“So, Codum is like a Tinder for Techies?”

This question often arises when people first hear about Codum, the accountability platform my sister Tatjana and I co-founded to help people reach their learning goals in tech.

While the comparison to dating apps might be amusing, Codum is far from it. Instead of fleeting matches, Codum nurtures lasting accountability partnerships. It’s a space where mutual support, knowledge exchange, and accountability mechanisms drive individuals toward their tech upskilling goals.

Regardless, platforms that connect human individuals and build community around shared interests, naturally share similar challenges.

At match-making and community-based platforms, the users’ education, intention, and behavior directly influence the platform’s reputation.

If, for example, your users are poorly educated and rude idiots, your platform will be associated with exactly that, no matter how good the UX is or how well the tech is built.

A platform with committed, supportive, and curious users thrives on the other end, and that’s the community we aim to cultivate at Codum.

The Social Yet Lonely Path to Upskilling:

The Codum journey began with a realization: while learning is inherently social, upskilling can often feel isolating. The demand for new tech skills is soaring, but without a supportive community, many feel left in the dark. From my own experiences as a perpetual learner, I recognized that setting goals was just the beginning. With a partner for mutual support and a collaborative environment, many aspirations go fulfilled.

Our solution? Codum pairs like-minded individuals into accountability partnerships. These pairs, with shared goals, motivate and support each other, all while using a gamified platform to plan and track their progress.

Addressing the Ghosting Dilemma:

In our inaugural year, Codum prioritized inclusivity, welcoming anyone interested via a freemium model. However, as our community grew, so did the challenges of commitment. Users would enthusiastically sign up, but some wouldn’t follow through, leaving their partners unsupported — not the ideal experience when promising accountability built around mutual support…

The pressing questions emerged: How can we maintain a high-quality user base while being inclusive? As well as: Who should be a Codum user?

Setting Clear Expectations:

Excite, and be strict on etiquette.

Instead of excluding potential users, we focus on attracting our ideal users and managing expectations from the outset. By clearly communicating our values and standards, we guide users toward the desired behavior.

If you tell the world: ‘this is the place for the world’s most motivated learners, then you will attract the world’s most motivated learners!’

Additionally, a code of conduct or an onboarding checklist with statements like “We don’t tolerate ghosting” or “We’re a community of goal-getters” not only sets the tone but also ensures users know what’s expected.

Introducing the ‘Commitment Fee’:

What’s the perceived value of something that’s free?

We introduced a ‘commitment fee’ feature to enhance user commitment further. Users select an amount that mirrors their dedication, ensuring they’re paired with someone of similar commitment. For those unable to contribute financially, we initiated, what we call ‘commitment conversations’. These discussions allow users to vocalize their goals and dedication, fostering a sense of responsibility.

What’s next?

Urging users to invest money, time, and effort, showcasing their commitment significantly boosted user engagement and profoundly affected user dedication and collaboration.

When individuals have something at stake, be it money or their word, they’re more inclined to honor their commitments.

Yet, challenges arose. Having grown into a global community with users from e.g. the US, Germany, Nigeria, … the varying value of money across regions became evident and we’re exploring solutions like geo-pricing and a comprehensive commitment score to ensure inclusivity.

As we navigate the early chapters of our Codum story, we’re uncovering the profound layers of dedication, consistency, and collective purpose. This knowledge is helping us craft a space where commitment, collaboration, and personal growth converge.

If you’re eager to follow along while embarking on your own growth journey, Codum welcomes you!

Join us in redefining the future of upskilling, one dedicated step at a time.

Stay curious, stay committed.

Side Hustle Club | Marx | Substack

Commitment issues? —What I’ve learned from guiding people towards their growth goals. was originally published in The Side Hustle Club on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A transformative trend is reshaping the world of talent development. The growing demand for a skills-based workforce is not just a trend; it’s a movement that’s celebrating your ability to learn and grow continuously and at the same time helping companies remain adaptive and competitive.

