SG 0.1a - Ambassador Program

SG0.1a - Ambassador Program

Summary

The Ambassador Program defines a collection of people appointed to be Ambassadors and perform outreach on behalf of the DAO.

Relevance to Strategic Plan

This proposal addresses the Seasonal Goal 0.1: Increase Community Size.

Motivation

We’d like to recruit Ambassadors who are well connected in 4 communities: web3, academic / medical research, biohacking, venture — especially connections local to their geographical regions.

However, because we are a decentralized organization, we want to minimize unnecessary gatekeeping. We’ll only have a vetting process to ensure that the candidate is fit to represent the DAO. Payments are done retroactively on a bounty basis, through Ambassador activities, so anyone regardless of credentials can have the opportunity to prove themselves.

Specification

Project Leads: Cat & Gavin
Team Members: @Shift @jengajojo

Criteria to be an Ambassador

General criteria

  • “Pass” a screening call where we verify that they are who they say they are
  • Conservational level of English (don’t have to be good, but they have to be able to communicate with us)
  • Able to submit a credible-looking plan for their Ambassador activities (will talk to these communities, will talk about VitaDAO at these events, etc.)
  • Pass a “training” (could be recorded videos or a notion page) on VitaDAO programs

Things we especially look for

  • Local connections to 1 or more of these communities: web3, academic / medical research, biohacking, venture

Payment and reimbursement

  • We generally don’t reimburse Ambassadors to go to events, but we do make exceptions on a case by case basis (only for experienced Ambassadors with a track record)
  • The first 3 events by an Ambassador, we will only approve a grant for expenses to host the event (no extra payment)
  • The 4th event or later by an Ambassador, we provide a payment bounty
    • $100 - $200 USD min. with a sliding bonus based on views and attendees
    • Might also add a “referral” and commission mechanism in the future
  • In the future, we will add bounties for “conversions” (e.g. new regular contributors, project application…)

Event Approval Process

Events will only qualify for reimbursements and/or payment if pre-approved by VitaDAO. VitaDAO approves events based on the DAO’s budget, strategic and community needs, the event proposal, and the Ambassador’s track records.

Implementation

Success Metrics

Intermediate metrics: number of ambassadors, number of events organized

Terminal metrics: number of active contributors gained from ambassador activities

Budget and Timeline

We propose to allocate a budget of $20k to the Ambassador program in Season 0.

$5k will be spent on the operation of the program, which includes:

  • Creating an ambassador application process
  • Promotion for the initial ambassadors
  • Finding ambassadors in Discord and local communities, talking with them to evolve the program design to make it more attractive
  • Creating presentation kits, brochures, email templates, posters, and other materials to support ambassador’s outreach and presentation efforts
  • Operationalizing program activities: ambassador onboarding, meetups,…

$15k will be spent on expenses and payments to Ambassadors. This will allow us to facilitate hosting 5-8 in-person events worldwide, and facilitate digital outreach to ~30 communities.

  • Agree
  • Revisions Requested (Detail in Comments)
  • Disagree

0 voters

2 Likes

Cool beans! Go outreach!

2 Likes
  • The 4th event or later by an Ambassador, we provide a payment bounty
    • $1,000 USD for a talk with more than 25 people offline, or 50 people online
    • $50 USD for digital outreach to a public group with more than 5,000 people
    • $100 USD for each targeted digital outreach to a private group with more than 1,000 people (for example, university department mailing list)
    • Might also add a “referral” and commission mechanism in the future
  • In the future, we will add bounties for “conversions” (e.g. new regular contributors, project application…)

On this not sure if $1k for more than 25 people offline makes sense, but only $50 for more than 5k online people, imo more crucial to have something like $100-200 minimum and then maybe sliding bonus based on views/attendees…

4 Likes

Good idea. I agree, that way we don’t limit the threshold of a successful event either. There are more success factors than number of pax.

I think this is a good initiative and generally support representation at events.

It is unclear exactly how will this approval work? If the expectation is for each event to receive approval from the DAO, then this will lead to governance fatigue. Rather the Ambassador program squad can be delegated responsibility to approve/deny events and publish their rationale at the end of the project on forum for feedback.

Since this is a PR initiative, potential reach should be a important success factor along with the suggested metrics.

