Bridge Builders Operations

Bridge Builders has been mentoring and helping the community since Fund 6. We provide events, 1 on 1 engagement, and project mentoring.

We are experts in Business, Project & Community Management. We are veteran full-time community members, serially funded proposers, Community Advisors, Catalyst Circle, and Admin Team members. We have deep knowledge and experience with Project Catalyst and are passionate mentors.

[IMPACT]

Background

The Bridge Builders group is an aligned group of highly engaged and committed Catalyst Community members coming together as a community-driven Assembly to provide value to their environment. We sensor and identify gaps within the ecosystem to co-design and initiate required solutions. In collaboration with well-established community projects, we co-build and design "tailor-made" solutions in line with the Cardano & Catalyst Philosophy... from the community, with the community, for the community.

We see each funding round amazing projects growing up in the Catalyst Ecosystems. The experiment to explore the highest potential of human collaboration seems to work out quite well. People meet and connect, build relations and trust and build whole projects out of their collaborations. We even see a trend of people leaving their day job and dedicating their time and engagement full time to Catalyst.

The Problem: once projects grow and take shape, pass successfully through the Catalyst Process, get voted, and receive funds, the funded projects face huge challenges.

• How to transform collaborative structures into professional projects
• How to build stable and sustainable projects in the Cardano Ecosystem
• How to transform projects into "legal bodies"
• How to find what you need when you need
• How to find collaborative projects which perfectly fits your project, idea, and vision

Many Projects are seeking professional education and Mentorship to move their projects to the next level but the Catalyst Community currently lacks experts and skilled structures to provide fast and effective support to those projects. --> That's where the Bridge Builders step in.

We establish and grow a team with experts in specific Domains to provide tailor-made services to funded proposers primarily. This proposal is to continue funding the activities of Bridge Builders. Bridge Builders performs several valuable functions in the community:

Governance Events - Bridge Builders has hosted a number of events to date, including Cafe Sur le Pont, and two Election Fest events. Bridge builders also hosted the first Catalyst Circle Congress where members from Catalyst Circle v1 and v2 were able to meet and mentor the newly elected Circle v3 representatives.

Community Mentoring - Bridge Builders work with various community groups to mentor them on a wide array of business and leadership capabilities. This mentoring includes proposal feedback and coaching, setting up core team leadership systems and mechanisms, creating vision and values statements and strategic plans, introductions between community members and projects, and coaching and emergency leadership assistance to both individuals and project teams.

Ecosystem Networkers - Bridge Builders actively engages with existing and emerging projects and leverages its capability of observing and reflecting on the dynamics of the broader ecosystem spectrum, in order to identify gaps and initiate effective solutions to improve the Catalyst Network as a whole.

Community Architects - Bridge Builders are constantly looking to improve the architecture of the community network by proposing new ways to the benefit of Project Catalyst and the wider community network. In concrete, we explore and establish communication streams to the Cardano entities which enables us to communicate community needs, opportunities and challenges directly to IOG & The Cardano Foundation.

Targeting funded proposal, entrepreneurs and startups providing solutions that are directly linked to the challenge:

1. Proof of concept: criteria definition of mission and vision driven projects of the Project Catalyst; 
2. Center of Gravity concepto to increase communication, coordination resulting in increased collaboration (MVP) 
3. Co-creation of system and sub-system: Designing autocatalytic systems & organic governance structures

In detail we will provide the services in 3 main parts:

1. Public - Online Live Sessions and Workshops
2. 1:1 Online Live Sessions and Workshops for funded Projects
3. Open Source - Content Creation of educational Resources

We will mainly focus on the following aspects: Team structures and agile concepts, Leadership education, Tailor-made business plans and strategies. Those topics will be covered in different ways:

1. Online - Open Sessions and Workshops with project teams and individuals: Once per month, we will host a breakout room in the Project Catalyst After Town Hall which is organized by the Catalyst Swarm. In these breakout rooms, we will provide open Workshops and Sessions for the Community. The Workshops will be recorded and uploaded on the Bridge Builders Youtube Account.
2. As we aim to support as well our friends in the eastern hemisphere, we will also offer a 1-hour Workshop each month in the Eastern Town Hall to invite people from the Indonesian, Vietnamese, Japanese, and East African communities to join our Workshops. The Workshops will be recorded and uploaded on the Bridge Builders Youtube Account. These Workshops are organized in Collaboration with the Catalyst Swarm & the Eastern Town Hall teams.
3. Online - 1:1 Team Workshops & Accompaniment for funded Projects: As we believe in "do not measure quality by quantity" we will start with a small number of Projects to whom we offer 1:1 "tailor-made" Workshops in private calls. This allows us to develop specific and unique succession plans, Guidance, and Mentorship. In the first 3 months, from April 2022 to June 2022, we will concentrate on a maximum of 10 Projects which will have our accompany over an estimated timeframe of six months. During this time, we will stay in close and permanent contact with the accompanied projects, provide direct communication streams via the Bridge Builders Slack account and weekly Team meetings. In the 1:1 Accompaniments, we build close relations with the teams and their projects. This close relation is needed to fully understand the needs and desires of the project and to co-design tailor-made succession plans.
4. The Bridge Builders Series. Providing a Series of, open source-based, educational content: Bridge Builders Series is a collection point or library of education information, videos, workshops, and items that can be utilized in training, building, and growing organizations in their business models and stages of growth. In addition, Bridge Builders will look to the community to assist in building out this series of open-source offerings. Initially Bridge Builders series will focus on providing a library of templates. Some examples include: 
5. Presentation templates for raising funds, sales engagement, and partnering recruitment.
6. Business plans, executive summaries, and strategic plans templates Marketing, public relations (PR), and launch templates

Other information will continue to be added as the market needs to expand and new business models emerge.