The Shift Towards Skills-Based Hiring

Traditionally, hiring processes have been centered around credentials, degrees, and years of experience. Once you chose your career path it was hard to switch to a new one. However, a significant shift is underway, moving to a more nuanced, inclusive, and adaptive approach known as skills-based hiring.

What is Skills-Based Hiring?

Skills-based hiring focuses on the specific abilities, competencies, and knowledge that a candidate possesses, regardless of how they were acquired. It’s about what a candidate can do, how well they do it, and their ability to learn how to do something new, rather than where they studied or the titles they’ve held.

It is opening doors for those who have the skills and the motivation to learn but may have been overlooked in the past due to their resume.

Compared to What?

• Credential-Based Hiring: This traditional approach emphasizes formal qualifications and previous job titles, often overlooking candidates who may have the necessary skills but lack the “right” credentials.
• Experience-Based Hiring: This method prioritizes the number of years a candidate has worked in a particular role, potentially missing out on those with relevant skills acquired in unconventional ways.

Skills-based hiring is growing in significance because it fosters fairness and equity, increases the likelihood of finding the most qualified person for the job, and aligns more closely with the actual needs of the position.

The Importance of Soft Skills

In addition to technical abilities, understanding and leveraging soft skills are becoming increasingly vital. Soft skills, such as communication, empathy, and leadership, are often overlooked but are essential in fostering collaboration, innovation, and adaptability.

Upskilling and Career Mobility

The rapid erosion of hard skills and the estimated half-life of 2.5 to five years for job-defined duties emphasize the need for continuous upskilling.

On top, the trends of internal and external career mobility are driving the significance of continuous learning and growth which put the individual in charge of seizing new opportunities and their own destiny.

The world is changing, and so can you.

The future of work is here, and it’s a future that increasingly recognizes your unique abilities, celebrates your potential and provides endless opportunities for growth. You are no longer trapped in a career that never resonated with your soul, instead, you have the tools to shape your own path.

Seize the opportunity, embrace the change, and take control of your destiny. ✨

Side Hustle Club | Marx | Substack

Skills-based Hiring and Upskilling are on the rise was originally published in The Side Hustle Club on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Starting a company is like moving from one setback to the next with enthusiasm.

It’s been one year since I left my signature on the incorporation documents of Codum at the notary's office. As a first-time solo founder, I can tell you, it’s been a year filled with ups and downs, but most of all it was filled with lots of excitement and learning.

We all know … self-starting is a bumpy journey. Even more so if you are a first-timer!

While I grew from the setbacks I went through, I could also avoid many mistakes by “borrowing” learnings from other founders. Let me share some of the important takeaways of this past year to help you accelerate your founding journey too!

tl;dr

1. Learn to navigate your black box and go step by step.
2. Build credibility and make it desirable for others to join you.
3. Avoid over-gripping and enjoy the climb.

Learn to navigate your black box and go step by step.

When you do something for the very first time, like starting a company, you’re usually entering a big, big black box. Your black box may have some small lights turned on here and there, knowledge you were able to gather previously, that is shedding some light into the dark.

Your goal will be to bring more light into this black box to better navigate it and to stop blindly bumping into unexpected obstacles.

Darkness can be scary, but the good thing about not having too much light in a black box is that you can’t see all obstacles luring in the dark for you at once.

While bumping into something here and there will strengthen your frustration tolerance, seeing a large flock of monstrous problems charging at you will be so overwhelming that you may freeze in shock and won’t even get started at all.

So, go step by step and focus on turning on one fairy light after the other.

The first things you need to turn on, or rather, set right, are your mindset and expectations. There are so many misconceptions about what it’s like to start a company (and no, it does not mean you will be hanging out at fancy cafes every day sipping specialty coffee). So, let’s set some things straight so you do not get bruised too badly in your black box. You want to prepare to enjoy the bumps on the way.

Things won’t be straightforward.

First and foremost, and as simple as that: Expect the black box.

