Proposers’ Hive

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

The need for a proposers' group

Proposers (both funded and unfunded) are what Catalyst is all about, so their interests are important. However, proposers can be isolated by lack of time, or because official meetings (e.g. the Coordinator) are not at the best time of day for proposers outside Europe and the US.

So we need multiple ways, both formal and informal, for proposers to be heard; including via the places they already go (regional Town Halls, proposer-led groupings, or even Ideascale). Proposers need to be able to quickly access small funding to build their own solutions to problems with the proposal process; they also need to be easily able to raise a problem with Circle and IOG where appropriate. Proposers also need access to resources and support to help them manage their projects; and to events and tools to help them showcase their existing work, find collaborations, and promote new proposals to voters and dReps. And because proposers are global, they need approaches that treat different language and time zone needs as a priority.

What's already been done - the Fund 8 Funded Proposers Subcircle

In Fund 8, the Funded Proposers Sub-circle https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/398211 has begun to offer some of these things.

You can see the minutes of our meetings, as well as some of the work we have done to translate useful information, on our GitBook https://catalyst-circle.gitbook.io/funded-proposers-hub (Note that its name - funded proposers - is a legacy one: if we are successfully funded, we'll transition it to just "proposers", to welcome and include all people who are proposing in Catalyst whether or not they get funded. )

Examples of issues which the Sub-circle has helped to work on, together with Circle itself and IOG, include: 

• the establishing of a predictable date for the release of funds; 
• the inclusion of the relevant exchange rate in announcements of fund release; 
• the start of researching how possible it will be in future to accept proposals in other languages than English; 
• the translation of written material for proposers into key community languages

These are big steps forward; but this kind of work needs funding to continue. The Funded Proposer SubCircle’s F8 funding runs out in August 2022; and due to Circle’s loss of funding in F8, and probable lack of funding in F9, the Proposer community will also no longer have the Circle-related Rapid Funding which has made some of its work possible.

Recent Circle meetings have suggested that individual communities within Catalyst need to submit proposals to support the work they need to do: see

More than ever, there is a need for an independent proposers’ group - people who are embedded in their communities, and have the time and capacity to do outreach in different languages and different parts of the world, problem-sense proposers’ needs, publicise what the widely-raised issues are, and coordinate proposer-led responses.  

The Proposers’ Hive

This is why we (the global group who are currently working as the F8 Funded Proposers sub-circle) are making this proposal to transition into The Proposers’ Hive. We see the Hive as a product, created to address the needs of proposers in Catalyst.

The Hive emerged from the work of the Fund 8 Sub-Circle, and is a group of people with strong connections in their communities, who can do the coordination work that’s needed to support proposers' interests. We enjoy working with one another, and are willing to work to build a sense of community and strength amongst proposers, both funded and unfunded, and to ensure that the issues we have begun to hear from proposers continue to be raised and worked on.

We want to continue to build proposer outreach in LatAm, Eastern Hemisphere, and Africa, to minimise the barriers that proposers face around language and time-zones; and we also want to continue supporting proposers’ needs in the rest of the world. We want to continue with the multilingual problem-sensing we have been doing, so that we can hear and collate the issues that proposers want to change. And we want to go a step further - to create an independent treasury that can be used to pay for community-proposed solutions. This would replace and extend the $7,000 “Rapid Funding Circle treasury” that each Catalyst Circle member held in Fund 8 to pay for community-led solutions, because this will not be renewed in F9. We want to make it independent of Circle, because we want it to cover the needs of both funded and unfunded proposers in Catalyst (whereas the Circle seat is specifically about funded proposers).

Autonomous regions that can work together as needed

We plan to organise regionally (LATAM, Africa, Eastern Hemisphere, and Europe/US) to decide how money will be spent - each community will have autonomy to develop systems that best suit them, whereby proposers can suggest, get funding for, and build solutions to issues that have been propblem-sensed.

But because the Proposers' Hive will also meet regularly (twice a month) as a group, we can also coordinate responses across regions, and bring people together to work on issues. (We note the time-zone issues with posting “first come, first served” bounties on Dework - if a bounty is posted when half the world is asleep, some people never get the chance to take it. So while different communities might decide to use Dework, we will actively pioneer approaches that address this.)

We will also work together to document decisions on spending so they are transparent to all.

