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Maya Draisin Of TIMEPieces — The Web3 Community Initiative From TIME, Plus: Roblox Rare Digital Item & Mastercard Free Music NFT Passes
One of the strengths of Web3 is its ability to bring the most talented people together and come up with incredible works. TIME encapsulates this idea as they expand their iconic brand into this massive space through their project TIMEPieces. Joining Jeff Kelley, Eathan Janney, and Josh Kriger, CBO Maya Draisin shares how they gather artists, collectors, and fans to build long-term utility and community value. She explains how they keep their Web3 items relevant and fresh despite the ever-evolving demands and expectations of the virtual world. For this episode’s hot topics, they discuss how Roblox is embracing and shunning NFTs at the same time and MasterCard’s release of free music NFT passes. Finally, they highlight a brand-new project called Swoops.
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Maya Draisin Of TIMEPieces — The Web3 Community Initiative From TIME, Plus: Roblox Rare Digital Item & Mastercard Free Music NFT Passes
This is Maya Draisin from TIMEPieces, TIME’s leading NFT Collection Community Initiative. We feature original artwork from more than 158 of the most influential artists in the space. I’m here on the Edge of NFT, the show where you can access the most influential people in projects on the Web3 space. Keep reading.
Curious readers, stay tuned for this episode to learn how TIMEPieces continue to expand the reach of its iconic brand into Web3 and is doubling down on true utility for collectors.
Our guest has in common hot air balloons, French bulldogs and marathon-level stamina.
Finally, how Roblox is simultaneously embracing yet shunning NFTs within its massive ecosystem, all this and more in this episode. Enjoy. Outer Edge LA is an awesome community-centric gathering, returned to LA from March 20th to the 23rd, 2023. If you missed out, here is a way you can catch up on all the interactive experiences, discussions, presentations and more. Simply, go to Watch.OuterEdge.live, register with your email address and get a full recap of over 60 captivating conversations and performances. See you inside.
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This episode features Maya Draisin, the Chief Brand Officer at TIMEPieces. She is the CBO for TIME and Head of TIMEPieces, their Web3 community initiative. At TIME, Maya expertly manages various business divisions, including TIME subscriptions, print and digital retail, licensing, accolades, time for kids, as well as marketing and community for TIMEPieces and Web3.
Before her tenure at TIME, Maya held the position of VP of Marketing at Condé Nast, overseeing iconic brands such as WIRED, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ, Pitchfork and Teen Vogue. Moreover, she Cofounded The Webby Awards and an esteemed judging body, the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. We will dive into TIMEPieces and inclusive NFT community initiatives featuring six captivating collections, Genesis, Inspiration, Long Neckie Women of the Year, Slices of TIME, Beatclub Collection and the most recent, the Seven Collection with Deepak Chopra. Maya, welcome to the show. It is a pleasure to have you here.
Thanks so much. It is such a pleasure to be here.
I don’t know if you know but we had Leah Lamarr. She was our emcee at Outer Edge in 2023 and TIMEPieces Entertainer of the Year in 2022. That was a pleasure to introduce her. I remember that accolade was awesome to be able to share with the world. She did an amazing job for us.
TIME is doing such incredible stuff. TIMEPieces represents this venture into Web3, which has been very bold and forward-thinking. I wonder if you could walk us through the genesis of the project and maybe provide a bit of an overview of everything it has come to entail.
We got into the NFT space in March of 2021. Keith Grossman, who was President of TIME, was in conversation with Marc Benioff. He and his wife owned TIME. He asked if we could see a place for TIME with NFTs. We met at WIRED and he went to Bloomberg. He is an art collector himself. All the little light bulbs went on and he was like, “Absolutely.” We started by selling one-of-one covers. We sold about eleven of them.
As that was winding up, it was the start of the PFP community initiative in the summer of 2021. We said, “It would be cool to do that and how could TIME authentically enter into the space.” One of the things we realized is that throughout history, TIME has always recognized an uplifted artist by giving them our covers to the next generation of artists.