Being aware that no one is holding your hand, or telling you what to do will mentally prepare you for the wild west. You’ll be awaiting surprises tomorrow and you’ll enjoy times of smoothness in a way you never have.

Surprises can come in many forms. Your product will have technical issues, contractors or employees turn sick in a critical moment, the market may suddenly go through a recession, and investors' expectations turn 180 degrees from: “build a great product and happy userbase and worry about monetization later” to “I don’t care about product and userbase, what’s your MoM revenue?”.

There certainly will be positive surprises too, but those hit best if you don’t mentally prepare for them ;).

The best way to prepare for these ups and downs is to make sure your “why” is strong. “Why” are you building this product?

A strong why will keep you going when things are tough.

You will continuously be faced with questions you didn’t even know existed.

And this is ok.

Even the most curious person will get frustrated when questions result in new questions and googling or talking to people gets you more confused. (Legal questions — for me the worst nightmare around!)

For your own sanity, remember, feeling this way is ok, it’s normal and you’re not alone. Just because you see founders share their successfully closed fundraising rounds on LinkedIn does not mean they did not pivot 3 times before finding product-market-fit or that they were not crying over a daily struggle on a low day sometime back. Nothing is as shiny as it seems.

And keep in mind: if your problems are changing, you’re making progress!

There are always ways to figure those questions out.

Again, go step by step.

Google, Medium, Youtube, StackOverflow, founder blogs, and newsletters … are your friends! Find the right sources for what you are looking for.

Most importantly though, surround yourself with and talk to fellow founders!

Check local meetups for founder events or message founders that you would like to connect with on LinkedIn (you should have a reason you want to talk to them though. Be mindful of people's time). Exchanging knowledge with people that are climbing the same mountain as you will spare you lots of energy! A common, unspoken rule is: Founders help founders (especially if you’re at a similar stage). And you want to be part of this.

How and where you find your solution will also depend a lot on your finances in the beginning. I strongly recommend accelerator programs for first-time founders with no entrepreneurial experience (but make sure to check their conditions, you don’t want to get ripped off) and if you have enough funds don’t shy away from hiring experts where needed (legal advice!).

In the end, spending money on the foundations is likely to save you a lot of nerves and time early, and money and time again, later!

Build credibility and make it desirable for others to join you.

Ok, so you’re a freshly baked founder on a mission. You have a strong “why”, excellent googling skills, a big and growing network of founder-friends, and perhaps even early users of your first crappy MVP.

Great, congratulations!

To move on to the next step though you will need support. Depending on your starting situation this will vary a lot. But no matter if you are a solo-founder in need of a cofounder, a cofounder in need of quality first hires, partnerships or investors … to grow you need people to join you and your mission!

If you want to go fast go alone. If you want to go far go together!

A big vision, endless motivation, and sparkling eyes when you talk about your mission are a good basis, but convincing others that you’re the one to make it big usually takes more (unless very lucky, especially in times of a recession)!

Your previous experience — and the labels that come with it — can make things easier but if you don’t have X+ years working experience in this industry, if you aren’t a XGoogler, if you weren’t part of an Xmillion dollar exit before, … there are many things you can do to build your credibility regardless.

Share valuable content about your space.

Choose your favorite medium and content form (Medium, Youtube, Instagram, …) and consistently share valuable content. (Emphasis on valuable, because your content should be relevant and have substance.)

If you manage to do this over time you will not only increase your knowledge in the field but grow a following around your personal brand. And a large following correlates with perceived trust and credibility (human psychology, you may or may not like it, but it’s the way we work after all).

I recommend you start building a following as soon as possible — ideally when you’re still in the ideation phase of your startup.

If creating content is not your thing at all or you’re already at a point where you need to focus on building your product and have no capacities left, an equally great (or even better) way to gain credibility is, well, making and showing progress.

Proving that you are persevering and that you can make progress with your resources at hand is quite impressive.

And if you’re starting as a solo-founder (like I did): never compare your progress with the progress of a startup that has 4 co-founders!

