Good morning ☕️!
For new readers, Adim Ink is our community-focused newsletter releasing every other Monday morning and is the premiere place to and catch up on all things Adimverse.
Here’s what we’ll cover today:
📻 Adim Radio Featuring Creator Rooms!
🤝 Hiring: Front End Engineer
⭐️ Community Spotlight: Annie Pressman
📚 Resources we’ve curated for you this week
Let’s jump in.
📻 Adim Radio Featuring Creator Rooms!
Since our last Adim Ink, we’ve featured Creator Rooms in back-to-back weeks on Adim Radio starting with the Pig the Cat room leads as well as a lead & members of The Funderdome.
Check out the recordings for each episode below 👇
🤝 We’re Hiring: Come build with us
Want to join a team of top-tier technologists pushing the boundaries of creativity, fandom and collaboration?
We're hiring a Senior Front End Engineer to work alongside our stellar engineering team 🤝
Come build with us: Job Postings
⭐️ Community Spotlight: Annie Pressman
Kyle Mazer, Adim Creative Strategist
Annie Pressman represented Adim before Adim existed. Growing up in Upstate New York with her sights set on the entertainment industry, Annie went to Boston University for a Bachelor of Sciences, not Arts in Film and TV. Though it was nothing more than a funny phrase on her diploma at the time, in many ways, this set the stage for a long career in fusing artistic creation and technological innovation.
After some time spent doing production work in Chicago, Annie turned down a full-time PA position on the Jerry Springer Show to begrudgingly move to Brooklyn, where she started working in web production for a publishing company. Bit by bit, year by year, Annie found herself falling more in love with the ever-modernizing field of technology, finding the work she was doing as a project manager to be creative and similar enough to what she once dreamed of becoming in Hollywood. And though one summer she decided to chase those dreams, where working as a challenge assistant on Project Runway helped her “find her people who got me, who weren’t the overwhelming number of tech bros of the early boom”—her words, not mine—the endless anxiety of a freelance production lifestyle was too much for her kind spirit and big heart to handle.
So, Annie once again returned to New York to try and find the right fit for herself. She found a company called MakerBot, a 3D printing company, and began managing their special projects team, designing products for Martha Stweart, Hello Kitty, and several Broadway Productions. Later, at Ruckus Media group, Annie and her team of designers were producing work that focused on—well this sounds familiar—expanding stories and iconic characters into new modern modes of consumption. Creating interactive storybooks for iPads, apps for My Little Pony, Transformers, Crayola and the Wiggles, helped Annie bring fans closer with different ways to consume. “Following innovation was exciting, and thinking of how it could help me see out my entertainment dreams was amazing.” Now where have we heard that before…
“For way too long,” she says, adjusting her heart-shaped glasses, “I had such a black and white perception of how the industry worked. I thought I had to live in the right city, know the right people, and only then could I get through the gate. I clawed my way into product management, which is a similarly gatekept position, and it’s not even my biggest passion. Why couldn’t I do this for my dream of T.V?” You and us both, Annie. Upon applying to and joining the Adimverse, Annie couldn’t believe what she saw. The same Miro boards she was using for product were now being used for story. The same sort of people who understood her like at Project Runway, but even more so—they weren’t tied to LA, always networking or worrying about their next paycheck. This perfect embracing of technology, of innovation, all in a new era of creation, was everything she had spent her life doing, and now was being done in a massive community on a global scale. “Working in the Funderdome and the Jimmy Charonne room has energized me, and not just at my work within Adim. Everyone is so respectful, their ideas so creative. Finding this place was definitely my highlight of 2022.”
This section will feature resources curated for the development of our community. This week, we’re exploring history-making Oscar nominations, learnings for new game platforms and ChatGPT solidifying their relationship with Microsoft.
📚 Resources of the Week
Michelle Yeoh, star of Everything Everywhere All At Once, made history last week as the first self-identified Asian actor nominated for best lead actress with her 2023 Oscar Nomination.
Robin Guo, a gaming investor from a16z, wrote a great thread on what new game platforms can learn from the classic MMORPG RuneScape.
ChatGPT Creator OpenAI and Microsoft have extended their partnership with a multi-year multi-billion dollar investment. You can read more about that here.
Thanks for reading!
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Take care & talk soon,
The Adim Team