What is Indie Party?

Indie Party is a fun and engaging virtual event designed to inspire creativity and collaboration among independent creators. Participants complete fun challenges in a playful and social atmosphere to bring their ideas to life.

In September 2024, we will be kicking off the very first Indie Party. All are welcome and this one is 100% free with no strings attached. Future parties will cost money (it takes a lot of time and resources to facilitate) so this is your only chance to join for free!

Creative endeavors are thrilling journeys that require clear milestones, social support, and meaningful feedback to truly bring ideas to life. While envisioning your idea is exciting, turning it into reality is a challenging process.

In many ways, creative endeavors resemble training for endurance events like marathons, bike races, and triathlons. They demand time, dedication, and discipline. At Indie Party, we believe creators can benefit from the key characteristics of endurance events:

Anybody can say they want to complete a triathlon but nobody goes from couch to triathlon in a day. It takes months of hitting small milestones to build up the strength and endurance to be able to complete a triathlon.

So why do so many people believe they can bring an idea to life overnight? It takes weeks to months of brainstorming, learning, planning, creating and iterating to bring ideas to life. Indie Party leverages gamification to make hitting milestones feel addicting and more motivating so you can accelerate from idea to execution as quickly as possible.

Imagine running a marathon alone with nobody else running alongside you. Would you feel as energized to run and to do your best?

There’s no need to pursue your best ideas alone. Indie Party is your opportunity to hit your creative goals with friends who are experiencing the same challenges as you.

Transforming an idea into reality requires thoughtful feedback and iteration. By sharing your project with others in the Indie community, you can expect to receive valuable insights from fellow participants and judges, helping you refine your idea and identify areas for improvement.

Indie Party is a space for creatives and builders to create whatever they want, like:

• 🎶 Music

• 🎨 Art

• 📱 Apps

• 🎲 Games

• ✍ Creative writing

• 🧑‍🎨 Design specs

• 👩‍💻 Open source projects

• 💡 Anything you can imagine...

If that is too broad for you, we asked a few facilitators of the event (who may also be judges) to express what types of projects they would love to see.

I would love to see projects that help make boring things fun, and projects that help group coordination through gamification (encouraging people to get involved in volunteering, politics, etc), and projects that help people express a more artistic side than a traditional "job" would normally encourage.

— Nico Valencia

I would love to see projects that blend art and technology in some way that can only be done by the person creating the project. Projects that make you think and inspire you to view the world differently.

— Katy Jeremko

I'd love to see projects that show the promise of the web as it can be/could be/should've been ... fun, democratic, anti-capitalist, user utility/value over profit and "retention" aka infinite scroll. Also projects that encourage civic engagement at a local level, to show people they can affect positive political or social changes in their neighborhood/village/town/city/communes/vault/etc. Similarly, projects that encourage hyperlocal community, to get people to better know and empathize with the people that are right across the street from them. NOT what NextDoor turned into.

— Ryan Bruels

I want to see people create things that bring them joy and that they want to share with others. One of my favorite creations was a game that I was able to play with friends and family. It was a joy to build and delightful when I witnessed others experience something I poured my energy into. I think everyone should experience this delight with their own creation.

— Sean Connolly

We thought long and hard about what types of prizes would fit the primary goal of Indie Party, which is to help people bring their ideas to life. Each prize pack was chosen to help the creative journey in some way, whether it’s gaining new skills, building encouragement or getting some much needed rest after grinding on your idea.

Indie Coffee Pack

Sometimes you just need a little jolt to start your day. We curated some of our favorites from one of our favorite coffee spots on the planet - Costa Rica!

Indie Chill Pack

Indies go hard. Chill out and treat yourself to a day at your local spa for a massage. You deserve it. Up to $300 value.

Indie Reads Pack

We put a lot of thought into our favorite books that can help you live your best indie life. We will announce some of these throughout the event but we’ll leave a few surprises too!

Indie Learning Pack

Hone that next skill, learn a fun craft or just jump into something new with $300 worth of Udemy learning credits.

Indie Recharge Pack

Indies need support from those around them. Celebrate your journey with your family, partner or friends with a special day out. We’ll help you find the right spot and cover the experience up to $300.

Indie Party is a two week event with multiple milestone challenges and one final challenge.

Participants can earn stars for each challenge where the amount of stars earned will be determined by the event judges.

The challenges will be revealed sequentially with the first one to be announced when the Indie Party officially begins.

If you are curious about what types of challenges to anticipate, expect things that involve fun, creativity, innovation, collaboration and impact.

Participants who earn the top 5 most stars will be eligible for prizes.

At Indie, our mission is to provide the digital space for creatives and builders to express their passions and bring ideas to life.

