Help Build the Beginning
The Inspiration Tree is in the Alpha stage of building a new kind of creative and discussion community. Here, we not only hope to display quality ideas and creative works (writing, art, audio, video), but also to showcase how those creative works evolved and to provide a platform where they can inspire new ideas and creations. In essence, we want to create a never-ending chain of creativity where someone’s work inspires the next person’s creation, and that new creation now becomes a new source of inspiration in the chain of creativity. To do this, we are looking for people to contribute (post) content in the early branches of “The Inspiration Tree.”
We are looking for those people now and hope you will consider becoming an Alpha Contributor.
This site is built around a simple but different idea: creativity should not only be displayed. We should be able to see where it came from, what it inspired, and what it inspires next.
Most creative platforms are designed around individual works. A writer publishes a story. An artist uploads an image. A photographer shares a photograph. A musician releases a recording. People may view, like, comment on, or share those creations, but much of what happens afterward (or before) is lost.
What if the creation became the beginning instead of the end?
Here, the premise is that one person’s idea or creative work often inspires others to create new and original ideas or creative works. Someone’s story might inspire a painting or digital art. That art could inspire a piece of music. The music might lead someone to write an essay about the emotion behind it, which could generate a discussion that causes another writer to imagine an entirely different story. Each contribution becomes a Seed capable of inspiring whatever comes next, while the site preserves and displays the creative genealogy connecting them.
Our secondary goal is to provide a platform in the forthcoming beta stage where creators can promote themselves to the world and even provide ways they can monetize their talent.
We want our Alpha Contributors to help us discover the best way those ideas can work in the real world.
And when we do, you will have been here at the beginning.
This Is Not a Typical Alpha Program
If you’ve participated in an Alpha program before, or heard about them, you may expect to spend your time testing features, finding bugs, and reporting what doesn’t work. We certainly want our Alpha Contributors to do those things, but that is only a small part of what this Alpha is about.
Alpha Contributors are contributors first.
The most important thing we are testing isn’t a button, a form, or a piece of software. We are testing an idea: Will people experience someone else’s creativity or ideas, become inspired by them, and contribute something meaningful of their own?
That contribution might be a short story, painting, photograph, essay, poem, piece of music, audio production, video, or something we haven’t anticipated. It could also be an insightful discussion that changes how other people think about a Seed.
You don’t have to consider yourself an artist or professional creator to have something valuable to contribute. The evolution of ideas is every bit as important here as the evolution of creative work. Some Alpha Contributors may create frequently. Others may become the people who ask fascinating questions, introduce new perspectives, challenge assumptions, and start discussions that send creators in directions they hadn’t considered.
In fact, one feature being considered for Beta would allow certain discussion contributions to become Seeds themselves, creating a new branch directly from the discussion that inspired it.
The Alpha will help us determine whether ideas like that are worth pursuing.
Your Chance to Shape What This Becomes
We already have plenty of ideas for this site. What we don’t have, and cannot manufacture ourselves, is the experience of a real community using it.
That’s where Alpha Contributors become particularly important.
You will have exclusive participation access to the Alpha Forum, a dedicated area where Alpha Contributors can start discussions and respond to conversations about the project. Portions may eventually be visible to others, but active participation in those discussions is reserved for Alpha Contributors.
We want to hear what you think should change. Tell us what is confusing, what is unnecessary, what works surprisingly well, what doesn’t work at all, and what you wish existed. Let us know what should be on our Roadmap. Suggest new Creator Guide prompts and ways to connect existing work into our ecosystem. Report a bug or tell us how discovery could be better. Question the way we categorize creative work. Suggest features we haven’t considered.
Most importantly, tell us what would make this a community you would actually want to continue using.
Some features developed for forthcoming Beta may begin as conversations in the Alpha Forum. Some existing features may change substantially because Alpha Contributors show us a better approach. Others may disappear because actual use demonstrates that they aren’t valuable.
You aren’t being invited simply to experience what we’ve built. You’re being invited to influence what we build next.
Be One of the People the Genealogy Leads Back To
There is another reason being an Alpha Contributor is different.
If this experiment succeeds, the contributions made during Alpha aren’t intended to disappear when testing ends. Meaningful Seeds, discussions, creative relationships, and genealogies created now can continue into Beta and beyond.
Imagine what that could mean several years from now.
A Seed created during Alpha could inspire three other works. Those three could eventually inspire thirty. Thirty could become hundreds or thousands as new creators discover different branches and take the original inspiration in directions nobody could have predicted.
Someone exploring that genealogy years later could follow those branches backward.
Eventually, they would reach the beginning.
They could reach you and your work.
Original Alpha Contributors will continue to be identified and recognized as the people who helped establish the community and its earliest creative genealogies. We don’t yet know exactly how every form of that recognition will appear as the site evolves, but your status as an Original Alpha Contributor is intended to remain part of your history here after Alpha has ended.
If this community becomes what we believe it can become, being among its first contributors should mean something. An important something.
You Don’t Have to Leave Your Existing Work Behind
Alpha participation doesn’t necessarily mean starting every creation from an empty page.
We actively encourage creators to look at work they have already produced and consider whether an existing Seed provides a genuine connection or new way of looking at it. A previously written story, photograph, painting, essay, recording, video, or other work may fit naturally into an emerging genealogy.
Once you have published Seeds of your own, they can also become Parents for future contributions when those relationships genuinely make sense.
What we don’t want is for the site to become another portfolio dump where existing material is uploaded simply because it needs somewhere to go. Explore first. Look at other people’s work. Consider connections you might never have noticed before. How does your existing work connect to an already existing seed? Does it continue the same theme? Does it show a different way of looking at the subject? Is it done in a different (or the same) art/writing/audio/video style? If you’re struggling to find a meaningful way to introduce existing work, ask other Alpha Contributors for ideas.
