Hedera Corner Twitter Spaces hosted by Genfinity with BATTY HATTIE (Part 2)

This interview was originally published by Genfinity.

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King Solomon interviews Batty Hattie’s NFT Emporium as part of the Hedera Corner in the LightHouse by Genfinity! Brought to you by LightHouse Report sponsor Hedera Hashgraph and in collaboration with our partner and Hedera wallet provider HashPack.

Transcription

Batty Hattie - Founder
‍We've sat down with Hattie and we went through a kind of lots of informal dialogues about well, look, you know, I've put my work out, what do you want to do with your work, what do you want to do with the aware of that you did over those two or three years. And we created a project called Pixel Drops, which is all Hattie's artwork, and it is, they're five Hbar and it's very much about creating an environment where People can collect, connect with each other, swap, have a dialogue and recreate that playground,  social interaction, which so many young people and adults um don't do. I think we're lucky in this space, especially on Global Twitter, that we interact with people that we resonate with on a daily basis, and I think that's what makes the community so strong. And we, we ran that as a separate Discord, so it's really well kind of looked after and supervised in a safe space for young People. We've got some amazing Community moderators in there, you know, some really really key people in the community. And we release Pixel Drops and that in itself was just a phenomenal moment for us as a project, to see how his artwork out there be well received, to be affordable for people to be able to learn how to download a HashPack, to download these Pixel Drops, to collect them, there's a hundred, she's still working on them now, the series two are done, and hopefully then we launch into future Generations of Pixel Drops, which are open to Young creators in the community, and we run Community kind of challenges throughout the year. And we've got one coming up after Alex launch actually, which is a celebration of Robin Holtham's work. She's an Australian artist, she's a phenomenal artist, very colorful, and the next Community challenge will be all about color, all about bright, summer, spring positivity, and through that project, we hope that we, and the Emporium, we hope to raise awareness of social mental health issues. The Emporium was founded to be able to Branch off into lots of different rabbit holes. We've got ideas, crazy ideas coming out of our brains, if you like, and one of the challenges is to be able to be focused as well as being creatively broad, and you know, we've had some fortunate uh people supporting us, so Elizabeth Chase from Hello Future Buzz, she's phenomenal, King Solomon is phenomenal again at supporting us and giving us that little bit of guidance where we need it to kind of say, okay, what's our what's our key focus, where are we going with the project, what are we trying to achieve, and it always comes back to creativity, fun, education, and raising awareness of mental and social health issues. And if we can create an environment where a parent or a loved one is sitting down with someone else and creating something and having a dialogue and connecting on that level, then, for us, that is a huge success. We are on a journey. You know, Hattie started secondary school last year, and September was in October or even after Christmas were really challenging times for us. And again, I'll share this out of the sheer hope and will that maybe it helps someone else it might be in the same position. So probably about three or four years ago, a young man -- actually, a young boy -- who played football's son, took his own life because he was suffering from depression. Twelve years old. And, my, it's horrific. And a love goes out to the family still. And Hattie was in a really dark place, before Christmas. Isolated. Alone. Sad. Really, really low. Again, we're fortunate. We were lucky. We were able to throw the kitchen sink at everything we could to support her. And even though we've done this whole few years of that journey of development and creativity and exploration and things were on the up, it still came back. And one day, she literally just turned around and said, "I understand why Bailey did what he did." And, as a parent, to hear that, that will rock you to your core. And it is so deeply ingrained within our mission to say, "Okay, let's share that. Let's share that. Let's share that. Let's share that." And let's try and help others. So we've got a charity wallet, which eventually we hope will be able to support people that can't get that support that we were able to. We were able to say, again, not wealthy, but right, how much did it cost to get that support that we need? Professional support? That professional help? And it was brilliant, because it worked. And we're now in the new year, and things are moving forward positively. Yes, there are sleepless nights. Yes, there are moments where there is anxiety and feeling a little bit low. But, you know what, there are tools there to get through that. So, sorry to ramble on about our journey, if you like, into where we are now. So, where are we now?