We believe that fun and engaging social creator events are a perfect way to help people embrace their ideas and connect with like-minded individuals, fostering collaboration and innovation in a supportive environment.

What we love most about Indie Party is that it is ultimately about you, the vibrant creative people out there who are ready to embark on an exciting adventure and bring your ideas to life.

We built Indie to support as many independent creators & builders as possible. 

After years of work, it's clear that indies excel in their craft, but often feel lonely taking the unconventional path.

Today, we're launching our open community, offering toys and tools to meet indies right where they are, turning ideas into reality.

Here, we create, play, & share.

Explore → Home Office

It’s about taking the unconventional path, launching your ideas, and building something meaningful without waiting for permission from external validation, capital, or middle-men. 

We created Indie to carve a cozy corner of the internet where creativity meets autonomy.

Here, builders are encouraged to launch daily, with like-minded creatives, instead of feeling the pressure to scale to millions, before they feel an ounce of success.

2025 is shaping up to be a wild ride. We're faced with unprecedented layoffs, AI taking over jobs, and a global loneliness epidemic. These challenges are hitting the workforce and society hard.

They're messing with how we see our self-worth, value, and identity.

So far in 2024, there have been 761 tech company layoffs with 203,919 people impacted (that’s roughly 910 people per day)(1).

Peter Yang

@petergyang

It's a bloodbath out there.

Source: trueup.io/layoffs

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11:00 AM • Jul 1, 2022

These changes are hitting everyone, and now more than ever, we need to build communities to navigate these shifts and lean on each other.

But the truth is, people are feeling more disconnected than ever. 

In 2023, 23% of people worldwide felt significantly lonely(2), and one in three U.S. adults experienced loneliness weekly, with younger adults most affected(3). 

Most companies see you as just a number on a spreadsheet, but you're way more than that. It's time to invest your energy in what you own, not what others own.

That’s why we’re building Indie, to help you:

• Build a community centered around you, and your idea

• Level up a skill you want to harness

• Rest, play games, and find inspiration

• Focus your energy on that idea you've been thinking about

• Launch something and share it

• Help other indies

It’s really that simple.

Remember Club Penguin, Hapland, and Whyville? These digital realms were our stomping grounds to wander around and forge friendships, some lasting a lifetime.

They were the playgrounds of our imaginations, teaching us, inspiring us, giving us something to share with the world. 

But then, one morning, we woke up, stumbled out of bed, and marched into the 9-to-5 grind, dismissing those games as childish relics, better left to the archives of the wayback machine.

Home Office is a sanctuary for rediscovering the lost parts of ourselves, where play becomes work. It’s a portal to mini-games, chats with friends, and spaces for meaningful projects, letting us distribute our own experiences as part of an indie ecosystem.

Start by creating your identity within Indie, play a few games, earn a few stars, and meet a few friends in the groupchat.

Going Indie is a journey that starts with an idea—a voice inside urging you to build something you've been dreaming about, even if you're unsure where to start. 

It begins as a small side project you work on during nights and weekends. From there, you share it with friends, your network, and your community. 

Eventually, it captures your full focus and becomes bigger than you.

We’re here for all of it. Every stage.

In fact, we want to know what you’re looking to launch as the first step of joining our community, so that we can help you to activate on your idea.

Through technology and gamification, Indie helps members make incremental progress both achievable and satisfying.

In our community, sharing your work and feeling valued is key. 

We celebrate each contribution, helping everyone shine a little brighter. Members give each other Stars ⭐ for cool ideas, memes, or just good vibes.

Indies have each other's backs, offering accountability in a world where it's easy to lose motivation. 

By building in the open, sharing our progress, and getting feedback, we do better work and make real connections.

Stars ⭐ aren't just points; they're markers of the connections you make and the milestones you hit along the way.

Success as an indie relies on developing strong rituals. 

A successful product's culture is built on daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal practices that shape the technology and connections that make the product unique.

Morning check-ins, co-op games, weekly challenges, or seasonal collaborations define traditional company culture, but what do we do as indies to keep this magic present in our work?

We've compiled these aspects into a community where you can plug your idea or product in, without needing to build a big team to achieve this culture.

Being an indie means embracing the roles of both learner and leader. 

Finding the person that will help take your idea to the next level is just as important as being the person that someone else needs.

Come join, and try your hand at both as we navigate uncertainty together (and launch some amazing projects along the way).

Sources:

1. https://trueup.io/layoffs

2. https://news.gallup.com/poll/646718/people-worldwide-feel-lonely-lot.aspx

3. https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2024-02-01/loneliness-is-plaguing-americans-in-2024-poll