4. Requires external production help (provided by venue at unknown cost)

None of this requires that we commit to such a physical venue/event, when we have a Metaverse team with a track record for phenomenal digital experiences.

  1. Deadline remains NFT.NYC. But instead of pooling all human resources into event setup, we could focus on longterm content + assets that won’t just disappear after one night.
  2. The physical event feels more “push” than “celebration.” Digital event = so many less moving parts to coordinate, which opens up room for actually having a good time.
  3. MetaFactory has really only been physical thus far. A digital event would clearly show our expanded direction.
  4. We’re relying on the venue for a lot of production oversight, quality, details, and it will come at a substantial additional cost which has not been outlined in this post. The Metaverse team is experienced and infinitely more flexible when it comes to props, lighting, composable media integration.

Best of both worlds: if the digital event is hosted in a scan of the ideal venue, or something similar, then we could extrapolate for a future physical event with a much clearer sense of how we want to set it up.

Additional thoughts

MetaFactory’s relevance / sustainable growth depends on things that we MUST do–namely, improve physical quality, nail fulfillment, release wearables, think about long term plan (curation game? back-end platform for aligned production coordination?), uplevel our content outreach and maintain a rhythm, hone our design language, figure out stables compensation, among others.

This event will inevitably come at a huge human resource cost, not to mention the non-negligable financial cost. But IMO the financial cost is far second to further pushing out the above mentioned must-do’s.

And for what?

Another party in NYC? Good ones go down well, but are still commonplace especially for our target audience. Bad ones cost reputations.

A metaverse experience is where MetaFactory could really stand out. Decentraland Fashion Week set a very very low bar. Just imagine what the Metaverse team’s magic combined with massive heart will do to set us apart!

In summary:

too many unknowns for hosting a main physical event during NFT.NYC. Huge resource cost and potential downside with little upside. I strongly question the underlying motivation for a physical event when we could do it digitally and play to our strengths.

3 Likes

In the spirit of honest debate, I want to respond to this… I believe you can’t go back and change a snapshot vote so while I’m responding to you Wes, my response is more for anyone else who’s reading the forum and trying to make a decision…

I apologize if the plan for the event was not explained adequately but I will summarize the highlights in a few bullets.

  • It’s a 13 hour event, which allows us enough time to showcase our technology during the day and have a fun party at night. The daytime portion is actually the most important part so the goal for this is the furthest thing from just throwing a cool party for ourselves.

  • Unlike previous phsyical pop-ups, this will be focused on showcasing our metaverse team’s work and the wearables standard. A room with floor to ceiling projections on all walls is a perfect canvas for our metaverse team to create an experience that is actually blending reality with the digital world, which is what we’re all about.

  • I imagine the event being integrated with a simultaneous digital event in the Metaverse. So while being a dope physical event, it will also be a standalone digital event occurring on the Metaverse platform of our choice.

  • We will sell only 1-2 exclusive items, IMO ideally a shirt designed in collaboration with a hyped NFT artist. Physical item will obviously be bundled with the wearable that the buyer could redeem to their wallet… This is a scenario where we can actually create secondary market demand for a Metafactory wearable with people who aren’t currently aware of Metafactory, and that is something very important to consider. We don’t have to deal with a ton of inventory like how it was at ETH Denver…

  • The event will feature NFTs by various artists for sale via IRL art, with a portion of revenue being shared with Metafactory.

I hope that summary gave some clarity at least on how the financial cost of the event will likely be offset by sales of both our physical item bundled with wearables & direct NFT sales at the event.

It is true that certain amount of detail needs to be fleshed out still for structuring the day, in terms of programming. I imagine we will have speakers, dedicated timeslots to demonstrate various aspects of the tech… Some amount of time would be dedicated to other partners like Webaverse or Kong…

Deadline remains NFT.NYC. But instead of pooling all human resources into event setup, we could focus on longterm content + assets that won’t just disappear after one night.

It makes a lot of sense to think about this event as a video & photo content production as well. The piece Ryan made about us at ETH Denver was awesome, but a video of this proposed NFT NYC event would be like that on steroids. It would cast us in a good light & add some pop via the high-end production value of the space, and the assembled crowd. Same goes for photography of the event, which would easily replace the photoshoot that is currently on our website. These things are assets with longevity, and honestly so are all of the materials we would prepare in advance of the event to showcase our technology.

Additional positives that haven’t been mentioned:

  1. Possibility of press coverage. It’s never a guarantee, but digital fashion is getting a ton of buzz right now and we deserve to be in the mix of that mainstream attention. Although we’re not the biggest name YET, it is very easy to spin a narrative for us as the face of an open source Metaverse, the real open internet alternative to the Zuckverse. The event & resulting photos would make that story something that a major NY publication could actually run (not as a paid piece).

  2. VC’s will be around. If we’re doing a raise, (which I don’t even personally want yet because I need to accumulate more ROBOT xD) a successful event could really increase our perceived valuation at a crucial moment.

  3. Inclusion of non-crypto people at our event. This is a big intangible and will lend some credence to the ‘fashion’ side of what we’re doing.