What kinds of work might we do or support?

The F8 Funded Proposers subcircle have already done a lot of problem-sensing all over the world, which can be seen on our Miro board here https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOp3c5lY=/?share_link_id=713706823738 

From this work, we know that some of the things the proposer community might want to work on in future include:

• Ongoing problem-sensing and collating problems, and publicising them so proposers can think about what dApps, products and integrations could best solve them
• Create products such as translations of proposer information into key languages (Portuguese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Japanese, French, Arabic, Swahili and more)
• Outreach and engagement work with potential future proposers in communities that face barriers to inclusion (language, time-zone, or lack of a strong proposer community in their locality to support them)
• Create products in the form of resources, learning materials and tools for proposers on how to manage price fluctuations, how to project-manage more effectively, and how to monitor and record your work as a proposer;
• Create tools to help proposers to find collaborators, and creating products in the form of spaces and events where proposers can publicise their successes more widely
• Create products in the form of events or platforms to help proposers showcase their work, and to help them present themselves to dReps and to voters
• Be a channel to help proposers’ issues to be raised with Circle and IOG
• Work to eventually make it possible for people to propose and be assessed in languages other than English; and meanwhile, build on the system currently being developed in LATAM where proposers can have their proposals proofread and edited by competent English-speakers
• and more - any other dApp, product or integration which addresses the problems that we have sensed across the proposers’ community.

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

The Proposers' Hive is, in itself, a product, which we believe will address some of the key issues for proposers (particularly, lack of a sense of community, lack of support, and lack of knowing where to go with problems). 

But also, by means of its treasury, this proposal can stimulate the creation of new dApps, products and integrations that address proposers’ needs.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

Risk that some proposers still feel left out, or do not hear about the Hive and what it can do for them.

We will mitigate this by the global reach of our team, and the way they are embedded in their particular regions; and by the fact that their connections in their communities will mean they can work in a more personal way to reach proposers directly. We will also mitigate it by making translations and attention to time zones a priority, to reach people who have been excluded so far. Finally, we will look outside of Catalyst social media, to other platforms such as Twitter or even IdeaScale, to reach proposers who don’t engage much on Telegram and Discord. We recognise that engagement is not instant, but a process, so we will not have an “engagement phase” that stops at a certain point, but will continue to work on publicising and engaging throughout the proposal.

Risk of duplication of effort in different parts of the world

We will mitigate this by meeting together, making each other aware of what is happening in different geographical communities, and sharing this with proposers in each community. However, we do recognise that plurality is important, and that a solution that looks superficially similar to another might be responding in distinctive ways to particular issues in that community; so the diversity of solutions might not actually be "duplication of effort", but necessary variation.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

Prior to funding: Until August, the Funded Proposers Subcircle is funded to continue to problem-sense, conduct outreach and publicity to proposers, and fund some low-budget solutions to key issues; and should be able to set some solid groundwork, and have an idea of what is most effective to reach proposers.

1 month after funding: we will have contacted all existing proposers directly, in their own first (ideally) or second (if needs be) language, and make them aware of who to contact to raise any issues. We will be reaching out regularly to proposers and potential proposers in all the main town halls, and other groupings such as GimbaLabs, Swarm, IOG tech community, etc, and will aim for individual proposers to be widely aware of the issues being raised in the proposer community and how to suggest a solution. We also aim to have set up systems and approaches in each region to allow proposers to offer solutions and receive funding from the treasury to implement them.

2 months after funding - We will have met approx 4 times as a Hive, and the meetings will be recorded and widely shared, with summaries translated into key languages. We aim to be supporting connections and links across regions; and to have held an event to link proposers together (perhaps an asynchronous “close-out fest” for proposers to celebrate the work they have achieved in a prior fund). We also aim for around 1/3 of our treasury to have been spent on community-created solutions to key problems that proposers face, and for the solutions implemented to be gaining widespread approval.

3 months after funding - Community-created solutions to proposer issues will be being proposed from all geographic communities, and at this point, around 2/3 of our Treasury will have been spent on solutions with a high degree of approval across the whole proposer community. We will have met approx 7 times as a Hive and the meetings will be recorded and widely shared, with summaries translated into key languages. We aim to see a stronger sense of community and support among proposers; and we aim to have more problems sensed and raised as we continue to work with proposers both funded and unfunded. We also aim that these sensed problems will be known to IOG, Circle, and the other communities in Circle, and that collaborations and cross-group working will be happening.