Avoid over-gripping and enjoy the climb.

“There is a term in rock climbing called over gripping, which happens when you pull on the rock too hard because you are afraid to fall. You exhaust all your energy pulling yourself to the wall when instead you can gently hang and trust that you are strong enough to hold on. When you overgrip, you tire yourself out and cannot think freely and creatively to find the easiest route up the wall.”

I first heard of the term over gripping from Tamir Shklaz and can’t think of a better metaphor for what I have seen happen to many founders around me — and it has happened to me too!

On top of that, keep in mind though, it’s not a sprint up that climbing wall, it’s a marathon (a marathon through a climbing wall in a black box with some fairy lights here and there:)).

Your goal should be to maximize learning which means trying new things without being scared of potential failure.

In short, breathe, regain strength, smile and try again.

So, work hard because of a strong “why”, bump into hidden obstacles with joy (more often than not), learn from them, and embrace the journey.

Everyone's starting point and founder journey will be a little different. Everyone’s life has different circumstances to it so when you read about someone's founder's experience or advice, take only what applies to you and your situation.

I hope you enjoyed reading and that I could help you get started or keep going!:)

I — a person who lacks any sort of artsy skills — just ‘created’ this art piece!

Out of thin air. With words. Sitting in a cafe on a rainy Saturday, giggling into my scarf while challenging Dall-E2 with the most abstruse combination of words I can think of.

If you haven’t heard of it yet: Dall-E2 is a new AI system created by OpenAI that generates images from text.

First thoughts: Cool, I need to try this!

When I read that Dall-E2 is now available without a waitlist and anyone can play around I got super excited! I signed up and started the fun.
These were my first trials.

Not really convinced of the fluffiness of the monster, but still impressed I continued.

The more precise I got in my descriptions the easier it was for Dall-E2 to produce my images.

I couldn’t have drawn this better!

OpenAI employee Alex Kantrowitz is on point by saying that “Dall-E’s power becomes evident within the first minute of seeing it. The AI program creates intricate, original images when you feed it short text prompts. Its only limit is your imagination.”

And this is great news for people like me who have PLENTY of imagination but struggle to visualize and share graphical representations of their thoughts.

Remember my pixel art? A few months back I wrote this article on how to create ‘art’ algorithmically. The algorithm was the quick part. Creating the individual components (landscape, van, and weather) took me forever. Today I simply typed “red van in front of mountain pixel art” into Dall-E2s text prompt to have a pixel van returned within seconds. Please decide for yourself which algorithms output you like more. ;)

Not only pixel-vans.

You’re looking to illustrate a children’s book? Need original images for your newsletter, storyboard, or marketing?

No need to waste time searching for free stock images that have not been overly used yet, or to try to explain your ideas to an illustrator.

On top “Users get full usage rights to commercialize the images they create with DALL·E, including the right to reprint, sell, and merchandise” according to the OpenAI blog.

But … what about sensitive content?

My creation power hit a wall when I attempted to create images where Angela Merkel danced with (god forbid, kissed) Barack Obama.

OpenAI is very cautious of how its tool can be misused. This new tool could be a powerful machine for fake news and political manipulation if not restricted!

Political names and sensitive words such as “blood” are banned and users can flag results for review that contain sensitive or biased content.

Nevertheless, while “dead ice bear in blood” wouldn’t return any results the user can use different words and paraphrase a scenario such as “icebear sleeping in red lake”. Kinda scary!

Aware of its high potential for misuse, OpenAI has strict policies which might ban users simply for generating images against the terms of service.

Interpreting my text prompts — with which biases?

When asking Dall-E2 to portray a “startup founder raising money”, it would return only male startup founders. This does not represent my reality of startup founders and is a great example of the very tricky topic of bias within AI models.

No matter what decision the model makes, it is based on OpenAI’s decision on how to represent the world.