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍No, you're totally fine, dude. I mean, I think it takes a lot of bravery to touch base on that stuff. I know that we've experienced similar stuff with, my two older kids. Yeah, it's not cheap. I mean, especially, you know, I think you nailed it even with the, I mean talk about getting somebody in to see, you know, somebody that can really help with mental health. And I mean therapy is or therapists or you have to even be really careful even within that, because like we went through five different iterations of trying to do therapy and everything else. And I mean, that stuff stacks up. I think I probably still owe about twenty thousand dollars for therapists for my, for my oldest. I will say, "I mean, you know, knowing, how long you guys have been in the space and even hearing like messages from Hattie that you guys have sent me personally, it's been a pretty awesome, especially like the Youth Empowerment and the aspect as far as creativity, to kind of help with the mental health issues. I think is fantastic because I hadn't seen anybody, it's actually something we talked about really early on with Genfinity, like back in like late 2021, and then seeing you guys actually roll out pixel drops in a way that was just really, you know, not trying to get rich off the back of the community, just trying to have a tool set for creativity. We did that, um, event my well she was six at the time I think, but my six-year-old and I, and just sat down and colored, and she submitted it in, and I know that you guys picked her as a winner, and I mean everybody's a winner when they're contributing into that stuff, but I mean that was like the happiest I'd seen my six-year-old in a while, like she hadn't won anything yet, so pretty awesome what you guys are doing, I will ask probably Tyler in a second here for an intro, and then we can get into some more questions with everybody, but one thing real quick, Batty before we kind of asked Tyler for an intro is you know, you talk about Go Mint and kind of really being back to like whenever you were reading through our articles and getting streamlined micro payments. I remember doing that too. I think that was like 20 maybe even 2019, and from where we were at was go mint. You know, can you just tell everybody, like, based on somebody that's been in the Hedera community like you have been since the beginning, how much of a shift we've really seen, and how far we've come, even in a year, it's probably pretty amazing for you, and what you're looking forward to in the hedera ecosystem moving forward?

Batty Hattie - Founder
‍Yeah, certainly it is amazing. I'm not joking, this is brilliant. So, we've got a merch time called 'Stronger Together' and it is celebrating the fact that the Hedera community is all about equality, acceptance, cohesion, unity, and helping each other out. This community is phenomenal and it goes back to that core community at the start, when it was Mance Leemon, the core team, people like King yourself and the core members. I think Hedera is a really mature community, actually very supportive, and when we first started, you know, if there was one article or one tweet or one YouTube video a week, we got excited. Guided by that, now you can't keep up, you know, I can't keep up with discords, I can't keep up on YouTube, I can't keep up online. It is phenomenal, and what's even more exciting is we're still early, we're still early, and I'm seeing Hedera flourish. You know, I talk about the day that open the open day of the thing when the token was available and got burned. I always believed in what Hedera was, and that was from a person that had limited education in the space. I think that the community has grown. To be so supportive of each other, you know, I was given a list of questions a while ago, and one of them was like, "Who's your competitors?" And I can safely say, there are other people in the space who are doing what we're doing, you know, Helping Hands, their Foundry (if I got that right, apologies if I've got it wrong). Um, like, two refused with young people, like Creative Corner and things like that. And as an educator, I've got an education head on, not business heads, but even people that have got a business mind within the community will say, "You know, yeah, go to Helping Hands, they'll help you get on board." Here, there isn't that...competition ethos which I think king or patches coins, and it is the fact that I can reach out to anyone, even somebody that's in the same kind of market as myself, and ask for help. And we wouldn't be here today without it. So, in terms of the journey we're on, it's exciting. But what I will say to anyone is that Hedera will do things the right way, and they will never swerve off their path to get a quick win. They'll always do things in the way they say they're going to do it, sometimes it might be quicker, sometimes it might be slower, but their heart is doing things the right way, which will last for 100 years or build a hundred-year-plus company. But I truly believe that that core ethos does resonate through, and when you hear interviews with yourself and Max Walker Williams with key Founders, you get an insight into a journey from day one, and it's really exciting. I'm proud to be part of the Hedera community. I'm proud to be supported by so many wonderful people in the space and really looking forward to what's to come. And I see ourselves being here for a very long time. You know, we've got our launch coming up on the 13th, the 14th, Happy Valentine's Day everyone, which is our Generation H Bears. They're one of one, It is about you know, driving again, as a project, when we first started, we couldn't do one of ones. We didn't know how to do that, but we've learned, and we are the example of Leemon talks about. Anyone can carve a piece of web 3 out for themselves, we are that project. We don't have a team, we don't have funding, we don't have a budget. We are literally your classic people trying to get on carving a bit of web three for themselves, creating an amazing community, working on their projects as best they can. And we'll be here for a long time because we love doing what we're doing and we love being part of this group of people. When I talk to friends, I say that when you go to school, you're lucky to meet one person that shares your values and they become your best friend. Technology now, you're surrounded by people who share your values and share your interests. On a daily basis, we can jump into a space. I mean, I've laughed so much in the last couple of weeks with Gob feet. I mean, come on, that's brilliant! You know, that's so good. And yeah, so to answer your question, I might well have gone around the house. I do apologize. I have. It's exciting, it's a great place.

Genfinity – King Solomon – Founder & CEO
‍Oh, no, you, yeah, you're totally fine, buddy. I mean, I couldn't agree more with everything that you've been saying.