d.craft
To those unfamiliar — certainly to the parents of players — d.craft may seem like just a Minecraft server. But in the midst of a pandemic, it was an extension of the community at Design Tech High School ("d.tech" for short). A place where students could be themselves and make friends, at a time when both were very difficult. It was my first foray into bringing both teams and communities together. And by the end of it, I realized, this is what I wanted to do: ship projects people love, and bring people together around them.
Here's the story of how we brought d.craft to life — a virtual recreation of the Design Tech High School campus in Minecraft.
Culture
I'm very fortunate to have fond memories from my time at d.tech. I can only describe the place as if it were the brainchild of the Stanford d.school (Hasso Plattner Institute of Design), IDEO, and modern startups.
Well, that's sort of exactly what it is: our founders worked directly with them to figure out what education should look like. The curriculum puts heavy emphasis on design thinking and other soft skills that are becoming more and more tangible today. There is a palpable air of experimentation, prototyping, and self-direction.
Until January 2018, we occupied a warehouse in Millbrae we lovingly called the "Hangar". Classrooms were really just the space sectioned by makeshift walls, composed of floating whiteboards and wood from our makerspace. We then moved into Oracle's campus in Redwood Shores.
Intersession
Four times a year, we'd have Intersession: a two-week break from regular classes to deep dive into guest-led workshops (e.g. productivity & happiness), skills (e.g. Korean martial arts), or self-directed projects.
From May 2019, my incredibly talented friend 
Joss and I would lead Intersession cohorts with our friends and build the school, block by block (pun intended).
d.craft started out as an inside joke of a project: we'd leave school and "come right back", virtually. But in the first week of the May–June 2019 Intersession, we held interviews with students and staff, and quickly realized this could be something bigger.
There were a few things on our minds:
- Being able to identify players as students, and know who's who
- Making sure only d.tech community members could access the server
- Safety vs. self-expression: where do we draw the line on interactions?
Laptops in hand, half the team set out walking around the school to build it to-scale, while the other half of us devised implementations for the community. This latter task would take us quite some time and iteration to get right.
It was building d.verify — a tool that linked students' Google accounts with their profiles on our Discord server — that convinced me to study computer science in university. The feeling of solving a problem no one else had solved yet, and the solution being intuitive, familiar, and fun to people, was incredibly empowering.
We knew we wouldn't be able to do a full launch just yet, so our goal for these two weeks was to complete a first build of the school.
Thanks to 
Jordan, 
Rohan, 
Ian, 
Aidan C., Darius, John, and Luke, we got it done.
In the months that followed, the team worked on:
- Building out the Oracle campus and surrounding area
- Storyboarding and building custom minigames
- Preparing for the school-wide launch
Launch
The timing is almost poetic: we launched d.craft exactly a week before our school would close its doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
We presented d.craft at our weekly community meeting. I will never forget the awe, cheer, and d.tech pride from everyone in the room. I'm pretty sure I teared up after the standing ovation. :)
Props to Joss, Rohan, 
Ryan, Elan, David, Logan Y., and Carson for getting us there.
Graduation
d.tech continued to run Intersessions through the pandemic months, and the team kept at it. Our first major project after launch was a virtual graduation for the class of 2020. We knew it wasn't what they wanted, but we sought out to make it as special as we could.
We storyboarded, programmed (using Minecraft's "datapacks" language), and built three unique events for a night of celebration and reminiscence:
- An escape room aboard a spaceship version of the school
- A capture-the-flag tournament on a post-apocalyptic map
- A scavenger hunt for relics from the Hangar
We asked staff to write speeches, and streamed the event on YouTube.
Shoutout to Joss, Jordan, Ian, Ryan, Elan, 
Aidan H., 
Logan J., Andrew, Paul, Jett, and Zackie for making this happen.
Winter
In the Summer 2020 months and into Fall, we struggled with getting returning players online. Fortunately, a new wave of freshmen meant new players, eager to play since they couldn't go visit the campus in person.
Unfortunately, we were no longer able to host Intersession cohorts, due to a change in how d.tech ran them.
We continued to maintain the server in our free time, and even held some one-off events, like our Winter celebration.
Sunset
Being in our senior year of high school, Joss and I had to switch gears to finding successors. Unfortunately, though, with a lack of new content coming out, player numbers dwindled. We eventually had to make the tough call to archive the project by the time we graduated in May 2021.
Lessons
Running d.craft taught me a lot about leading a team, branding & marketing, and what I wanted to do for at least the next four years of my life. Naturally, I made mistakes along the way. Here's what I would advise in avoiding them:
- Take more pictures.
- (1) Set a ship date, (2) tell people about it, and (3) stick to it.
- Respect momentum. Know when you've got a good thing going. Early enthusiasm goes a long way. Don't curb it.
There is a world in which d.craft lives on. And, when that happens, I'll be there to support it. Until then, it's me and the team, hitting Return to Main Menu.
