After Town Hall by Swarm

OUR MISSION

"The SWARM is a community-driven "grass roots" initiative, supporting Cardano in its mission to build a universal decentralized system that provides access to a global society and economy."

CONNECT: We bring the community together to unleash its full potential.

INCLUDE: We build bridges to ensure the diversity of the Cardano community.

EMPOWER: We encourage everyone to act and lead by creating space to do so.

WHO WE ARE

"The SWARM is a dynamic organism. It is the result of its individuals and groups. Each new individual brings a new quality to the swarm. A healthy swarm is constantly evolving."

The active parts in SWARM are categorized in three groups that are related to engagement, trust and endurance. The Swarm doesn't give roles, roles are rather establishing themself over time in proved participation. Example: How to become a bricklayer? By laying bricks.

• Hive: Those taking the highest personal initiative and responsibility in the total Swarm actions.
• Swarm Veterans: Highly dedicated supporters that have been constantly following the events over a period of time, taking action by hosting rooms and moderating sessions and discussions.
• Swarm Supporters: Engaged supporters who are repeatedly active in meetings and discussions.

WHAT WE DO

Swarm operates and interacts in and around the wider Cardano Community, focused on linking individuals, projects and communities to Project Catalyst. Our activities are characterized by the following qualities:

• Listen to the community and gather data and opinions from an unbiased perspective.
• Host different events and meetups where the community members come together, share their ideas, connect, listen and get inspired from each other.
• Reach out to underrepresented groups in the community, exploring ways to lower entry barriers and offer continuous support and advice.
• Integrate local communities to enrich a diverse, multi-cultural Catalyst Community.
• Moderate the community discussions in our events and Discord server in a way that empowers individuals to further engage.
• Explore novel ways for decentralized governance within our community, based upon practice oriented methods.
• Document and track our activity to build trust and transparency.
• Reproduce ourselves by creating new swarm groups to have a diverse co-existence and collaboration of several swarms.

I M P A C T

Detailed Problem Description:

Town Hall is a weekly event organized by IOG and serves as one of the main entry points into the Project Catalyst. Town Halls are attended by hundreds of people every week and the recordings on YouTube average 2000-4000 views. Difference in YouTube views and live Town Hall participation is obvious. We see YouTube views as leads generated by Town Hall that we would like to convert to proposers. Currently, almost all of the Town Hall participants stay and actively participate in the After Town Hall events which shows community interest in this format.

Significant number of entrepreneurs and developers in other blockchain ecosystems are still underestimating or are not familiar with possibilities on Cardano. We believe that an interactive format like After Town Hall can be a great introduction to knowledgeable and constructive people within Cardano. We believe that these interactions can lead to significant inflow of outsiders into the ecosystem because we recognize the power of the Cardano community, as we have witnessed it on many occasions so far.

Detailed Solution Description:

We are organizing and delivering:

• Weekly moderated Zoom Events with multiple, content dependent break-out rooms
• Well established community moderators who facilitate breakout rooms and guarantee high quality conversations
• Depending on the topic, breakout rooms visual support by the use of Miro-boards to help facilitate an engaged and lean discussion
• Engagement of participants during the week by establishing communication to Newcomers
• Tracking the progress of ATH growth & success of breakout rooms

We would like to add new things:

• Professionals to hold breakout rooms on relevant subjects where they will present and answer questions from participants
• Influential figures from Cardano and crypto space to present and engage with the community

Impact on Challenge and Cardano:

We want to include and onboard active participants of other blockchain ecosystems as well as provide a platform for people new to the cryptocurrency world. We want to demonstrate openness and power of our community because we see it as our most precious resource and a definite differentiator from other crypto projects. If we successfully onboard only a couple of entrepreneurs or developers, we expect the word to spread out quickly. By adding more proposers to Catalyst, we increase the quality of the proposals, we increase the ADA transaction volume and finally, the adoption of Cardano itself.

F E A S I B L I T Y

References:

We have hosted 13+ weekly ATHs so far.

Furthermore, we moderate a Discord Server with more than 500 highly engaged members.

Our ATHs are characterized by:

• High engagement and interaction
• Fair and open discussions
• Relaxed and friendly atmosphere
• Constant growth in participants
• Initiating ideation and collaboration
• Proposer-voter interactions
• Relevant content for Project Catalyst
• Flexible adjustments to just-in-time content

Core Team & Roles:

• Dominik - Hosting, finance and accounting, social media and marketing
• Felix - Hosting, outreach to new hosts and topics, organizing
• Filip - Hosting, organizing, finance, outreach to partners
• Jakob - Moderation, hosting, organizing
• Simon - Hosting, website, GitHub, working on connected projects
• Stephen - Github documentation and tracking for transparency and trust building
• Tevo - Hosting, improving organizational structure, miro boards, website updates
• Victor - Hosting, organizing, creating content

More Details on www.catalystswarm.com

Budgeting: 

For facilitating 17 After Town Halls each Wednesday from November 2021 to February 2021

Each event is calculated with $812 which covers following activities: 

- Reaching out to ideas and hosts, onboard hosts

- Organize each event

- Market and communicate the event 

- Document event activities for transparency

- Moderate and host the event

Calculation: 17 events for $812 each = $13.804 total

A U D I T A B I L I T Y

Transparency:

Ongoing activities are documented in the following Gitbook: 

https://catalyst-swarm.gitbook.io/catalyst-swarm-genesis/

Milestones and Key Deliverables:

Establishing an engaged and interactive "After Town Hall" (ATH) Event:

• A moderated Zoom Event with multiple, content dependent break-out rooms
• Well established community moderators will facilitate breakout rooms and guarantee high quality conversations
• Depending on the topic, breakout rooms will be visually supported by the use of Miro-boards to help facilitate an engaged and lean discussion
• Following & maintaining engagement of participants during the week by establishing communication to Newcomers
• Tracking the progress of ATH growth & success of breakout rooms

Providing customized solutions for international communities

• Enabling community members, to translate Catalyst events in different languages, depending on demand
• Further advising emerging communities to create dynamic structures for engagement that are connected to ATH, supporting group building
• Adapting & evolving the ATH format according to demand
• Surveying the international community for additional time slots
• Creating feedback loops within the community to constantly adapt and evolve the formats and tools (e.g. Mentimeter, surveys)
• Reacting to just in time content

Establishing better communication channels between key stakeholders within the system

• Providing stages for SPOs, projects, communities to present their concerns and interact
• Connecting emerging entities and formats to work more efficient and effective: Catalyst Circle, ATH Swarm Sessions
• Facilitating the development of "Community Stories"

Establishing a community narrative that connects the different ATH / TH & Swarm Sessions

• Further guiding the conversations by providing breakout rooms for deep dives in Swarm Sessions on Saturday
• Empower community members to host their own interest and topic related breakout rooms
• Supporting Newcomers on their way to become CAs, create proposals etc.

Measures of Success, Key Performance Indicators:

• Deliver weekly After Town Hall session
• minimum 5 breakout rooms with moderators
• Holding a retention rate of over 80% of Town Hall participants stay for After Town Hall
• In partnership with Catalyst School deliver specific breakout rooms for proposers
• Track entrepreneur participation and engagement in further Catalyst funds