We had Chagall’s, Lichtenstein’s, Basquiat’s and Warhol’s in our collection. If we believed that this was the next evolution of the internet and the next generation of artists, wouldn’t it make sense to give them a cover? We ended up doing an 8x8 square with a red border in which to create. We gave them the theme of Build a Better Future. That was the launch of our Genesis collection.
Since that, we have done five other collections, including one with Nyla Hayes. At that time, she was twelve and we paired her with Times Women of the Year, which went and looked back because, until the ‘90s, it was Man of the Year. There had only been one woman recognized. TIME went back and said, “Over the course of 100 years, who would the women have been?” Nyla took those 100 women and put them into her Long Neckie format.
We did Slices of TIME, which was a collaboration with TIME’s creative director, where he took all the covers from a given year and made a collage out of them. We had a burn mechanism on those, which you could trade for art if you wanted or keep those covers. We did a collaboration with Timbaland, which supplied a beat. We had fourteen artists who created visual art to go with that beat.
Lastly, we have the collection of Deepak Chopra, the Seven Collection, where we brought back celebrating the 25th anniversary of his book, The Seven Laws of Spiritual Success and bring that wisdom back in a TLDR format for people with 73 artists creating covers. Seven of them create interactive, immersive spaces with artifacts.
The Seven Laws of Spiritual Success
I particularly resonated with that. It is humbling to face that it was only Man of the Year for a while.
It is insane when you look at that.
It is great to see an intentional, not only adapting it to feature Women of the Year but also to go back and make up for what was lost. I appreciate that.
I love Nyla’s interpretation of it so much.
She has been an amazing contributor to the space, more broadly speaking, at such a young age and a powerful voice in the space. We had a chance to have Keith on the show a while back and we talked about the unique way that TIMEPieces is bringing together artists, collectors and fans and trying to build long-term utility and community value. We would love to get an update from you on how that is looking, especially in this builder’s market of ours and what strategies you employed previously and maybe some of the newer strategies you are utilizing.
We have been committed from the beginning to long-term values. This is not a short-term flip play. We are not the thing that is going to go up and down or hopefully stay up, whatever that case may be. For a lot of our value, we assume it will be providence or historical value. It is important for us to continue to add value. We do that by creating a real community, which is the key element. It is not necessarily the fancy stuff per se but we have had a lot of success.
We provide tax information when tax time rolls around. We cook together online on a weekly basis. I have chill time every Sunday morning, where a group of people get on the Discord voice channel and talk about our weeks, what is going on in the space and all kinds of things where you get to know the other people better. We have historically, at the big events, done an artist dinner where we bring our artists and collectors, about 150 of them, together for an intimate connection. I heard a lot from the people coming out of NFT NYC that they are beginning to appreciate the smaller, more intimate connections about meeting and getting to know people. We do that well.
Part of it is we create a wholesome space where everyone feels safe and comfortable. It is a good first stop for people. For people who don’t know what they are doing, our Discord is incredibly welcoming. No question is a stupid question. That is not everywhere. We are trying to create a cozy, comfortable place for people to be themselves, get to know other people in the space, ask questions they may not feel comfortable asking in other places, learn together and discuss the biggest things going on in this space.
That is what TIME does. It starts and holds the most important conversations. That is important in this space. As you ask about what we are doing more of, we are starting to say, “What are we talking about this week? Who can we pull together to have that conversation?” You will see a lot more of that happening but we want utility as useful things.
I was not to create more FOMO but I was at NFT New York. It was interesting comparing the contrast of being on the front lines of planning a larger gathering where this time around, my focus wasn’t creating media but joining community events. On a grassroots level, I went to some deep music events in the space and joined the OnChainMonkey on the NASDAQ floor, which was fun.
I had a chance to go to the Impact Theory Dinner, which we are early supporters of what Tom’s doing in space. I did appreciate the value of these 25 to 150-person events and what you can get out of them. Something we are looking to do with our community as we move forward is mixing those small, medium and larger events digitally and in real life because you get different outcomes from mixing it up like that.
IRL is better than virtual hugs. There are no two ways about it.
IRL is better than virtual hugs. There are no two ways about it. Click To Tweet
I want to dive a little bit deeper into the process that goes into creating these various collections. You got six of them in the bag already. They vary in a number of different ways. Can you tell us what that process is like, the creative side, the inspiration, the distribution of content, the marketing and all of that goodness?
