Proposal Templates + Guidelines

Design a series of proposal templates for all entrepreneurs and provide a crash course in the key fundamentals of presentation design

25+ Years of Design experience including extensive presentation design. Have spoken at conferences on the art/science of presentation design

Overview

The success of project catalyst rests upon the success of the ideas brought forth by the community.

But what if the community isn't voting for the best ideas? 

What happens to a good idea if it is poorly presented? 

——

What if there are strong ideas that are not being selected in the voting process because they are not being communicated with clarity and impact?

I would like to level the playing field by providing *all* of the proposers access to a series of designed proposal templates that will become tools that help them to best present their ideas for Project Catalyst. 

I would also like to help proposers to understand the fundamentals of presentation design and how to build a clear, concise, and powerful proposal deck that will optimize their chance to succeed in having their idea funded.

——

"We're looking for tools, we're looking for methodology."

 - Charles Hoskinson, Keynote for Project Catalyst Weekly Town Hall, August 11, 2021

What I'm proposing to create is both a set of tools (slide templates) and also a methodology—a set of principles and guidelines to help guide the user in the process of creating their presentation.

Target Audience

I believe that these tools and methodologies will benefit three key groups: 

1. First, the proposers themselves. By providing some structured, well-designed documents to work with

2. The stakeholders and individuals voting by creating a clearer, more systematic process to gauge one proposal against another and to understand the idea in it's most essential form

3. The entire community: by creating this set of tools and methodologies, it is the community that ultimately wins. This helps to ensure that the strongest, and best ideas rise to the forefront in the process and are seen in their clearest possible light. It helps to ensure that the impact of Project Catalyst, and the governance process that underlies it, is as effective as possible.

Community Polls

I conducted several polls on Telegram with the Project Catalyst Proposers, as well as the larger project Catalyst Community, to get a sense of: 

A. The value of the templates to proposers. 

B. What format are formats would be most valuable for the templates. . 

C. If there would be value in having a course on the keys to presentation design, and if so, what format(s) would be most valuable.

Here are the results (2 identical polls in proposer and general project catalyst communities combined here):

Q1: Would you benefit from being able to submit a proposal and professionally design template? (26 total votes)

Yes 73%

No 8%

Possibly 19%

Q2: If you answered yes or possibly, what format(s) would be most useful for you to work with? (Select all that apply) (17 total votes)

Google Slides 76%

PowerPoint 23%

Keynote 29%

**Q3:**Would you benefit from a quick course in deck presentation design? If so what format(s) would be most useful to you? Select all that apply.

Live Workshop 33%

Series of short videos/screencasts 60%

Longer video/screencast presentation 33%

Recording of live workshop 27%

PDF with screenshots 33%

I would not benefit from this 0%

Takeaways from the polls

Clearly there's a perceived community value in both having proposal templates available and also to having resources for better understanding the principles of presentation design.

Although there's no unanimous consent on the format that they should be delivered in, it appears that Google Slides is the strongest initial contender. It also has the added benefit of being available for free to anyone who wants to set up a free Google account, and the ability to export as PDFs which could be uploaded the Ideascale.

Similarly, creating a short series of videos with screencasts would be the most immediately beneficial to the greatest number of people.

I would note that these formats could be built upon in future funding rounds, but for now it makes sense to focus on the MVP.

Template Creation

I believe that 4-6 templates would be a good MVP that provides enough breadth to choose from initially while not creating an overwhelming library to choose from. This, of course, is something that could be augmented in subsequent rounds with different template organization and categories to help further define specific areas of funding.

I would envision that this would be an iterative process, whereby proposers could provide feedback to the templates which would be refined in future stages and future funding rounds to continue to evolve with the proposers needs.

Outreach

The final aspect of the project would entail the marketing and outreach to make these proposals available to they propose us in the community at large. This would take place through multiple channels: via telegram and discord, as many presentations in one or more Townhall's, and linked in various documents and on related resource sites.

Key Milestones

3 Months

Initial 2 to 3 templates are designed and provided in PDF format for feedback to a subset of the community.

6 Months

Based on the feedback, refinements are made to design and initial 2 to 3 decks are built out as Google slides to be distributed to the community. Design work begins and has made progress on the additional 2 to 3 templates  

12 Months

All of the 4-6 final templates are available and actively in use within the community. Based on existing data, measurements of successful proposals to be determined as measured against those not using proposal templates. (See metric section below.)

Metrics

Though there are many things that could be measured, ultimately, the best metric to evaluate the success of this project will be to measure how many ideas that use the proposal templates are funded versus those that do not. 

Budget Requirements

Proposal Template Design and Revision $10K

Proposal Slide Development/Build $4K

Q/A Testing $2.5K

Preparation and Creation of Video Series on principles of presentation Design ~8 videos @$1.25k/video = $10K

Outreach/marketing  across various channels (ongoing) =$2.5K

Total Budget Required $29K

Total Value Delivered

If funded, I believe that this system of template development and it's inherent structure would not just level the playing field for all the proposers, but also raise the bar for everyone. The result would be that the advisers and community Voters would be able to focus their energies on debating the merits of the ideas rather than spending time getting clarity on the actual nature of the ideas themselves.

Ultimately, investing in this proposal is investing in the future roadmap of Project Catalyst. This project optimizes the possibility of greater success for the proposers, the stakeholders, the entire community, and I would argue, the value of ADA itself.

In Closing

Thank you for the opportunity to propose for this exciting project at an equally exciting juncture in the companies evolution.