Learning how creators successfully make those connections is itself valuable Alpha research. The approaches that work particularly well may eventually become part of the Creator Guides for everyone who follows.
What Do We Hope Alpha Contributors Will Do?
There are no quotas, no minimum suggestions or bug reports, and no required number of Seeds or posts, but Alpha Contributors are expected to participate meaningfully during the Alpha. Different people will naturally participate in different ways, and that is something we want to learn from as well.
Depending on your interests, you might,
- Explore Seeds and create new Child Seeds when someone’s work genuinely inspires you.
- Contribute with comments or discussion, or contribute fiction, nonfiction, poetry, artwork, photography, music, audio, video, or other creative responses.
- Participate in meaningful discussions about existing Seeds and the ideas behind them.
- Explore creative disciplines or Seed Types outside your normal comfort zone.
- Find meaningful ways to introduce existing creative work into the genealogy.
- Follow branches of existing genealogies and tell us what you discover.
- Experiment with search, discovery, profiles, discussions, and other site features.
- Participate in the exclusive Alpha Forum and help shape priorities for Beta.
- Suggest new features, Creator Guide ideas, community functions, or entirely new ways of using the site.
- Tell us when something is confusing or unnecessarily difficult.
- Report bugs and things that simply don’t work.
- Tell us what we should not build.
- Help us understand what would make the site useful, enjoyable, inspiring, and worth returning to.
- A full list of optional Alpha Contributor Challenges.
You don’t need to do all of these things. We would rather have someone participate meaningfully in the areas that genuinely interest them than treat Alpha participation like a checklist.
Help Us Build Something Good
There is a larger purpose behind this experiment.
The Internet gives us extraordinary tools for publishing creative work, but it isn’t always very good at preserving how one person’s thinking influences another person’s thinking. That is our experiment, purpose, and what we want to learn from. Inspiration happens constantly, yet the trail is usually lost.
We want to preserve some of that trail.
We want a place where disagreement can inspire an essay, a story can inspire a photograph, a photograph can inspire music, a discussion can change an idea, and someone encountering that work years later can still discover the people and creations that helped it evolve.
That gives creators something more meaningful than another view, like, or number on a screen. It gives their work the opportunity to become part of somebody else’s creative journey while preserving their place in that journey. It gives them and their work a certain kind of immortality or permanence.
It also gives us an opportunity to build a community where inspiring something new is itself a form of recognition. It is not all about whether people arbitrarily “likes” something because of popularity, followers, or social algorithms… it becomes what work actually inspires someone/s to create something new. “Most Inspiring” is one of the most important metrics on this site.
We think that metric and the entire genealogy of inspiration is worth exploring and recognizing.
Alpha Contributors May Get More Than Early Access
Being an Original Alpha Contributor will also give you priority consideration and an invitation to participate in Beta.
We are considering ways Alpha Contributors in good standing might continue receiving access to selected experimental, enhanced, or future features that aren’t available to regular subscribers. Some of those features could eventually become associated with upgraded memberships or subscription levels.
Nothing has been finalized, because we want Alpha and Beta Contributors to help us determine what creators actually want and need before we decide what to build.
Ideas already being explored in our Roadmap include enhanced creator profiles that could become promotional hubs for a creator’s work across the Internet, ways for visitors to tip creators whose contributions they appreciate, private or limited-access Seeds that may come with a fee or subscription (so the contributor can earn some mon ey), additional creator and discovery tools, and features we haven’t thought of yet.
There may eventually also be a crowdfunding campaign supporting Beta development, with certain levels of support providing Beta access. Participation as an Alpha Contributor in good standing may provide another path to Beta consideration without requiring that type of qualifying support.
These are intentions and possibilities rather than promises of specific features or permanent free access. But there is an important advantage to being here now:
You get a voice in deciding what those future benefits should be.
Who Can Apply?
Anyone 18 or older may apply to become an Alpha Contributor. You don’t need an invitation, and you don’t need to be a professional creator.
Applications are reviewed individually, and Alpha Contributor status is not automatic. We are looking for people who appear genuinely interested in participating in the experiment, whether through creative contributions, thoughtful discussion, exploration, feedback, or some combination of them.
That is why the “Why I Want to Be an Alpha Contributor” portion of the application matters. Tell us why this interests you. Tell us what you create, if you create. Tell us what you’d like to explore, discuss, contribute, or help us discover.
There isn’t one correct answer. We want to understand why you want to be here.
The Beginning Is Happening Now
Right now, the earliest branches are still being created. The conventions haven’t all been established. The community hasn’t yet decided what it values most. Features that may someday seem obvious haven’t been invented. Some of the ideas that could define the site several years from now may not have been suggested yet.
This is the rare opportunity to participate before those decisions have been made.
Bring your creativity. Bring your curiosity. Bring your opinions, your existing work, your unfinished ideas, your willingness to experiment, and your ability to see possibilities in what somebody else has created.
Help us discover where inspiration can lead.
Apply to Become an Alpha Contributor
Apply to Become an Alpha Contributor →
Alpha Participation Notice
Alpha Contributors are expected to comply with the site’s Terms of Service, including its Community Guidelines. There is no required number of Seeds, discussions, or other contributions; however, Alpha status is intended for active participants and may be removed for little or no meaningful participation, violations of the Terms of Service, abuse of Alpha privileges, or other conduct inconsistent with the Alpha program.
Selection as an Alpha Contributor does not make a participant a founder, owner, employee, partner, agent, investor, or equity holder in the project or site and does not create any ownership, financial interest, compensation right, or entitlement to future features or services. Original Alpha Contributor recognition and priority Beta consideration do not guarantee Beta acceptance, continued access to any particular feature, or free access to features or services that may later require payment.