They are made up of two different kinds of collections. One is our signature drop, which started with Genesis. The framework we used was we were going to invite half the artists and they were going to invite half the artists. That allowed us to choose artists that are probably more well-known and for them to choose people we should be discovering. We were thrilled with the results of that. We launched that with our signature event.
In the beginning, we also did a combination of NFT artists and TIME cover artists, which was an interesting thing. What we found over time is that it is a fairly steep learning curve to get into the space and continue to build value in the space. We moved more towards NFT natives, although we have had great success with 4 or 5 of our cover artists from the first drop who fell in love with the space and dove down that rabbit hole too, which is exciting.
The other collection was the artist-in-residence collection, which Nyla was the first of and Timbaland was the second of. In the Deepak drop, we combined them. He was the artist in residence, except for his art was his wisdom. We paired him with an artisan signature drop style, which was the largest set of artists we ever had, which was 73 of them. Every time we try, we don’t want to be doing the same thing. We want some elements that are the same but it is like working with a 100-year-old brand. You bring forward things that people love the most. How do you keep it new and relevant in the space?
With Slices of TIME, we added a burn mechanic. The first set of art that was minted for the Slices of TIME was made by our creative director. You could either choose to hold it or burn it. You established the rarity going in. As you chose to hold or burn, the rarity of the slices dropped and got more scarce. The rarity of the art started to get less. It started at zero and it would move up from there. We thought it would be a fun dynamic but it ended up being a mechanic that was far better than we ever could have imagined because people started seeing them as scratchers. They started watching the numbers and that ended up being incredibly fun.
When we got to Timbaland, we wanted to get into music NFTs. We saw that conversation happening and we wanted to be involved in that but it was a 252-piece drop. It is much smaller. When we got to Deepak, the additional element was the combination of things in partnership with artifacts. We did not only make book covers with Transient Labs but there was also an element of OnChain Books. Also, 3D sculptures that you could work into your virtual environments if you got one of those. These immersive worlds are fully built out by some of the artists, one for each chapter that you could explore for a short period. We are constantly trying to think of like, “What is that new extra layer that remains relevant and is making some commentary on what is going on in the space at any given time?”
Web3: TIME is constantly trying to add a new extra layer to their offers so they can always remain relevant in the Web3 space.
You know what works traditionally and have applied so many different cool techniques. I’m excited about the next batch.
To the question of how we are adjusting to space, many of us are thinking about it. We have 20,000 NFTs out in the world at the moment and I like to think of them as chapter one. The first set of 6 is our 1st chapter based on the signature style. Everyone is discovering, “What do you do moving forward?” I don’t think it is necessary. I don’t intend to do a large signature drop again anytime soon.
If something fabulous comes into being, we will. Otherwise, how do we add that utility? How do we add value? What do we do for the people who are already there? I’m more interested in what mechanisms I could use to burn down that supply and gamify it in some way. I was excited about the new manifold announcement to see whether that is something that could work.
Lots of diversity in what is going on as well and perhaps it is useful to dive a little bit deeper into that collection with Deepak. It was fascinating when the buzz started. I remember because we are in the domain and you would be at an event. Somebody would be like, “Deepak is going to be doing something.” It has been interesting to see what has bubbled up from his domain. Do you have any insight into the conversations around getting that going? Is that something where you guys reached out to him or he reached out to you? If you don’t have that info, any more info on what the experience has been like for the users and the fans of the time?
Deepak was a TIME 100 honoree at one point. I already recognized by time who Leah Lamarr was. He has been interested in and active in the space for a long time. We are working together. He did an incredible drop with Emilia Clarke from Game of Thrones. They did an auction drop. Needless to say, mental health is a huge issue in this space. Whether it is FOMO, disconnecting from all things or that sense of having to be online 24/7, all of those things create a lot of mental health issues in the space.
He is always pushing the envelope forward in association with Seva.Love, his foundational side and if you watch, they are doing a lot in the space. Having a conversation about how we could partner together to bring that issue to the forefront and work with some fantastic artists. It happened to be the 25th anniversary of his book, which seemed a great way to bring that information back into the world.