Downsides of a digital-only event:

  • Inaccessible / Irrelevant to a vast majority of people. If we’re going to be successful in our goals, we need to bring new people into the space. Cannot get stuck in a web3 bubble.

  • Release of our wearables will happen anyway but take place in a less exciting context. Only “power-users” will be able to truly use our wearables at first, so we need to visually demonstrate their utility and do outreach to onboard as much as possible.

  • Incredibly fast pace of crypto narrative cycle, project lifecycle means that we are dealing with a ticking clock. We have an early mover advantage, strong ties with the Ethereum community… Something to capitalize on sooner rather than later.

Overall, I understand where you’re coming from, but I have a very different opinion. I see the event as a low downside, a good deal resource-wise when you consider that the event generates amazing content and also has a chance at turning a profit, and asymmetric upside with a lot of potentially amazing outcomes from doing this.

My thing is, as far as a solid alternative plan for NFT NYC, apart from this, I haven’t seen anything proposed. The truck was cool but was also expensive and we can’t do the same thing two years in a row, plus it’s all physical. A digital event can happen anytime and shouldn’t be considered a replacement for a presence at a physical NFT conference in New York. I agree that it would have been nice if we had this idea in Denver in February and immediately began making moves to plan and organize it. But with exactly 2 months, we have enough time.

I say we SEND IT and I think we’ll be vey happy we did (insert relevant Wayne Gretzky quote here) :robot:

2 Likes

Yea it would be awesome to collab with you guys again for the event! We could def use help with the whole interview booth setup (potentially live-streamed) and getting nice footage of the event itself as well.

1 Like

Stellar! How about we schedule a call or video chat to discuss the vision and how best we can execute it?

1 Like

Hi folks, VR crew has recreated Lume studios in VRchat according to the dimensions from the floor plan. Positions of the projectors should match as well. Planning to do a cool intro sequence into it like this to showcase it:

Going to add a storage room with a bunch of pickupable items so that we can arrange / rearrange the space live in the virtual.

perhaps we can host an event there next week or stream it on the next vprod call (monday 1est) or community call (thurs 4est)

2 Likes

super fire… When we have the event there, let’s capture some screen recordings & use those in the trailer video for the event. thanks for throwing this together so fast, amazing work

Thanks man, can you get some b-roll from the physical venue in the meantime for a promo teaser?

Yeah, i asked Marcel to send in the telegram group. I know he has a video walkthrough of the spot when it’s empty and i’m hoping he has a good one of it during a live event also but i’m not sure. We shall see.

1 Like

Marcel just posted one in the telegram group. Said he’ll record another one at their next event on Thursday. He also said theres some good clips you could recycle from their instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lumestudios/

We’re stocking up the storage room and giving colliders + physics to everything so that we can arrange / rearrange the venue space quickly together. We’re adding furniture and objects based on references of what we know is available to rent at the physical studio.

Side effect: the space gets trashed real fast

1 Like

MF x M3 Mixer

Highlights:

  • Few AV issues that got quickly resolved after the VRC event
  • Having props like cheese is a life saving icebreaker for some
  • The world hop afterwards was dank, like going to Denny’s after a rave

Metadreamer with a dank nug lol

Got some 360 content with my avatar

This guy had INCREDIBLE worlds and stories that he shared with us after the event

Mixer event format is checked off list, next event will be a field trip where we document builders talking about their worlds or avatars and test projecting those videos onto the screens.

1 Like

TV displays

Opportunities to do some fashion shoots with these + physical model at event with virtual avatars in different worlds displayed on screens behind them.

TV Wall

  1. cryptovoxels
  2. vrchat
  3. craftopia
  4. ??
  5. webaverse
  6. neos vr
  7. valheim / VRAST / etc

These are just ideas, more ideas here: https://hackmd.io/@XR/avatars

TV Tower

Suggestions welcome

3 Likes

The tv tower looks cool!

1 Like

Studio Updates

TV tower and wall moved to entrance of the world, animated cameras positioned there as well

Storage room before entering main floorplan. Hidden by default, can spawn all items by shift+\

Here’s how the fully UV wrapped video screens look in the world. We can spawn cube pedestals by hitting the b button. Nothing is placed on them at the moment.

If we wanted to import / model more rental equipment the link is here. We didn’t have time this sprint since even pre-modeled assets still require a fair deal of preparation to use in the project.

Digital screens

The screens have been UV mapped so that videos can be wrapped in a continuous way to match the spec of the physical venue.

Youtube videos aren’t great because there’s no way to specify the quality of the video by URL for using the vrchat player. We can point to our own mp4 files though, and 360 equis work nice as well (which we can record in vrc).

Avatar switcher

Avatar switcher where people in the world can change to different MF / virtual production related avatars.

3 Likes

Eventbrite Link!! :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Updates 6/4/22

Tshirt merch wearable completed :white_check_mark:


Website promo WIP

Going to have all the METAPHYSICAL related posters link to the eventbrite page and wrap up the site for deployment next week.

2 Likes

Great work everyone, very well done on the 3d / storefront website Sith! You did an incredible job!

1 Like

Jin do you want me to send you the eventbrite flyer poster in that format too? What aspect ratio is it?

1 Like