0:30CarlOf course. So as you said, my name is Carl. I’m the marketing director over at Craft the Future as well as the founder of Craft the Future. The number one thing that we like to focus on is being an educational resource hub for no-code creatives. That is a term we’ve coined and tried to make our baby. No-code tools has been existing for quite some time now. Right. And now we’re really trying to kind of use that to break into the creative atmosphere. where we help creatives feel more comfortable using AI and blockchain technology.
0:59Kamal HubbardThat’s a great thing because I’ve had an opportunity to work with artists and there’s a lot of artists out there who really warm up to Web3 and the fact that, hey, this is a way that I can engage with my patrons.
1:16CarlRight.
1:16Kamal HubbardAnd removing intermediaries in the process. However, some get stuck by the complexity of blockchain and Web3. How does Craft the Future with these no-code tools, and maybe let’s back up, can you define what no-code tools are?
1:32CarlRight. So no-code tools means there are applications that allow for you to create your own creative webpage or application for so that doesn’t even allow you to even know what’s going on behind the You don’t have to know the JavaScripts, the web development frameworks, the, or even the object-oriented code. You can just go in, break stuff, have fun, and kind of put your product out there in a way to your audience in a more fast, quick, and dirty way. But it allows you to get the results that you need to know what your audience is really looking for.
2:08Kamal HubbardRight. So these are user-friendly designs.
2:12CarlExactly.
2:14Kamal Hubbarddesign and application design tools where once again, people don’t have to worry about something breaking in the process, right?
2:22CarlRight.
2:23Kamal HubbardOkay. And Craft the Future, how are you -- what’s your outreach to artists to bring them into the collective?
2:32CarlSo I always like to kind of say Craft the Future has always been on a journey. We started off as a marketing agency, and marketing is still like our big bread and butter. We love storytelling and love having a home for community. And being able to have a home for community allows creatives to be able to come into our space and tell their story and talk about how they’ve been able to use this technology. Every month, we’ve been able to highlight and spotlight creatives that actually have taken this technology and use it from an artist’s perspective, from a tangible, physical, digital artist, or even from a musician.
2:32CarlOr we like to even say our coders as well are creatives in themselves because it does -- it takes a creative mind to have some of these applications. Um, but now we have pivoted a little bit more towards an educational resource hub. So that allows us to have webinars, that allows us to have workshops focused a little bit more on our meetup community here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Our Q1, we actually just across the street, um, we partnered with Milwaukee Artist Resource Network, otherwise known as MAR, to be able to host our Q1 meetup, which was no-code. We called it Volume 1, No-Code Creatives. And we specifically highlighted women in the Milwaukee area for Women’s History Month.
3:40Kamal HubbardThat’s awesome.
3:41CarlThat has a background, um, in diverse fields, but tackles their fields using AI and showing us from an architecture mindset all the way down to I am a medical doctor and this is how I use AI in my everyday world.
3:55Kamal HubbardThat’s cool. So are you also, I know you’re here in the Milwaukee area, but are you focused on artists that are here locally, regionally, or is this a collective that’s global?
4:08CarlSo we -- Craft the Future is very local to global mindset. We are definitely more bread and butter in the Midwest with our partnership with ETH Chicago. As the communications lead, it allows us to be able to tap into the Midwest global community in a stronger way. Milwaukee actually is a rich hub in itself because Chicago is the -- what we like to call the cousin of the Midwest.
4:33Kamal Hubbardsome water.
4:35CarlUm, but with that, it has definitely given us some reach, given us a lot of opportunity to be able to take the audience in Chicago and bring them to Milwaukee, or that audience in Milwaukee and bring them to Chicago. Um, I’m originally from Ohio, so of course my overall goal is to be able to reach out that far, touch some Michigan, touch some Indiana, see how far we can go out there. But as of right now, we have focused heavily in Chicago and Milwaukee.
5:00Kamal HubbardThat’s great. That’s great. I mean, Milwaukee just has a great art scene. Yeah, I don’t want to go on all the stuff that I -- other stuff I like about Milwaukee, but it has a very great, robust, strong art scene. And so I think this is a great resource that people can tap into and just start their Web3 journey. And maybe can you share a success story with someone who really had no skills, technical skills who was able to kind of pick up some of your resources and run with them?
5:34CarlYes. So as I said before, every month we were able to highlight creatives on our newsletter and we’d be able to highlight different individuals who have never used this technology or who probably do have a little bit more of a technical background, but have shown us how they’ve been able to immerse their creative side to it. 2 artists that I would like to highlight, one is named Donna Renee and then the other one is named Sonia. Both of these artists have their own perspective -- I don’t want to say labels, but their own albums and ventures that they’ve created and bodies of work that they’ve been able to create. And one, Sonya, she’s been able to have Deaf as a Business. Deaf as a Business is a nomadic band where people from different individuals and backgrounds are able to come in and out of the band and perform in different varieties of spaces across the globe, actually.
6:24Kamal HubbardWow.
6:25CarlSo they actually created an NFT. And now I’m speaking a little bit too much in areas that I’m not super familiar with. But I do know they were able to create an NFT and actually offer that to their community and even start the stepping stones of that, where Donna, she actually did a performance recently where she reached out to Craft the Future, i.e., myself, and was actually able to ask, like, how can I create some visuals for my performance using AI. There’s a text-to-video platform known as Pika Labs, and that was a tool that we were able to use in combination with DALL-E 3 just to be able to make some motion graphic videos, but also taking the music that she was already able to create and kind of create more of a performance scenic vibe for her in the Milwaukee area, performed at Wunderbar Cafe.
7:12Kamal HubbardWow, that’s really cool. Yeah, it’s great that you can point people to tools like Pika or DALL-E 3, which are great. But I think that’s a big thing. Sometimes people are overwhelmed by AI, right? There’s so many different tools out there and they might not necessarily know how to actually use them or get acquainted and they get intimidated and they kind of turn away. So I think once again, what you’re doing by Warming people up to the concept of, hey, AI can actually make your life better.
7:45CarlRight.
7:46Kamal HubbardAnd as a creative, it’s not taking away from your creative talents or spirits. It can actually amplify them.
7:54CarlRight.
7:55Kamal HubbardAnd so that’s a really great thing.