4 months after funding - we aim for all of our treasury to have been allocated to community-created solutions to proposer issues, with a wide geographic spread in terms of where solutions come from, and a high level of community approval and satisfaction. We will have met approx 9 times as a Hive and the meetings will be summarised and widely shared, with summaries translated into key languages. We aim to have more problems sensed and raised as we continue to work with proposers both funded and unfunded; and to have a sense of where the proposers’ community will be going in future and what problems are priorities. If appropriate, we will submit, or help others to submit, a F10 proposal for some form of support for proposers’ interests.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

8 people (LatAm x2, Africa x2, Eastern Hemisphere x2; “main” Town hall x1; admin and coordination, including wallet management, meeting documentation: x1). More resources are going to the underrepresented regions.

$550 a month per person (10 hrs a month at $55 p/hr) for 4 months - so total $17,600.

The work that each rep will do in their region will include outreach to new and potential proposers; facilitation of sessions such as after town halls; engaging on social media; problem-sensing and collation of problems; small bits of translation; attending Hive meetings and reporting back; helping to document things via Miro and GitBook.

Rapid Fund Treasury - $12,400. This can be used for products such as major translations; events to showcase proposers’ work; events to help proposers present themselves to dReps; training and resources for proposers e.g. in monitoring, project management, budget management; building a “find a collaborator” platform; outreach to potential proposers; and anything else that serves the needs that have been identified by problem sensing.

total $30,000

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

LATAM: Alex Pestchanker +1 other TBC

Alex has 20+ years of experience building Digital Products and Companies. Alex is also a professor and public speaker, helping to build common knowledge around Digital Transformation, Exponential Organizations, and Abundance. Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/apestchanker/ . Within Cardano, Alex is an active community member, co founder of the LATAM Cardano Community helping to building impact in and out of the Latin America ecosystem and host of the LATAM TownHall, performed as Community Advisor in F6 and F7, with high ratings on his assessments, vCA in F7 and won several funds for his proposals, such as: F6: Proposals Mentors Marketplace, F7: Easy Engagement - New members -AIM, F7: LATAM TownHall by Catalyst Swarm, among others.

Africa: Emelia Sarfo + 1 other TBC

Emelia is a CA, vCA and voter; entrepreneur, training consultant, community worker, Human Resource Practitioner of over 20 years experience, philanthropist, marketer of over 10 years experience. She is active in CATH (Catalyst Africa Town hall), and is a funded proposer in F8 and a proposer in F9.

Eastern Hemisphere: Mie Tran +1 other TBC

Mie is an English and International Business major by training; experienced in working cross-continent corporations. Funded proposer, Challenge Team member, Co-host for Eastern Town Hall.

“Main” Town Hall: Steve Lockhart

Steve is a Funded proposer, community builder, decentralization advocate, arborist, and dog owner who has been active in Catalyst since the beginning.

Admin and coordination: Vanessa Cardui (@CallyFromAuron)

Vanessa is a community engagement professional with 20+ years' experience of working with communities to record and collate their information, archive it, and make it discoverable (see for example https://creationofacommunity.wordpress.com ). Funded proposer and part of QA-DAO where she is leading on documentation of Catalyst Circle.

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

Probably yes, because supporting proposers is an ongoing need in Catalyst - but this will depend on future developments with Circle or any other funding streams to support key communities in Catalyst.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

• Number of meetings held and documented, number of languages that we create meeting summaries in, and page views of meeting documentation

• Numbers of problems sensed, and in which communities

• Numbers of products created in the form of resources, tools, platforms, translations, and events to support proposers

• Numbers of people engaging via regional communities, and contributing to problem sensing (e.g. in "regional" Town Hall meetings etc)

• Numbers of community members coming forward to work on solutions to sensed problems

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

Success would be that some key issues for proposers have been addressed, and particularly, that they have been addressed by proposer-led solutions and products;

proposers know how to raise issues simply and quickly in their own communities;

and proposers increasingly have a sense of themselves as a community, and have created events and spaces where they can collaborate.

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

It is a new project.

But it is related to and has grown out of https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/398211 Funded Proposers SubCircle.