Grant Thomas

is a technologist, and creative.

Grant makes things that use technology in unexpected ways to surprise people.

He's an engineering director and creative lead at W+K Lodge.

Selected Work (in reverse chronological order)

Cozmo: Lost In Reddit

  • What: We put Anki's little robot with big personality, Cozmo into a physical manifestation of Reddit and let Redditors take control. Over the course of 6 hours, Cozmo and Reddit played a live game where Redditors helped Cozmo escape from actual rooms based on 7 subreddits.
  • Client: Anki
  • Role: creative director/creative technologist
  • With: Dan Viens, Nick Morrisey, Ryan Hartsfield, W+K Lodge
  • Links: press press video

H.A.R.L.A.N.D.

  • What: We brought the Colonel back to the drive thru by designing & building an animatronic robot that integrates with a real drive-thru system, changing the operator's voice to the Colonel's.
  • Client: KFC
  • Role: concept, tech direction, code
  • With: Lloyd Winter IV, Michael Brandes, Eric Baldwin, Max Folley, Manxue Wang, Nate Horstmann
  • Links: press video video

Soy Route

  • What: We needed a cool way to introduce our spokescharacter Trish to Soylent's core audience of early-adopters. So we built a market on the dark web where you can use Bitcoin to buy the rarest and most special Soylent products from her.
  • Client: Soylent
  • Role: concept, copy, tech direction
  • With: Shaine Edwards, Chuck Carlson, Dan Viens, Manxue Wang
  • Links: press website

Pee World VR

  • What: As you know, peeing is boring and bathrooms are boring. So we set out to solve this problem by making a VR experience where you can pee anywhere while actually peeing in the safety of a real bathroom.
  • Role: everything in collaboration w/Pablo Rochat
  • Links: press video app website
  • Awards: 2016 Product Hunt Golden Kitty for WTF Product Of The Year

Verizon in Minecraft

  • What: We extended Verizon's network into Minecraft because video games are one of the few places they don't already cover. We created software to build video and websites out of Minecraft blocks in real-time. YouTubers made video calls, browsed the web, sent selfies, and ordered pizza without leaving the game.
  • Client: Verizon
  • Role: concept, tech direction, copy
  • With: Chuck Carlson, Aaron Allen, Jason Kreher, James Steele
  • Links: video press code
  • Awards: Gold Cyber Lion, 2 X Gold Andys, Gold Clio, Silver Clio

Hands on Ron Burgundy

  • What: We made an online endurance game for Dodge where you could touch Ron Burgundy. A real-time system tracked the gameplay and the winner touched Ron for 41 hours. We created a custom CAPTCHA, Ron Burgundy's Human Verification System For Websites, to prevent cheating.
  • Client: Dodge
  • Role: creative (game concepts), tech lead, engineer
  • Links: video press
  • Awards: 2 X Webby, 2 X One Show Silver, Shorty

Kobe Counter

  • What: We built a counter for Nike that counted the number of times somebody counted on Kobe in real time.
  • Client: Nike
  • Role: lead developer

Coke Chase

  • What: People watching the Super Bowl could use our system to vote via social media on the ending of Coca-Cola's spot. We built a real-time system for capturing their votes.
  • Client: Coca-Cola
  • Role: engineering
  • Links: video press

Comment Haiku

  • What: We built a thing that used natural language processing tools to turn YouTube comments into semi-topical haikus.
  • Role: creative, engineering
  • Links: video

Ahh

  • What: We built 61 websites for Coca-Cola's ahh campaign along with a tool that helped us manage the deployment of 61 websites.
  • Client: Coca-Cola
  • Role: tech lead, engineering
  • Links: press

Dark Horse Digital

  • What: We built a system for authoring, selling, and reading digital comics on mobile devices and the Internet.
  • Role: android lead, full-stack developer
  • Links: Dark Horse Digital

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