Ekphrasis Gitbook

Background
Academic and philosophical activity about Cardano is an important way that Cardano gains recognition and legitimacy in the wider world. It is a significant "way in" to involvement; for many people an academic or philosophical article or video, or a mention in the footnotes of an academic thesis, is the first way that they ever hear about Cardano. It is therefore important, for posterity and as a potential tool for onboarding, to collate together relevant mentions in the academic and philosophical literature in an accessible, open-source repository. This is also a useful resource for the Catalyst community itself, providing context for discussions and a reference tool for anyone interested in learning more about the thinking behind Cardano.

QA-DAO's Ekphrasis GitBook https://quality-assurance-dao.gitbook.io/ekphrasis/ has been providing this useful service since June 2021; but continuing to do this requires resourcing. We also want to publicise Ekphrasis GitBook more widely, so that people within and outside Catalyst become more aware of it as a resource.

Documenting the philosophical background of Cardano is a valuable service which is beginning to gain attention and traction within the community; so although it does not align with any other Fund 7 challenge, it is one of the miscellaneous small efforts which give vital support to onboarding of new people, increased knowledge and understanding, and the overall growth and development of the community.

Project aim and outline
The aim of this proposal is to fund maintenance of the Ekphrasis GitBook for 3 months, from Feb to April 2022. This assumes a single maintainer who collates materials relevant to the philosophical background to Cardano - academic articles about Cardano, videos discussing significant ideas, philosophical publications, etc - and tracks daily activities.

The GitBook maintainer will also regularly post links to updated content on Catalyst and Swarm servers on Discord and Telegram. In-context links will also be posted in Town Hall chat where appropriate.

A part of the proposal budget has been set aside for social media engagement, so that the Ekphrasis GitBook can achieve a wider reach, and can provide insights into Cardano on social media such as Reddit and Twitter.

We will also share Ekphrasis GitBook material directly with a Philosophy In Pubs, (https://philosophyinpubs.co.uk/) a network of community philosophy groups in the UK, so they can use it as background for some of their own meetings. Additionally, if QA-DAO's fund 7 proposal Penny Lane Liverpool Philosophy Hub is successful, (https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Penny-Lane-Liverpool-Philosophy-Hub/383504-48088) , the Liverpool branch of Philosophy In Pubs will use the Ekphrasis Gitbook as a resource for a series of philosophical discussion sessions aimed at onboarding people and creating a community hub centred around philosophy.

Economic sustainability
QA-DAO (https://quality-assurance-dao.github.io) is seeking GitHub sponsorship (https://github.com/sponsors/Quality-Assurance-DAO) and will also explore StakePool Operator sponsorship. The long-term aim is to become independent of Project Catalyst funding. As it takes time to build up sufficient sponsorship, this proposal seeks to fill the gap.

Maintenance
Whilst the Ekphrasis GitBook content is open-source, the maintenance is currently the work of QA-DAO. But through this proposal, (and possibly also the related Fund 7 proposal Penny Lane Liverpool Philosophy Hub), we plan to move to a shared maintainership by the Catalyst community itself, with a distributed process of soliciting and reviewing submissions.

Timeline/roadmap, and definitions of success
Prior to funding
Ekphrasis Gitbook began in June 2021 and has been maintained since.

At 3 months (Feb - April 2021)
Over the course of its funded period, Ekphrasis Gitbook will

• continue to collate academic and philosophical material about Cardano
• communicate its content via social media, to reach a wider audience
• develop discussion and engagement on philosophy within Catalyst, by using Discord to encourage discussion of issues raised in the material collated on the GitBook
• hold one Swarm or After Town Hall breakout room, to raise awareness within the Catalyst community of philosophical and academic content about Cardano, and discuss the idea of community maintainership and how this might work
• be shared as a general resource for discussion sessions with the Philosophy In Pubs network of around 30 community philosophy groups in the UK ; and, if the proposal Penny Lane Liverpool Philosophy Hub (https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Penny-Lane-Liverpool-Philosophy-Hub/383504-48088) is successfully funded, Ekphrasis GitBook will be used as source material for a series of specific onboarding sessions.