We are a committed team with a strong spirit on providing value to the community. Commitment of these individuals has been proven throughout their engagement prior to Bridge Builders. We evaluate it to be a low risk proposal and challenges will be tight to our level of quality service and impact of our work to funded proposals. 

[FEASIBILITY]

Roadmap (May 2022 - July 2022)

Project mentoring (min 10 projects)

Kick-off with and need identification with projects

1 on 1 mentoring sessions

Group experience facilitation

Monthly group call

Engage projects to GMBL tokenomics experiment

Public meetings / events

After Townhall (breakout room hosting)

Eastern Townhall - open session workshop

Governance events

Content creation

Research, gather and develop content related to mentoring

Established ready-to-use templates, guides and playbooks

Core services:

Governance Events - 15.000

Community Mentoring - 25.000

Ecosystem Networkers - 15.000

Community Architects - 20.000

Operations:

Tools & Services - 1.500

Documentation - 3.000

Accounting & Treasury Management - 3.000

Additional positions:

PR & Marketing - 10.000

Website development: 2.300

Treasury for free use - 6.000

Total budget: US$100800

The team

Dean Taylor

Dean has more than 25 years of experience in the technology industry including 15+ years at executive management level—including startup and established organizations. His primary experience is in moving companies or offerings through the "pre-chasm" marketing and partnering activities; bridging the business gap that exists as technology moves through stages of innovation into business acceptance and adoption. As a Linux pioneer during the '90s, he was there at the inception of the open-source movement, working for Caldera Systems as the Vice President of Marketing and Channel Sales. He played a key role in growing the company's market presence and creating Caldera's Initial Public Offering (IPO).

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rdeantaylor/

Felix Weber

Founder and leader of the Catalyst Swarm, Initiator and Coordinator of the Ambassadors Guilds, Initiator and of the Eastern Town Hall, Elected Member of the Catalyst Circle version 1, Community Advisor, Challenge Team Member, Proposal Mentor and Community Manager

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/felix-weber-339590209

Nori Nishigaya

Founder of the Salmon Nation Decentralized Alliance (SANADA), Bridge Builders, and SAMON pool. Member of the Catalyst Circle Admin Team, Cardano4Climate, and Rapid Funding Challenge Team. Cardano Ambassador, CA, and Funded proposer. Passionate about radical inclusivity and community, and devoted to making Cardano the best community on the planet. Nori brings over 30 years of experience in software development, agile methodologies, leadership and managing teams, and founding and running technology

startups.

Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/nishigaya/

Juliane Montag

Co-Founder of Gimbalabs, Project Catalyst Fund 1 participant, Community Advisor, Veteran Community Advisor, Catalyst Circle 1 participant and funded proposer. Background in front- and back-office Business Development, PMO Transformation & Change, Family Business & Board Program Management. Juliane brings over 19+ years of experience in business- and market intelligence, strategic planning and execution, operationalizing transformational projects, as well as managing and coaching teams and individuals.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julianemontag

[AUDITABILITY]

The Bridge Builders services, actions and operations will be transparently documented and published via the Bridge Builders Website. We will provide constant updates via Website and Communication hubs and will present achievements and failures in a monthly Town Hall report.

KPI: Stating that the proposal is aligning with Challenge KPIs as showcasing to be a business oriented training and consulting service as well as emphasizing business and process improvement since this is embedded in our 1 on 1 mentoring approach. This way we help projects to define their journey towards a self-sustaining business (e.g. positioning Cardano-based solutions; engaging in partnerships; possibility to engage with additional funding sources by developing business presentations). Specific metrics are:

• Number of organized and hosted public Sessions and Workshops for Funded Proposer
• Number of organized and hosted 1:1 Sessions and Workshops for Funded Proposer
• Value / impact of generated Playbook/Blueprint

A success of the Bridge Builders Projects, will be measured by:

Successfully organized and hosted Governance Events

Successfully onboarded Team Members

Successfully mentored Projects

Successfully implemented Challenges and/or blue prints to wider funded proposal community (activities related to community architecture)

Our long term view is to help build and provide a safe environment for funded projects to achieve the next level and healthy growth. Scaling our services to a wider range of projects is a longer term success metric we focus on already.

This proposal is a continuation of our Fund 7- funded proposals:

Mentorship proposal: https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Bridge-Builders-Mentorship/380973-48088

Governance Events proposal:

https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Bridge-Builders-Governance-Events/382705-48088

Our proposal is a continuation of both proposals stated above and summaries the previous explored main tasks of the Bridge Builders Assembly.