The Eastern Catalyst School | What is it all about?

The Catalyst School, already established, is a place created to enhance the impact of Catalyst as a whole by improving the contribution of all its different players and roles. The Eastern Catalyst School will provide similar services as The Catalyst School, but in the Japanese, Vietnamese and Indonesian and steadily adding more local languages by reaching out to other communities where English is not the main communication instrument.

We aim to 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, a Challenge member 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.

With the encouragement and support of Catalyst School, Catalyst Swarm and Eastern Town Hall, this proposal is also a CALL for purpose driven people in the Eastern Hemisphere to join the MOVEMENT. The main topics we are willing to cover by the Eastern Catalyst School are :

• Introduction to Catalyst
• Proposing in Catalyst
• How to be a Community Advisor
• How to be a Veteran Community Advisor
• Why do we need the Eastern Catalyst School

Catalyst is not a traditional funding platform, it has its own protocol and functioning method. Therefore, anyone who wants to join this experiment needs to learn about it first.

The general perception is that Eastern Hemisphere communities are not fully aware of Cardano and Catalyst, and there is also the language barrier once English is not commonly spoken in the region.

Our proposal aims to bring together the Eastern Hemisphere communities which have an interest in the process of learning about Catalyst constructively, be they, newcomers or veterans, so they can exchange knowledge and help each other in their own languages.

The Eastern Catalyst School | The Approach

By having Eastern Catalyst School, we will have leveraged the system and teaching of Catalyst School which is a proven system that delivers on various metrics such as onboarding new members, converting lurkers, increasing awareness of Project Catalyst and it's caveats to adding meaningful participation of exisiting community members.

Onboarding would be the keyword here. For having Catalyst School in East Asia local languages would breakdown the number one factor that prohibits wide participation of the Eastern Hemisphere, which is the dominant use of English though out the current Cardano Ecosystem.

From breaking down that initial language barrier, the learning curving barriers will then be addressed. This would potentially lead to more sign-ups to Cardano IdeaScale, more attendance in Town Halls and Swarm Sessions, more Catalyst School attendance.

Growth of attendance of above entities will eventually lead to growth in proposal submission, growth in Community Advisors ( which is happening now [ 1 ] ) which will lead to the growth of Veteran Community Advisors. Most importantly, through education and participation, educated and engaged voters will be a by-product of all processes above.

The Eastern Catalyst School | The Risk Factors

Language barrier would be the number one risk we face. How do we cater the proven education system of the Catalyst School translates well into local languages and fits the local culture. There are two methods to address this; initial running and iteration through surveys.

From each iterations we will better fit the teachings to cater to each community that the Eastern Catalyst School currently represents. Which are (in alphabetical order) Indonesia, Viet Nam and Japan. These iteration will most likely take more time than the learnings done during the growth process of Catalyst School due to having to translate the content.

The next challenge would be how to advocate, a holistic multi-language approach across the whole Cardano ecosystem. A bridge to far for our lowest hanging fruit is to onboard as much as we can, users from the Eastern Hemisphere.

The Eastern Catalyst School | Roadmap

This proposal aims to provide The Catalyst School Sessions and Workshops (in Japanese, Vietnamese and Indonesian). When funded, we will provide all of these services in the next two Funds, 8 and 9. The Catalyst School Sessions and Workshops are planned to be weekly.

Also, the sessions are going to be synchronized with each phase of Project Catalyst so we increase the value delivered by them.

Our goal is to provide 18 sessions in each Fund, following the Project Catalyst schedule. Therefore, our roadmap per Fund are : (each will be done in Japanese, Vietnamese and Indonesian)

• Week 1 - Insights Sharing Phase : “Introduction to Catalyst Workshops” @3
• Week 2 - Proposal Submission Phase : “Proposing in Catalyst” @3
• Week 3 - Proposal Refinement Phase : “Proposing in Catalyst” @3
• Week 4 - Proposal Finalize Phase : “How to be a Community Advisor (CA)” @3
• Week 5 - Proposal Assessment Phase : “How to be a Veteran CA” @3
• Week 6 - Assessments Review Phase : “How to be a Veteran CA” @3

* This road map and sessions/workshops schedule can be adapted based on community feedback and needs

The Eastern Catalyst School | Budget Breakdown

Our 6 month budget covers the following actions :

• Sessions and workshops : (4,320X3) $12,960

1. 18 sessions/workshops per Fund
2. 36 sessions/workshops per 2 (two) Funds
3. 2 hours per sessions/workshops
4. $60 per hour for main presenter
5. $30 per hour for moderating the room, answering the chat and keeping track of statistics

• 1-to-1 and/or group sessions based on request : $1,800

1. 30 minutes/$30 per sessions
2. 60 minutes/$60 per sessions
3. 30 hours equal 60 sessions
4. Topics covered : CA, vCA, Project Catalyst, Proposal

• Education materials creation and its translation : (1250X3) $3,750 

1. Creation of sessions and workshops presentation slides
2. Education materials to be distributed via our platforms
3. Updating education materials in accordance with changes in Project Catalyst

• Marketing : (1250X3) $3,750

1. Reaching out to potential students via different channels
2. Managing the community platforms

• Website creation and maintenance : $1,000

1. Creating a basic website to serve as a landing page and to host the main information about the Catalyst School in Japanese, Viet Nam and Indonesian

• Project Management : $3,000

1. Scheduling events based on community interest
2. Coordinating hosts, co-hosts (scheduling, backup plan)
3. Coordinating with community events (Swarm Session, After Town Halls)
4. Coordinating with partners (creating bridges, realizing synergies)
5. Controlling the project costs
6. Managing YouTube channel
7. Project documentation and housekeeping

• Contingency : $1,000

The Eastern Catalyst School | Core Team

The team represents the initial Eastern Town Hall (ETH) Trusted Seed and incoming new members.