4 Likes

Yes, and I think that’s what @catthu and I had in mind. To make up and form the assessment squad (open to join for any contributor).

3 Likes

As the one who just new to VitaDAO, I would like to be the trial one for this Ambassador program according to the draft and giving feedback from the point of view from new comer before officially launch.

3 Likes

The thinking is that it’s a lot easier to have online reach than in-person reach, but online also has lower conversion. But I do like the $100-$200 minimum + sliding bonus (and + a maximum probably). Let me think about that and revise the proposal tomorrow.

Yes, the ambassador ops squad decides! That will just be me and Gavin at the moment… but if anyone is interested in contributing to the DAO, this is a great place to join :grin:

And good point, will add reach.

@Shift that’s great, would love you eyes on it! Would you like to join the ambassador ops squad with Gavin and me then?

1 Like

I have been leading a global events partnerships squad at banklessDAO for almost a year now. Happy to join the squad if given the opportunity

2 Likes

Sure, i love to join. Thanks for the invitation.

2 Likes

I’ve revised the proposal to include all the comments made. Please vote!

3 Likes

Wait, why are there so many negative votes? What am I missing? It can’t be that people are generally against the whole proposal - we all want to increase outreach.

I can understand if people have opinions on elements such as compensation/budget, criteria, or other elements - if so, please detail what you’d do to improve the proposal. I’d really like to understand the rationale behind some of these straight “disagree” votes…

4 Likes

I hear you! This has been a consistent problem we’ve had on Discourse actually, and it is very frustrating for people who put forth proposals (many people feel this, not just you and me). We’ve talked about requiring people who vote disagree to input a reason (anonymous ok), but unfortunately Discourse doesn’t support that.

Shilling for my other proposal here, but if you want to see us working with platforms that has what we need, instead of us having suboptimal systems around platform limitations, vote yes for my other proposal about member / community portal scaffold :grin:

1 Like

Oh I see what you’re saying. I checked it out right now. What’s the issue, though? Do people have a problem with budgets? It would be good to know.

1 Like

I’m going to be doing research on this and implementing a solution on our next governance amendment proposal

2 Likes

I would caution that requiring extra effort to disagree will discourage participation. If you’re going to require a comment to disagree, you should require a comment to agree, too. Or you could add a couple options to ‘disagree’, and iterate until you find the most common reasons (start with disagree: budget too high, disagree: proposal flawed, disagree: other (comments encouraged) and then swap out the weaker performing disagree option every 5 votes). That may give the proposers some feedback without putting people on the spot.

I suspect most people are more diplomatic than I am. They may be willing to vote ‘disagree’, but less willing to say ‘I think this proposal is BS’ (not saying that about this one; didn’t vote on it). Also, there are advantages to allowing WG leads and VitaCORE the ability to disagree personally as one vote without being forced to weigh in publicly against a proposal. They may not want to sway the community one way or another.

3 Likes

For my past experience, it is not a good idea to ask why vote disagree after seeing the result in the public.

It will put “disagree” community member in the spot light; like “hey, stand up. Let us do a public discussion and see how the reason behind disagree!”

different options for the disagree is a very good management way. options like

  • “no comment on this”
  • “no interest on this topic”
  • “Budget concern”
  • “no enough understanding about this proposal” to dilute a simple “disagree” button

“every 5 votes” will need to calculate the average total number of voting for every proposal first. a % is better than a fix voting number.

sometimes, if we use a wrong way to solve this, it is easier to remove the voter on disagree. But we didn’t answer the question behind.

Voing with other options is one method.

scale down the proposal is another way.

lower the requirement of submitting a formal proposal is another way to encourage different opinions

1 Like

By every 5 votes, I meant every 5 proposals or so, not 5 votes within the same proposal.

I don’t think disagree votes are bad, nor the threshold. They’re healthy, and not every proposal should be adopted. From a proposer point of view, having some insight into why their perfect idea went down in flames can be helpful.

I generally do not vote on proposals I don’t care about or am uninterested about. Sometimes I wait to see how the discussion goes.

2 Likes

Oh no the intention was that you must submit a reason to vote disagree, but all reasons will be anonymous (just like how the votes are currently anonymous). I wouldn’t want reasons to be associated with the author. I wouldn’t oppose to requiring a reason to agree either; in fact I’m pro anything that nudge people to be more thoughtful when voting.

3 Likes