The Catalyst School Fund9 Operation

[IMPACT]

The Catalyst School: what is it all about?

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 improving 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.

We understand that different people prefer different learning methods. Therefore, the School aims to help the community through:

• Live sessions and workshops.
• 1-to-1 and group support in many different languages.
• Interactive website.
• Other workshops related to Catalyst.

Today, the main topics covered by the Catalyst School today are:

1. Introduction to Catalyst
2. Proposing in Catalyst
3. How to be a Community Advisor
4. How to be a Veteran Community Advisor

What is the School already doing?

The Catalyst School is already helping the community since the beginning of Fund 6. We are doing that so we can receive feedback from the community and improve our teaching methods and content so we reach the highest Return on Intention we can.

You can check our last announcement during a Catalyst Town Hall here:

We have already run several sessions about the main topics described above, and onboarded more than 1000 new Catalyst members. Some of these sessions were recorded and are now available in our YouTube channel.

In Funds 7 and 8, we have provided Insight Sharing Workshops ( https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/384064 ) to increase the discussion during Catalyst's Insight Sharing Phase. The videos can be checked in our YouTube Channel. For example, this one related to the Cross-Chain Collaboration challenge:

We have also already ran workshops during the Catalyst Eastern Town Hall, the WADA Conference 2021, Cardano 4 Climate and other events.

Why do we need the Catalyst School?

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

Until today, learning about Catalyst, how it works, its requirements and the criteria to succeed according to one's role is still not so easy because the relevant information and resources are not easily digestible and findable, in one hub known to newcomers and veterans alike.

There is also no platform to bring together those who are in the process of learning about Catalyst, be them newcomers or veterans, so they can exchange knowledge and help each other.

Our Partnerships

As the saying goes, if you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together! With that in mind, Catalyst School will collaborate with other educational stakeholders in the Catalyst ecosystem, building bridges to maximize synergistic optimum impact.

The Catalyst School already has many partnerships, such as:

• Gimbalabs ( https://gimbalabs.com/ )
• WADA ( https://wadalliance.org/ )
• Eastern Town Hall ( https://discord.gg/4xnCdV6Qrn )
• Tutorial for Community Advisors ( http://app.ideascale.com/t/UM5UZBiSh )
• Sustainable ADA ( https://www.sustainableada.com/ )
• BeanChain ( https://twitter.com/beanchain )
• LATAM Cardano Community ( https://discord.gg/VzQCNmWzMr )

The Catalyst School is all about onboarding new members to the different roles in Catalyst.

We are aligned with the guiding questions:

• How might we convert passive ADA holders into active Catalyst members?
• How might we increase more meaningful participation from challenge teams, proposers, advisors, mentors and voters?
• How might we encourange new members to utillize the tools and services availalbe for onboarding?
• How might we improve the use of existing text, video and audio materials?

The main risk of this proposal is something that we have faced already: outreach. During Fund 7 we had very low attendance, but we have increased our marketing and improved our outreach strategy to get a good number or participants in our workshops and support sessions.

[FEASIBILITY]

The Plan: Roadmap and Milestones

This proposal aims to provide the School sessions, workshops, 1-to-1/group support to provide written materials and content in our website. When funded, we will provide all these services for the next Fund 9. We are changing our budgeting and project management strategy, so we will test this for one fund, and if we get funded and it works out well, we will continue with the same strategy next fund. Otherwise, we will adapt and improve.

School Sessions and workshops are going to be synchronized with each phase of Project Catalyst, so we increase the value delivered by them.

Based on our previous experience, we have decreased the number of workshops, since we realized it's better to have less workshops with higher attendance and quality instead of aiming for quantity.

Our goal is to provide 8 sessions in Fund 9, following the Project Catalyst schedule. Therefore, our roadmap is:

- Week 1 - Insight Sharing Phase:

• 1 x Introduction to Catalyst (After Town Hall and Swarm Session)

- Week 2 - Proposal Submission Phase:

• 1 x Introduction to Catalyst (After Town Hall and Swarm Session)
• 2 x Proposing in Catalyst (After Town Hall and Swarm Session)

- Week 3 - Proposal Refinement Phase:

• No workshops, only 1-to-1 support sessions.

