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How can early stage entrepreneurs develop their skills to execute & communicate great ideas so voters/stakeholders value the project? Let's collaborate to improve our collective skills in a book club!

We all have good intentions to read more books and improve our knowledge and sharpen our saws. Let's take action on those good intentions and form an intentional community to read a book a month to improve our entrepreneurial skill set and meet to discuss and learn from each other how we can apply the lessons of the book in the Catalyst ecosystem and how to improve our skills in communicating ideas, gain confidence in presenting strategy and objectives, and create better outcomes.

The high level proposal is to create a curated list of 6 books to read over the course of six months with community input. Funding is requested to support the work to prepare, host and facilitate bi-weekly book club meetings and perform administrative duties for 6 months.

The book club meetings themselves will be 60-90 minute sessions over Zoom to discuss the book, ideas that were relevant for the Catalyst community, and dive deeper into how we can improve our skill sets together, collaboratively, looking at the material through the lens of seeking to improve skills to communicate great ideas to voters and stakeholders and be better able to execute when funded. Each session will be recorded and written notes will also be provided for the community to use.

These sessions and materials will also teach some reading and study techniques including:

• How to take good literature notes
• Use a zettlekasten to organize notes
• Introduce tools and services to capture notes and accelerate learning and retention of what we read

Roadmap:

Suggested reading list and meeting cadence:

• December 2021 - Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto to improve writing and clarity.
• January 2022 - Business Model Generation to provide a solid framework on which to think about and design a business model.
• February 2022 - The Design Thinking Toolbox to learn about design thinking and how to apply it to Catalyst projects.
• March - May - Community choice. We will poll the community for books they recommend

Budget:

• 4 hours per session x $50/hr. x 6 months = $1200 for marketing, preparation, and facilitation of book club meetings, and creation of notes, reference materials, and archives of each session.

What will be provided

• Monthly face to face book club meetings via zoom open to everyone to discuss the book selection of the month and how it can be applied to those working in the Catalyst ecosystem.
• Zoom and written record of meetings and notes
• Open discord server to discuss each book and how it can apply to the Cardano/Catalyst community and ecosystem

How it will be done

• Marketing and building of Catalyst Entrepreneur Book Club community
• Running polls for the next books to read
• Administration and facilitation of book club meetings
• Recording and maintaining history of meetings for the community

Success Metrics:

• Number of people participating in the book club
• After session metrics on

• selection suitability for Catalyst proposers
• educational value for attendees
• would recommend book for larger community

• Measure proposal quality (CA score), funding rate, and project success of book club attendees vs. non attendee medians (are we effectively building relevant skills for success?)