The Catalyst School is a place created to enhance the impact of Catalyst as a whole by improving the contribution of all its different players and roles. We onboard new members and help improve their skills along the way, in any way they decide to engage with Catalyst: as a Proposer, a Community Advisor, a Veteran Community Advisor or without any specific role within the process. In order for Catalyst to flourish and reach its full potential, all these roles need to give their best contribution within the process.

In Fund 6 and Fund 7 we focused on 4 types of workshops (Introduction to Catalyst, Proposing in Catalyst, How to be a Community Advisor, How to be a Veteran Community Advisor) and for Fund8 we would like to expand our work including a new type of workshop for the "Insight Sharing" stage to take full advantage of it and help Catalyst members to have a deeper knowledge about the specific challenges.

This new type of workshops will be challenge-specific and they will include the participation - as presenters - of domain experts and challenge team members.

They main goal is to encourage the development of domain-specific skills related to the challenges for all the various roles in Catalyst:

Proposers could better understand the Challenge scope and the key elements required to successfully propose
CAs and vCAs can learn how to apply the assessments criteria to the specific challenges and share their own domain-specific knowledge to others
Voters and new community members can improve and share their domain-specific knowledge

In Fund 7 we hosted a pilot of this new type of workshop for the Dapps/Mini-Dapps & Integration challenge in collaboration with Gimbalabs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8B5R0DaGxE

Deliverables and roadmap:

Week 1 - Fund 8 Insight Sharing Phase:

4 x 2 hours Insight Sharing workshop (each one for a specific challenge)
The challenges will be selected when it will available the list of the challenges for Fund 8 (after Fund 7 Governance Stage)

Budget:

For each workshop:

6 man/hours for hosting and co-hosting (Domain expert + Catalyst School members)
10 hours for the preparation of the workshop and the related material
2 hours for workshop management
2 hours for contingency

Avg. hourly rate: 50$

Total per workshop: 20 hours x 50$ = 1000$

Total budget: 4 workshops x 1000$ = 4000$

Success metrics

We will track the success of this project by measuring the:

Total number of community members who get involved with the Insight Sharing workshops
Number of proposers joining the workshops
Number of CAs joining the workshops
Number of vCAs joining the workshops
Number of new voters joining the workshops

The Team

We believe that collaboration is the key for the success of Catalyst… and it couldn't be different with this project!

We are a group of 9 people of diverse backgrounds, but two common passions: Catalyst and education.

Go on and get to know our team:

Felix Weber: enthusiast & community networker, T&M's elected representative for the 1st Catalyst Circle, co-founder of Catalyst Swarm, co-initiator & coordinator of the Eastern Hemisphere Town Hall, initiator of the Catalyst Alliance.
Kerstin Nobel: Digital education researcher, university lecturer for digital education in Germany and Luxembourg, academic peer-reviewer, Community Advisor (CA).
Lucio Baglione: Web / mobile developer with 9+ years of experience. CA and vCA, co-creator of the Community Tools (Proposer/CA/vCA/Voter Tools).
Raz Samsudin: Interdisciplinary trained academic, educator and mentor, sustainability professional with 13+ years of multi sectoral experience, experienced curriculum and course designer, independent researcher and writer, proposal mentor, UN SDG coordinator/education, curriculum advisor - WADA, co-founder - Sustainable ADA, education and sustainability lead - Global Policy House, founder and publishing editor - Bona Fide Info.
Simon Fleck: Catalyst Swarm core member, Cardano enthusiast since 2018, IT background.
Stephen Whitenstall: Stephen Whitenstall has 30 years' experience in organizing academic, community and business projects. He develops, maintains documentation and provides technical project management support for Catalyst Swarm. As QA-DAO he tracks and documents the Catalyst Circle and maintains 'Ekphrasis' a repository of academic content from across the Cardano community.
Tevo Saks: I enjoy documenting systems and procedures that will achieve specific goals in an efficient way. Active participant in Catalyst since Fund 1, Catalyst Swarm core member, experienced Proposer and Veteran Community Advisor.
Victor Corcino: Veteran Community Advisor (vCA), Proposal Mentor, CAs' elected representative for the 1st Catalyst Circle, co-creator of the Community Tools (Proposer/CA/vCA/Voter Tools), Catalyst Swarm core member, engineering/science/developer and 'hands-on' teaching background.
Filip Blagojević: Community Advisor and Veteran Community Advisor since Fund 2, Plutus and Atala Pioneer, Emurgo Academy student, Catalyst Swarm member, educator and communicator