- Week 4 - Proposal Finalize Phase:

• 2 x How to be a Community Advisor (After Town Hall and Swarm Session)

- Week 5 - Proposal Assessment Phase:

• 1 x How to be a Veteran Community Advisor (After Town Hall and Swarm Session)

- Week 6 - Assessments Review Phase:

• 1 x How to be a Veteran Community Advisor (After Town Hall and Swarm Session)

Besides that we aim at providing 30 1-to-1/group support sessions in Fund 9.

*Considering a $50/hour cost:

Project Lead

- Project oversight and define future directions (12h/fund)

- Manage partnerships (20h/fund)

- Represent the project externally (e.g. TH and Community Initiatives) (12h/fund)

- Manage project's finance (4h/fund)

Workload (by the fund in hours): 48h/fund

Budget: $2400/fund

Project Manager

- Check workshops hosts performance (feedback form) and propose improvements (8h/fund)

- Check 1-to-1 support sessions performance (feedback form) and propose improvements (8h/fund)

- Report progress to Catalyst (coordinator meetings) (8h/fund)

- Check if project’s content is up-to-date (slides, one pagers, website) (16h/fund)

- Filling in some role if necessary (10h/fund)

- Ensure proper execution of all other School roles (12h/fund)

Workload (by the fund in hours): 66h/fund

Budget: $3300/fund

Secretary

- Schedule and facilitate team meetings (12h/fund)

Workload (by the fund in hours): 16h/fund

Budget: $600/fund

Documentation & Auditability

- Keep track and report 1-to-1 support sessions (10h/fund)

- Submit Catalyst reports (progress) for School proposals  (10h/fund)

Workload (by the fund in hours): 20h/fund

Budget: $1000/fund

Core Content (per topic - 4 topics in total)

- Maintain workshop slides (8h/fund)

- Maintain one pagers (8h/fund)

- Host workshops/sessions (4h/fund)

- Create and maintain website content (10h/fund)

- Community/project knowledge acquisition and maintenance  (10/h fund)

Workload (by the fund in hours): 40h/fund

Budget: $50/h = $2000/fund, for all topics: $8000/fund

Website

- Manage gitbook/website (20h/fund)

Workload (by the fund in hours): 20h/fund

Budget: $1000/fund

Marketing/Media

- Make weekly announcements on Twitter, Telegram and Discord (24h/fund)

- Manage project's visual identity across content and media platforms (6h/fund)

Workload (by the fund in hours): 30h/fund

Budget: $1500/fund

In comparison to our previously funded proposal ( https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/367842 ), the budget is a bit higher than before. The reasons for that are:

1. The amount of work required in the back office was not accounted for properly in the last proposal
2. We are including more content creation than before
3. The website update and maintenance is included in this proposal - it was included in a separate proposal previously
4. We needed to ask a few more tasks and roles that were not included before in order to make the project effective and increase overall quality of our services

• 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.
• Filip Blagojević: Experience CA, vCA, proposer, proposal mentor, entrepreneur, industrial software engineer, Plutus Pioneer, Project Catalyst Community Advisor and Veteran Community Advisor
• 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.
• Phil Khoo: Co-founder of AIM Community Tools, experience CA, vCA, proposer, proposal mentor, challenge team member amongst numerous other pursuits.
• 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 member, engineering/science/developer and 'hands-on' teaching background.

[AUDITABILITY]

We will provide progress report to IOG in the bi-weekly coordinator meetings, and to the challenge team in the monthly meeting.

Besides that:

• Workshops are always uploaded to our YouTube Channel
• All our content will be available on our website (thecatalyst.school - to be updated very soon)
• We will provide a list with contacts from all the community members who asked for 1-to-1 support sessions

Success for this project is delivering everything according to the schedule and being able to onboard a large number of new members into Catalyst.

We will measure success by tracking:

• Number of workshops participants (maximum and average)
• Number of 1-to-1 support sessions provided
• Number of view on our YouTube videos
• Number of accesses in our website
• Number of sign-ups in our website

This proposal is a continuation of the following funded proposals:

• The Catalyst School: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/367842
• The Catalyst School - Multilanguage: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/368887
• The Catalyst School - Website: https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/368885

SDG Rating

We are inderectly related to many of the SDGs, since we are support multiple projects that will handle many of them. But are especially aligned with SDG 4: 'Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all'.