According to Alex Kantrowitz, “If an occupation is majority male or female, for instance, and you ask Dall-E to illustrate someone doing that job, the results can either reflect the actual proportion in society, or some even split between genders. They can also account for race, weight, and other factors. So far, OpenAI is still researching how exactly to structure these results. But as it learns, it knows it has choices to make.”

The question then becomes whether OpenAI wants Dall-E’s results to reflect society’s approximate reality or some idealized version.

Oddly, adding ’90s japanese anime style’ did the trick for my results to include also female founders (I think…).

Policy researcher from OpenAI, Lama Ahmad highlights that one goal is to teach people how to search with precision. So if I want to see a female Muslim founder, I need to type this in, instead of asking for generic founder images.

The results of my Japanese anime founder prompt however led me to another interesting finding.

Spelling!

‘StAUB’, ‘STAPTU’, ‘STARIUT’ … seriously ??? (no, it’s not Japanese)

Dall-E2 can’t spell.

Thinking about it is not too surprising though that Dall-E struggles to understand the relationship between components. Instead, I find it quite impressive actually that it manages to form full letters!

So, is this art then?

I feel empowered by this tool. But I do not feel like an artist. Thinking 3 seconds of a text string, and ‘Dall-E-ing’ the results is too easy.

I don’t intend to open the bucket to the “what is art” discussion here.

But with Dall-E potentially going mainstream, it will allow anyone to create their own “art piece” to decorate their apartment … which really gets me confused about the term “art piece”.

I was lucky enough to have a chat with AI artist Julius Niemeyer about Dall-E2 and he shared his view and his definition of art with me.

Art for me must always be read in the overall context of current contemporary history and deals with what kind of time it was created in. In order to be art, it must have an inherent social and contemporary consciousness. (…) — Julius Niemeyer

This would mean that images created by Dall-E2 do not necessarily equal art. Which feels about right.

Dall-E2 and similar tools will accelerate (maybe replace) the creation of media which “will lead to a change in the collective aesthetics”. For Julius Niemeyer, Dall-E2 will simply become another tool in the toolbox of an artist or creator.

Fascinating with a sprinkle of adrenaline

I’m excited by the possibilities of this technology! It is somewhat of a “nervous excitedness” given the novelty and the massive potential for manipulation of this tool.

Alex Kantrowitz calms my nerves though. “OpenAI is taking this responsibility seriously, as evidenced by its slow Dall-E rollout and its careful content policy. But the product will still reflect its values, and that’s where things get fascinating.”

Fascinating indeed!

Passionate about Data, Lifelong Learning, and Willpower. Founder of Codum. Maxed happiness when surfing waves!

Hi there and welcome!

I’m excited to see you here on my Medium profile and flattered that you made it all the way to read about me! My name is Isabella and I am a curious mind based in Munich, Germany.

As a kid, my superhero was the German author Cornelia Funke and I wanted to become a writer myself.

From the activity on my Medium profile, you may guess … life and life choices distracted me from the path to becoming that author. I believe I underestimated the fact that you need to WRITE to get there…

Nevertheless, here I am, writing this short article about … myself (got to start somewhere) to share with you what I’m up to when I’m not writing (…).

Why am I doing this?

Well, for one I like the “About me” etiquette here on Medium. On the other hand, I do want to get started sharing more of what I’m learning and thinking about as a founder in the tech education+willpower space. A very very interesting field and I invite you to follow along!

So, what do you do for a living?

Enjoying life to the fullest, taking challenges, and spending time on things and with the people I love.

I’m a cliche European Millennial. I care about my ecological footprint, that my actions are of impact and that I take advantage of this one life!

Choosing the entrepreneurial route and starting a company as a solo founder at first and then having my sister join to tackle a problem we both wanted to see solved has been one of the most fulfilling and exciting decisions of my life!

We’re just getting started and are building an accountability platform for people that teach themselves to code. Learning to code all by yourself can be extremely lonely and frustrating — and I know because I have been there, shifting into data science for my first job with nothing but a business degree and loads of motivation in my pocket.

