Project Catalyst HeartBeat

Gather your community, plant the HeartBeat Podcast seed, then water it together with your time and attention.

Paul has 17 years of experience producing podcasts - Peter 1 

We own a Mighty Network with 60+ people and have been hosting 6+ events/month

Problem Statement:

Long form content, while informative, requires more time and energy to investigate and digest than many members of Project Catalyst can commit to regularly.

This dynamic potentially sidelines the busiest and yet most dynamic members of Project Catalyst who could otherwise plug into ongoing projects if there was a brief and regular way to stay informed.

Describe your solution to the problem:

The Heartbeat Podcast process is a fast and easy way to surface the most important efforts in a community and it focuses everyone on doing their most critical and relevant work. The process smoothly facilitates spontaneous collaboration w/o requiring commitments to attend (or review) more lengthy meetings.

The process of creating a living HeartBeat in a community is akin to planting and nurturing a seed through its development into a tree. The community gathers around the HeartBeat seed and waters it with their time and attention. Through this process the seed develops into a mighty tree of collaboration, based on each participant's contributions.

Relevant Experience:

Meet the Team!

Paul Benedict aka RevPaul

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/pauljbenedict/
• 20 years experience as a project manager with 501(c)3 non-profits, schools, churches, start ups, and national companies such as Whole Foods, Geek Squad, Circuit City, and Sprint.
• 10 years experience teaching most of the college courses in a Bachelor's Degree program in Computer Science and Project Management.
• Certified Scrum Master and Product Owner.
• Certified HeartMath Trainer, Coach, and Mentor
• Certified Blended Learning Live Facilitator

Peter Wolcott aka SirWolcott

• 3 years Project Management experience
• 1 year deep network observation in multiple global communities with >500+ members
• highly engaged Catalyst Community member
• small business owner

Required Skills

The ability to facilitate and produce a high quality, group podcast via Zoom.

The ability to flexibly insert the podcast into existing community social structures.

The ability to coordinate and harmonize a community as it grows.

_____ INTRODUCING THE DELIVERABLE _____

How does this work?

The HeartBeat Team (Peter and Paul) work with the community to establish a regular time and place where The HeartBeat will be recorded. By having the community input on the date and time, participation is maximized.

Next, each member of the community attends and participates in the 3 rounds of a HeartBeat.

Round 1 - is a lightning round where each participant stands up and answers these two questions in less than a minute:

What are you working on now?

What would you like to be working on and what resources, tools, skills, and talents do you have access to that would enable this?

A gentle bell rings to remind a participant when they reach their 1 min mark. Respect is required.

Round 2 - is a conversational round where the community suggests discussion topics, then votes on which to address first. Each topic receives 2 minutes of stage time, then a Roman vote, where thumbs are displayed either up (continue), sideways (no preference), or down (move onto the next topic) determines whether to extend the topic for another 2 minutes or to immediately move onto the next topic.

Discussion topic collection and voting is handled via a live, web based software.

Round 3 - is a Next Actions round where each participant writes in the chat what they are committed to doing immediately to progress the communities' work.

Broadcast - the HeartBeat recording is then broadcast either within the community, to the public, or both via a listed or unlisted YouTube video on this channel - (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmB1Kvf8PvIrvzg8EMKOKew/). Members of the community who could not participate in the HeartBeat recording can rapidly review the content via time-stamped, indexed links to the video content. Resources mentioned in the podcast are linked to in the podcast video description, which is hosted on GitBook. 

Roadmap - 12 episodes per funding round ~ 1 episode per week

_____ I M P A C T _____

The Project Catalyst HeartBeat is a weekly online event where proposers have an opportunity to introduce/update their projects, activities, aims and hopes to their community.

Will increase the number of collaborations in Project Catalyst.

Creates a consistent channel where community members can broadcast their signal - quickly boosting the power of our voice.

This initiative leverages the awareness and attention of faster paced individuals, catering to a modern attention span.

This deliverable better leverages the attention economy in Catalyst, brings proposers and the community closer, and puts faces behind proposals, making the process more human.

We are submitting this proposal under the 'Community Events' challenge because we believe we are addressing most of the challenge's Guiding Questions:

• We are increasing meaningful participation in Project Catalyst among all stakeholders.
• We are increasing voter-proposer interaction.
• Our product can onboard and integrate new people into Project Catalyst.
• Our products' main function as an event is to facilitate collaborations and the formation of new teams.
• Our product can increase workshop collaboration in Project Catalyst.
• Any event's participation can be increased by announcing it on The HeartBeat in the weeks preceding the event.

We are helping keep the community together, up to date and in sync.

_____ F E A S I B I L I T Y _____

Plan for Implementation for each edition of Project Catalyst HeartBeat:

"What we are doing is not that hard to do, it's just important that We do it."

Date and Time:

TBD - Telegram (https://t.me/+hfhm5_h4HXNmZDBh/) and Catalyst Swarm Discord channel

Event Introduction and Sustainability:

Actively familiarize community with The HeartBeat mechanism - explain Lean Coffee Table and our Zoom facilitation protocols.

Marketing for the event:

Word of mouth and announcements in the various messaging platforms and events in the ecosystem.

If YOU are interested in participating in The Project Catalyst HeartBeat - reach out to us at hello@heartbeat.team and we will create a calendar invite for our Launch Pulse with all needed links to participate.

Recording, Collection and Distribution:

Announce event. Record event using Zoom. Collect Resource Map using gDOCs in Live HeartBeat. Upload to Youtube. Publish Resource Map with Vidcast to Github. Strip and Upload audio only versions to podcast portal.

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

Transparency:

Our standard is for highest possible transparency in all our activities and resource gathering with the community. That is why Project Catalyst HeartBeat has a Github repository w/ Gitbook - where all our activities, resources and meeting protocols are published (https://github.com/AdminHeartBeat/PC-HeartBeat/).

Project Catalyst HeartBeat will be recorded and uploaded to our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmB1Kvf8PvIrvzg8EMKOKew/).

Audio Only versions released through Libsyn.

Metrics to measure our success:

Length of episodes remains consistent with # of community members participating in The HeartBeat. Target is 3x # of participants in minutes + 1.5 minutes (intro/outro). 

Number of times "Round 2" discussion topics are appear on multiple HeartBeats.

Number of Resources being linked to the episode consistent with # of episode participants - hoping for a resource from EACH participant, at least an email to contact them.

Daily traffic to our Github.

Increase number of "in sync" CAs.

Number of emails we receive expressing interest in HeartBeat participation.

Through a non-mandatory, anonymous participant survey - we will ask community for suggestions/improvements as well as collect feedback on good measurables and community satisfaction.

_____ B U D G E T _____

$1,000 Services per quarter for website hosting, audio podcast hosting, Zoom and Lean Coffee Table subscriptions, and accounting research and fees. 

$15,000 Labor @ 12 episodes @ 4 hours of effort per episode @ 2 facilitators = $156.5 per man hour.