Having introduced the idea of spending “10 minutes with…” some prominent individuals, it’s occurred to me that when I’m looking into a new project, I often wish there was a resource that I could use to quickly get up to speed, before even thinking about reaching for my ledger. 

Some projects do this brilliantly, of course – but it’s very much case-by-case in my experience, both in terms of content and in terms of how and where that content is presented.

Specifically, what I tend to look for when first starting out are factors such as the approachable-ness of – and vibrancy within – a community, a sense of what the project is working towards, the role played founders/community leaders and any red flags from a project’s history or culture.

Often, projects that have been around for a minute have pretty evolved eco-systems with multiple collections – all of which can be daunting and even offputting at first.

In many cases, this DYOR activity is part of the fun of the space – and certainly it’s something I’ve enjoyed, particularly when I’ve had the mental bandwidth to get stuck in. And in most cases, it’s a rewarding experience. But it’s not always possible, for timing reasons – and the available info is sometimes buried.

So, my intent is really to pull together some helpful and relatively objective info and perhaps the odd insight, to shine a light on each project’s strengths and to transcend the usual call from some helpful soul in Gen Chat to go ahead and “check out latest announcements”. 

First up, the project I know perhaps the best and is super (duper) dear to my heart – The Overlord (nee Creepz).

But I see this as a rolling series and have a bunch of projects in mind.