I am also a certified systemic coach, and as such the topics of goal achievement and willpower have always fascinated me! I aim to help many more people than I could on individual coaching sessions, but I still offer coachings to female career-shifters that are thinking about changing their lives by entering tech.

Where do you charge?

It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

While I’m working hard on building a valuable product together with my sister, I’m also well aware that we will achieve the most if we know what drains our energy and what boosts us with energy.

I consider us quite lucky because we are active in a space where the users themselves are a true source of energy. Career-shifters+Learners are people that want to grow and improve their lives! Their motivation and stories inspire me daily to improve, grow and push on myself! (Thank you, early users, also for bearing with us, for any bugs and early-stage startup inconveniences!)

Other than that I’m a big fan of sufficient sleep, fresh air, fresh water, healthy food, and meditation for a calm and relaxed mind. I love all things outdoors and need a healthy dose of these activities regularly: surfing, bouldering, skiing, hiking, …

A little curation of life hacks

Along my entrepreneurial journey I came across some hacks and habits that changed my life for the better — and I am convinced, some of them prove useful for you too!

Set your phone to be your tool, not your boss!

I have sent this article to so many friends after taking half a day to set up my phone for focus and longevity following its instructions. Life changer!

I highly recommend you check it out and use it as a guideline to set your phone up in a way that suits you and your life. For me, it included removing Instagram from my phone — and honestly, this is not TOO crazy. Most of us are ALL day in front of our laptops. You can check your socials there if you need.

Program your mind for progress

We all know these quotes painted on little wooden blocks sold in beach towns or yoga studios. Those quotes are just a little too much when more than two in one place, no?

“You win and you learn”

“You only fail when you stop trying”

“Go where the wifi is weak and the rum is strong”

(ok maybe let’s focus on the first two;)) … but you know what? I think many of them are quite awesome!

Positivity makes us nicer and more relaxed people!

Surround yourself with positivity where you can! Avoid the grumpy, skeptic people, and spend more time with the positive and supportive ones instead (and if you’re also based in Germany I hope you have a high skepticism tolerance in any case)! You could also join me and follow Cafe Gratitudes’ approach and name things around you after positive affirmations (this is their old menu, I find it genius … why not respond to the waiter: ‘Good afternoon, I am extraordinary!’).

I changed the name of my phone and now, whenever I connect to my device I choose “another good day 🧚‍♀️”.

Yell “plot twist” when things go wrong

I am somewhat of a perfectionist & impatient person. This can be a very inconvenient and stressful combination of traits when you start a company by yourself with very few resources to start with.
You may need to be your designer but don’t trust your design skills. You may have to acquire loads of legal expertise but at the same time avoid talking to any lawyer because you’re scared of their bills. Your account on the cloud platform where you deploy your web app got hacked, won’t let you login anymore and you have no clue how to fix it …

Things will take time, things will break, and only patience and a calm mind will get you forward. I have increased my zen thanks to the intense training that comes naturally with getting your hands dirty but I know there will be new, surprises waiting for me around the corner, testing my coolness.

And I will continue working on keeping my sleep deprivation and coffee consumption low to keep the nerves calm and consistently pass the vibe check!

When something goes wrong at work, yell “plot twist!” and move on. — Scott Stockdale

… you may want to raise your arms while you yell “plot twist” and perform a little dance too! Studies have shown this helps too (n=1).

When I come across quotes from people like Scott Stockdale (one of my favorite Medium writers) I know, I’m not alone!

The what ifs:

I’m a bad sleeper and at night I’m a big daydreamer. I enjoy envisioning things, thinking through scenarios, and following the rabbit holes of the “what ifs …” of life.
When November comes and/or life gets grey I enjoy thinking about how interesting and fun my lives in different universes are… Those lives I don’t live because at some point I (or my parents for god’s sake) took a decision that led me on this other path.