There are no roles, no leaders. Rather people establish themselves over time, through participation. We overlap and collaborate with Catalyst Swarm [ 2 ] and Catalyst School [ 3 ] and other community groups across Asia.

This collaborative effort brings a wealth of cultural and technical experience to Cardano. We are all very active in Catalyst, and community groups across our ecosystem. We are a diverse bunch united by the promise of Cardano : (in alphabetic order)

• Core Team

1. Andy Sibuea @zicozibu - Indonesia: IT & Blockchain Educator, Eastern Catalyst School member
2. Linh @elpidanang - Australia: Digital Forensic and Cyber Security academic staff since 2004. Fund 7 and 8 Challenge Team member, Co-host for ETH. 
3. Mie Tran @mie.tran.0407 - Vietnam: English and International Business major by trained, experienced in working cross-continent corporations. Funded proposer, a Challenge Team member, Co-host for ETH.
4. Tien @tienna - Vietnam: Computer programmer, Cardano SPO (VILAI), Cardano community activist since 2018, funded proposer, a Challenge Team member and Co-host for ETH. 
5. Yuta Yuta @yutazz - Japan: Cardano Ambassador, Community Co-Organizer, Catalyst Fund 2 & 7 Recipient, Certified Public Accountant

• Consultant Team

1. Yan Tirta @yantirta - Indonesia: Cardano Indonesia Organizer, Community Advisor, Veteran Community Advisor, Eastern Catalyst School member, Catalyst Challenge Team member, Entrepreneur
2. Andreas Sosilo @andreassosilo - Indonesia: Software Developer, Cardano Foundation Ambassador for Indonesia, Cardano Indonesia Community Manager, Eastern Hemisphere Town Hall Team

The Eastern Catalyst School | Public Documentation and Domain

The Catalyst School | Eastern Hemisphere will include a basic website (in Japanese, Viet Nam and Indonesian) consisting of two main parts : 

• GitBook : All the content and the resources used for the Catalyst School will be published in a public Git repository with an Open Source license and presented to the users through GitBook (https://www.gitbook.com/), a platform for publishing documentation.

• Landing page : All content of the landing page will include ; a subscription form to collect students and engage them with periodical emails and resources, a visual index to help users navigate through all the resources published in the GitBook, a basic quiz about the "Introduction to Catalyst".

The Eastern Catalyst School | Milestones

These are our following targeted milestones :

• 3 months after funded or at the end of Fund 8 :

1. Learning content created for the School sessions and workshops
2. Host 18 School sessions or workshops in three languages

• 6 months after funded or at the end of Fund 9 :

1. Host 36 School sessions or workshops in three languages

The Eastern Catalyst School | Success Metrics

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

• Total number of community members who get involved with the Catalyst School
• The number of proposers joining the sessions and workshops
• Number of CA’s joining the sessions and workshops
• The number of vCA’s joining the sessions and workshops
• The number of 1-to-1 supports provided to community members
• Number of new referees
• Number of new voters

The Eastern Catalyst School | Overall Arch

• Short term - attendance growth of participants/attendance of the Eastern Catalyst School (since there is no baseline, this proposal will function as the initiator of that baseline)

• Mid term - growth of Community Advisors and Veteran Community advisors (this would be a continuous by-product of the initial growth of participants/attendance of the Eastern Catalyst School, the more initial attendance the more likely a Community Advisor will come out of it)

• Long term - eventually all our actions will lead to more proposal submission from the Eastern Hemisphere (the end goal we seek to eventually achieve which can only happen if there is a conscious effort to educate and compensate participation)

This indeed is a new proposal that continues the efforts of the Catalyst School.

Intellectual Property

Participation in our community is covered by a Contributor Covenant. A Contributor License accompanies contributions to our project. The copyright of anyone's contribution is retained; the agreement simply gives us permission to use and redistribute contributions as part of the project.

All our source code is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 

Our published content is licensed under the Creative Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) License v4.0.

Additional information

By close communication, coordination and collaboration with the Catalyst Swarm, The Catalyst School, the Ambassadors Guild and the Bridge Builders, we build a Network of Community initiatives able to provide an A to Z onboarding process which allows newcomers to appreciate a fast and safe onboarding process.

We have also set up an Eastern Town Hall Stake Pool (C3ETH) and are part of the Ryuuki Fund and Network.

References

[1] Ongoing CA onboarding in local language : https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ltmakj7l24SIYZONogskh46eIXsA0ubH?usp=sharing

[2] Catalyst Swarm : http://catalystswarm.com

[3] Catalyst School : https://linktr.ee/CatalystSchool