6 months (May - July 2022 - after the end of the project)

• Page views, and awareness of Ekphrasis GitBook within Catalyst , will have increased as a result of the project.
• If the fund 7 proposal Penny Lane Liverpool Philosophy Hub is successfully funded, the Liverpool group will be using Ekphrasis GitBook from May to July to help lead a regular breakout room at Swarm or After Town Hall, to engage with Catalyst around philosophy. If it is not funded, QA-DAO will continue to manage basic social media engagement with Ekphrasis Gitbook, and more if we gain sponsorship to cover costs.
• In the medium term, Ekphrasis GitBook aims to be self-sustaining, and sponsorships will help achieve this aim.

12 months (Aug 2022 - Feb 2023)

• In the long term Ekphrasis GitBook should be self-sustaining, and sponsorships will help achieve this aim.
• At 12 months, we aim for Ekphrasis GitBook to be moving towards a distributed, community maintainership, with the whole Catalyst community suggesting material and adding it. If the Penny Lane Liverpool Philosophy Hub fund 7 proposal is funded, we intend that the community hub that it creates will take over the running of Ekphrasis GitBook for the 3 months from August to October 2022, as a first step towards developing this.

Budget
Maintenance
Regular updates over 3 months (21 hours/month) to add content
$50/hour for 63 hours (21 x 3) = $ 3,150
Engagement
Promotion, engagement and communication on social media: Twitter, Telegram, Youtube, Discord, Reddit, JISCmail (academic mailing list network in the UK with several philosophy lists) plus one Town Hall breakout room during the course of the project
2 hours/week for 3 months = 24 hours = $50/hour for 24 hours = $ 1,200

Total: $4,350

KPIs

• Number of articles and material collated on the GitBook
• Page views (measured by Google Analytics) and source of page referrals (to track effectiveness of social media engagement)
• Dwell time (as a rough measure of how useful visitors find the material)
• Comments, views and interactions on social media
• Number of attendees at engagement sessions (for example, Town Hall breakout room) that use material from Ekphrasis GitBook

Risks and mitigation
Risk of low levels of engagement with the material: There is a community of interest beginning to build within Catalyst around philosophy, including Swarm breakout rooms, and a Discord channel on art and philosophy. We will mitigate the risk of low engagement by connecting with this developing network. We will also run an After Town Hall breakout room during the course of the project to raise awareness of the Ekphrasis Gitbook, generate interest, and explain the pathways for people to get involved with it. We will also use social media, and academic networks such as JISCmail (the main academic mailing list network in the UK) to build the GitBook's connections within academia.

Relevant experience

Stephen Whitenstall (@swhitenstall) has 30 years' experience in business, community and academic projects. Stephen has a First Class Honours degree in philosophy, and was drawn to Cardano by an academic interest in distributed governance. He set up QA-DAO (quality-assurance-dao.github.io) in April 2021, and created Ekphrasis GitBook (https://quality-assurance-dao.gitbook.io/ekphrasis/) in June 2021, which he has maintained since then to document the philosophical underpinning of Cardano. He also develops, maintains documentation and provides technical project management support for Catalyst Swarm; has been successfully funded in funds 5 and 6 for several significant projects around community engagement, auditability, recordkeeping and transparency; and is currently the representative for Catalyst Co-ordinator (Funded Proposers) in Catalyst Circle v2.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-whitenstall-166727210

Vanessa Cardui (@CallyFromAuron) is a community engagement professional with a background in archives and records, and over 20 years' experience of supporting independent communities such as Catalyst to document themselves, collate material and make it accessible. She is currently leading on the QA-DAO fund 6 proposals Homeless Hub https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Homeless-Hub/367891-48088 and Oversight of Catalyst Circle https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Oversight-of-Catalyst-Circle/370088-48088.

Ekphrasis GitBook is a project of QA-DAO (https://quality-assurance-dao.github.io), an ongoing open source project that provides support for the Cardano Project Catalyst Community. Ekphrasis GitBook's project documentation will follow QA-DAO ideals of open-source transparency and auditability.