These are the lives I get particularly excited about. My life as a:

• Pro-surfer, touring the world to surf surf surf every day!
• Marine biologist, hopefully saving fascinating species this-life-me has no clue even exists!
• Cirque Du Soleil artist, performing acrobatics to the coolest soundtracks ever!
• Best-selling Author, learning about any topic I choose, to then write about it! And of course to live up to my childhood hero.

Wow, a lot about me here!

Let me tell you this last thing about myself before I let you go. I’m the third of 5 kids. Like my siblings, I DON’T love the spotlight, and can only perform karaoke when intoxicated and in a faraway country.

Now, I wrote this article just about myself, and the chances are high that I’ll press the ‘publish’ button!
The good news is: You’re still here. You read the whole thing. Cool!

I hope you follow along for more!:)

About Me — Isabella Hoesch was originally published in About Me Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

NFT’s have been around for a while. With Visa making headlines after buying a CryptoPunk for $150K this summer, they have increasingly adopted mainstream attention and are starting to permeate into a variety of different fields. Even though NFT’s and blockchain technology in general is hard to grasp, it is clear that it is here to stay.
So let’s play around with it! I’m not an artist — neither by heart, nor by talent but I am curious about where the world is headed and wanted to have a go at it!

When creating my first NFT collection ‘vans-on-the-road’ my goal wasn’t to make money from it. I wanted to understand what it means to sell NFT art on a marketplace and figure out how to apply a simple Python script to create a NFT collection algorithmically.

I’ll be sharing my take on this and which resources helped me get started. If you’re a NFT newbie and/or you are curious about how to algorithmically create art, this article might be for you.

What does it take to put art on the blockchain?

Let me clarify one thing here. NFT art does not have to be generated algorithmically. In the end, NFT’s are usually little PNG or JPEG files that are bought and sold online. You could hand-draw a smiley, take a picture of it and upload it to your NFT marketplace. In fact, my first NFT is a handwritten poem that I took a picture of. For the vans-on-the-road collection I used the editor and prototyping tool figma to create pixel-art (“art” if you want to call it that). There might be more handy programs around, figma just happens to be the tool I am familiar with.

Creating the art is the simple part.

Most people get confused with the process of setting themselves up in the ‘crypto-world’ to be able to upload and sell NFT’s. You will have to set up a Crypto Wallet (e.g. Metamask) which you’ll need to connect to your NFT marketplace of choice (e.g. Opensea) to create a profile. This video will help you set up your Metamask crypto wallet. Once the wallet is set up, you can follow this video which will walk you through creating your first NFT on Opensea. Make sure to store your passwords and phrase somewhere safe.

If you’re serious about making money from your NFT-art, you should do additional research on what to watch out for, for your items to attract attention. As marketplaces are starting to get flooded by art (by professional artists or by amateurs as me) you will need to figure out how to bring visibility to your NFTs and have them stand out.

How to algorithmically generate art?

There are many ways to create art using code. Here, I am talking about the methodology of creating an image by combining different attributes with a few lines of code.

Let’s understand this by having a look at the vans-on-the-road collection.

We have three different sets of attributes:
* Van-colors: 6
* Landscapes: 3
* Weather: 4

With these attributes there are 6*3*4=72 possible unique combinations that a few simple lines of simple code can put together for you.

While my few different variations of only 3 attributes add up to 72 different images, you can see how adding a few more attributes and variations can grow this number exponentially without increasing your manual workload by that much.

I came across several articles that provide code to create combinations. This article walks python lovers step by step through the process of creating unique variations. If you’re into JavaScript and want to take a step further and even create your metadata programmatically, check out this post. You can basically copy-paste the code and tweak it for your purposes!

So what?

The term ‘digital exclusion’, will take on exponential forms for those nations, companies and groups or individuals that are afraid of, or don’t feel the need to adopt and learn about new technologies.

For me, practicing hands-on and creating the vans-on-the-road, was fun and has made new concepts feel less abstract. I hope this article can point you to the right resources to start playing around yourself. Bring along your googling skills and some patience. Who knows… you might be the next big NFT artist!