Description: Futureland 2 is an enhanced version of Futureland 1. It focuses on balancing both qualitative and quantitative tracking approach, while being a fast and beautiful native iOS app that allows users to track their own progress across habits, projects, and interests, share that with a close group of friends or create challenges to increase accountability.
Status: On-Going
Description: New Systems is an experimental project aimed at improving Toronto’s systems related to creativity, innovation, and culture. The project seeks to form a fundamental understanding of needs, then addresses these needs by creating new systems, communities, and infrastructure. Learnings and insights from the project are shared broadly to benefit the wider community.
Status: On-Going
Description: A unique hackathon in Toronto that combines intensive project development with a sports-style draft night for team formation. This new team formation mechanic effectively encourages cross pollination of skills and perspective in the ecosystem. Then Participants engage in a 48-hour hackathon to create new technology projects and share widely with the broader community.
Note:Likely one of the most successful and impactful hackathon projects in Toronto’s history. Increased cross-pollination between Toronto, Waterloo, and beyond. Set the stage for New Builds 2.
Status: Complete
Lead: Tommy Trinh, Vincent Tran, and Vin Verma
Support: Mandira Midha, Ben Parry, Jon Bergen, Genelle Cruz, Jacky
A formal attire event held at the Ace Hotel in Toronto where hackathon participants were drafted by team captains in front of a live audience. This unique event added excitement and a sense of ceremony to the team formation process, creating a memorable experience for all involved and setting the tone for the hackathon to follow.
Lead: Vin Verma
Support: Tommy Trinh, Vincent Tran, Jon Bergen, and Anson Yu
Defined and implemented the unique draft-style team formation process. This was an essential change that made the project more unique and entertaining, while also significantly increasing its overall effectiveness. The draft mechanic encouraged diverse team compositions, fostered new connections, and added an element of excitement that set New Builds apart from traditional hackathons.
Art Director: Marvin Lau
An animated poster using a tomato as the driving concept, inspired by the Pomodoro technique. The tomato was distilled into its most basic shapes, creating the basis for a visual language we could use across different materials.
Design Lead: Mandira Midha
Support: Vincent Tran
A long sleeve shirt that expresses New Builds 1 visual direction. The front features a small logo reading “New Computer Entertainment Inc.”, while the back showcases a prominent visual expression of the tomatoes that were a fundamental element of the art direction for New Builds 1.
Design Lead: Tiffany Trinh and Kent De Bruin
Support: Mandira Midha, Tommy Trinh, and Vin Verma
To make the draft possible, we created anonymized player cards. These cards included key details about each player such as their skills, tools, and a catch phrase, without revealing their identity. This approach allowed team captains to select players based on elements other than just recognition, avoiding a popularity contest. The player cards proved to be a very effective method for conducting an interesting and skill-based draft process.
Lead: Tommy Trinh and Vin Verma
Developed and implemented a rigorous application and selection process for New Builds 1. This involved reviewing all applications and carefully selecting ideal team captains who could contribute in many intangible ways, with the goal of exciting Toronto’s technocreative ecosystem. The process aimed to identify participants who would not only excel in the hackathon but also foster long-term growth, innovation, and camaraderie in the community.
Description: A new event series in Toronto that blends art, technology, games, (and soon food) into a single experience. The project aims to create a unique celebration of work that is distinctly Toronto-centric, avoiding derivative cultural influences.
Note:We’ve hosted two successful New Demos, with New Demos 2 being bigger than New Demos 1. Each New Demos aspires to contribute the Toronto’s culture and storytelling in its own way. This series has resonated locally and beyond.
Status: Complete
Visit WebsiteDescription: A series of videos created to explain various aspects of Futureland 2′s product features and overall vision. These videos serve as both marketing material and user guides, helping to communicate the platform’s functionality and purpose to a wider audience.
Key Contributions: Concept Development, Scripting, Video Production, Product Demonstration
Note: These videos help to clarify Futureland 2′s unique value proposition, showcase new features, and articulate the long-term vision of the platform. They play a crucial role in user onboarding and community engagement.
Status: Complete
Select Videos:
Track Anything with Your FriendsDescription: An improved version of Futureland that grew from a Slack community into a full daily tracking platform. It started as a place for people to learn new skills by practicing for 365 days straight and evolved into a tool where users could track their habits, projects, and experiments using a mix of habit tracking and visual journaling.
Key Contributions:Product Management, UI/UX Design, Community Building, Feature Conceptualization, Iterative Development Process
Status: Complete
Description: A short film for FUTURELAND that explores the process of self learning. The film aims to draw attention to questions around how we learn and imagines a future with thoughtful tools and resources for self-directed learning in a rapidly changing world.