What I will say to your question about how people responded to it, I would start with the artist because, throughout the artistic process, Deepak provided several opportunities for the artists to meet with him via Zoom. Those sessions were the most incredible thing. What you found is you had a lot of the artists who had some personal connection already, either themselves or via their parents or their grandparent. This was wisdom that had worked its way into their lives. You had another set of artists who hadn’t previously had any exposure to this and were struck by it. It was changing their lives as they were making this art, which was incredible.
We had a ton of spaces, some with him and some with the artists, where people were sharing these stories about it. People say, “The art is the utility.” This NFT is its utility. It is life-altering if you let it and it has beautiful art on top of it. Access to Deepak, he did some weekend meditations and he still does this through Seva.Love. It was interesting to see because none of the other collections had this consistent throughout the entire process, a positive experience for anyone. It was a niche. It wasn’t for everyone but anyone interested in it was radically touched. That is all I can say about it.
Wellness is something that we hit upon over and over again. I like what you said. It is an especially important subject matter in this space and technology in general. It is such a fast-moving space. There is a lot of excitement and dopamine-fueled personalities. It is good to have the other side of things and a place to reconnect, rejuvenate and make that part of the conversation. It is exciting that that is the most recent but also excited about what is next.
This is such an important thing. My girlfriend is a marriage and family therapist. She has been volunteering some of her time to help people in crisis and doing some additional therapist work on the side besides her day job because there are many people in need of mental health and elevating their consciousness. It is an interesting tie-in to something that you guys are thinking about as you engage in mental health awareness month in May 2023 in working with someone who is a true collaborator in space and a friend of Edge that we worked with on a wellness event tied to the event during community day. I would love to hear this breaking news about what you are doing for Mental Health Awareness Month.
We are partnering with Shira Lazar and several other partners on a project called the JOMO Effect. JOMO is Joy Of Missing Out instead of Fear Of Missing Out. It is the sense of, “While I’m not there, I take joy in the fact that other people have a great experience.” There are 40 artists who are creating art around the JOMO. It benefits five nonprofits in this space. It is dropping in May 2023 for Mental Health Awareness Month. We are super excited. Seva.Love is involved in that one as well. We are excited to continue this conversation with the same partners and new partners because, as noted, it is super important. About twelve of the artists are TIMEPieces’ artists. It is always fun to meet new artists from the other group that isn’t.
All the money goes to charity, 100% of it, which is a unique type of drop. We’re looking forward to being in the mix and seeing how that goes.
I’m excited about it. It is an incredible group. I’m sure it will go incredibly well.
We covered a wide spectrum of activity over at TIMEPieces but I’m curious about anything that we didn’t cover already. What is next? What is in the hopper?
We are talking to several people about exciting partnerships coming up. I can’t announce them yet. I’m sure you guys feel like every day, we have the most exciting conversations from Web3 native people to Web3 champions who may have Web2 ties to Web2 companies who are looking to get into the space. It is an endless set of interesting conversations and opportunities. We have about a handful that we are excited about coming to fruition.
That is a question we love to make sure we hit upon. There is always something to cover. Another one we like to ask is, what are the projects that we haven’t mentioned that you might be following in the space, be a particular fan of, inspired by, a trend or movements you are noticing that you are excited about?
Snoopy.
Stuffed Snoopy, 6 foot tall.
Is it still around somewhere or long gone?
Long gone.
No. I sold Girl Scout cookies.
Plants on Facebook Marketplace
On Marketplace?
I love my necklace.
Stamina.
About anything fun?
It was good. It was fun.
Take my dog for a walk.
What dog did you get over there?
He is a French bulldog. His name is Bucky.
Why Bucky?
He was named for Buckminster Fuller.
We got a bonus question.
I would love to take credit for that.
That wasn’t so bad. Thank you.
It is like an obstacle course.
That is a dope contest. Thanks a lot.
Important Links
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Keith Grossman - Past Episode
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Discord - TIMEPieces
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@TIMEPieces - Twitter
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@MissMayaDᵍᵐ - Twitter
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Spotify – Edge Of NFT
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iTunes – Edge Of NFT