Key Contributions: Creative Direction
Status: Complete
Watch on YouTubeDescription: A series of videos created to explain various aspects of Futureland’s product features and overall vision. These videos served as both marketing material and user guides, helping to communicate the platform’s functionality and purpose to a wider audience.
Key Contributions: Concept Development, Scripting, Video Production, Product Demonstration
Status: Complete
Select Videos:
Futureland: Now Available on the App StoreDescription: A year-long experiment in music creation, where I created some kind of music every day for 365 consecutive days. This project resulted in 21 hours of continuous music and prior to this experiment I had not made any music before.
Key Technologies: GarageBand for iOS, GarageBand on Mac, LogicPro X, Sound Design
Genres: Electronic, Ambient, Hip Hop, Techno, Acid, Soundscapes
Status: Complete
Description: After making music for 365 days, I realized this could be a very effective way of learning new things, so I decided to learn programming by writing code for 365 consecutive days.
Key Technologies:HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, Swift
Note:This experiment, along with the music project and my prior experience with filmmaking made me start to believe that I could explore any medium, and I should.. It solidfied that the most important things to me is continuous learning, rapid creation, and breaking self-imposed creative limits.
Status: Complete
Description: A global community of technocreatives focused on 365-day learning challenges across various disciplines. Before midnight individuals would publish daily creations through a SlackBot named Otis, which uploaded content to a web interface for tracking their progress. Disciplines explored included coding, visual art, music production, game development, hardware projects, and a lot more.
Note:Futureland Zero had a transformative effect on those that completed their 365 day projects,N leading to new opportunities, relationships, and ideas. This project also became the foundation for Futureland as a startup, leading to multiple iterations and versions since its inception.
Status: Complete
Description: Established and led an internal studio for Shopify’s storytelling, focusing on developing diverse narrative capabilities. The studio produced documentary films, animated content, and original productions to enhance Shopify’s storytelling on all levels.
Status: Complete
Description: FURTHER is an original animated series exploring the intersection of science and humanity. The project involved working with experts from SETI, NASA, CRISPR, and other cutting-edge scientific fields.
Status: Complete
Description: Led the creative direction for Shopify’s IPO, creating a documentary about the company’s origins and growth. This was a high-stakes project, completed on a short timeline, had to find a way to make it feel like a film while seamlessly integrated key business details.
Key Contributions: Creative Direction, Documentary Filmmaking, Storytelling, Business Communication
Note: The documentary was highly successful, effectively communicating Shopify’s story and contributing to a successful IPO. This marked the first time a Canadian company used video in their IPO process. It was the first project I worked on at Shopify, and I think it set a high standard for future storytelling efforts, paving the way for expanded narrative capabilities within the company.
Status: Complete
Description: A documentary film exploring the hip hop scene in Alaska. The film delves into the lives and music of Alaskan rappers, including Josh Boots, and examines the past, current, and future state of the Alaskan hip hop scene.
Status: Complete
Description: A 25-minute documentary short film following educators-turned-entrepreneurs at 54-hour events in New York and Silicon Valley. The film showcases how teachers tackle real-world education problems through technology, highlighting the journey of Kevin Tame and Rob Schwartz as they develop new solutions for students and schools.
Outcome: This project was a milestone for us with its longer 25-minute runtime, and heightened focus on present-time storytelling, meant we were growing in documentary filmmaking.
Status: Complete
Description: A documentary short film following the early beginnings of the band BADBADNOTGOOD. This project aimed to capture the unique sound, energy, and vision of the emerging jazz group in Toronto.
Status: Incomplete
Description: A documentary short film about two of the first female taxi drivers in New Delhi, facing personal challenges and societal norms in an often dangerous environment.
Location: New Delhi, India
Status: Incomplete
Description:A film exploring the origins, design philosophies, and inspirations behind Staple Design, a New York City-based design studio founded in 1997. The documentary also covers Reed Space, their innovative boutique in the Lower East Side.
Note:First time making a video outside of Toronto, felt crazy bringing the footage back.
Status: Complete
Watch on VimeoDescription:A film about Bryan Espiritu, the creator of The Legends League, a Toronto-born brand. It explores the ups and downs of his life experiences, artwork, and clothing line “IDEALL”.
Status: Incomplete
Watch TrailerDescription:A commissioned piece to capture Toronto’s thriving technology landscape, featuring conversations with local entrepreneurs, developers, and visionaries.
Status: Complete
Watch on Vimeo