Hi Everybody, this will be interesting to you if you care about media creation, content strategies, and treasury management through governance.

The following is an offering of a possible strategy, made stronger by your attention and then thoughtful questions and feedback below.

Polkadot Citizen Media is not a brand or organization but a discussion about aligning Media creation and both treasuries with the long term success of the Polkadot Network.

The conversation is also happening on Twitter and the Polkadot Forums!

For your convenience it is summarized here in a 10min video with salient points to follow!

Content of Video:

0. INTRODUCTION

• Suggestions in this video based on 18 months of making and scaling media with 250+ other tokenholders!
• This is a suggested strategy specifically for aligning Media creation and both treasuries to the long term success of the network.
• The goal is to begin a conversation around intentional spending on the creation of media serving three distinct audiences.

1. AUDIENCE

• Audience One is made up of current users, builders, and tokenholders of Polkadot and Kusama Network.

• smallest audience.

• they require media that is accurate, timely, and relevant information so strong communities can form, build, and prosper via informed decisions and action.

• media serving this audience is always relevant but especially during market downturns (to preserve and support).

• Audience Two is made up of tokenholders to be -- those who are into crypto/blockchain but don't know or understand Polkadot yet.

• larger audience.

• this audience needs media that educates, compares, onboards, welcomes, and shows them what’s possible.

• media serving this audience is also always relevant but maybe most useful during boring sideways/bottom market action.

• Audience Three is made up of those driven in by speculation and hype

• largest audience (also most fleeting).

• requires media that offers attention redirection, reality based settings of expectation, and firm indoctrination into long term thinking.

• The Point: without strategy hype/fud cycles will continue to play out, wrecking potential token holders and causing chaos.

• by strategizing around these three audiences we will grow the core of true, long term, network participants.

2. STORIES

• stories drive action.
• media is stories at scale.
• media determines meta narrative and thus the actions of large groups of people.

3. ACQUIRING TALENT (& Decentralization)

• "He who controls the media controls the minds."
• media decentralization is vital.
• current onboarding of talent via tips in gov1 or Open Gov is okay but requires duplicated research, acks guidance or knowledgable feedback — especially for non-anglo media, is extremely time and resource intensive... and a little bit lonely.
• tl;dr high friction and easy to quit.
• content creation guilds rely on the establishment of communities led by experts.
• standards are set, feedback is provided, cheaters are snuffed out, resources are shared, education is offered, and the very best are gradually elevated and encouraged with incentives.
• provide welcoming onboard experience for talent and incentivize with small rewards as they grow an audience and become more valuable to the network.

4. FUNDING

• "He who controls the media is paying for the media."
• tokenholders must pay for media services to ensure alignment with longterm interests.
• successful media pays for itself by retaining and onboarding users, brainpower, and builders to the network increasing its utility.
• real world businesses commonly dedicate 10-20% of budgets to media and marketing.
• in 2022 10.62% of KSM spends were for media and 0.32% of DOT spends.
• $930k worth of KSM and $125k worth of DOT at today's market price (30d MA).
• media benefits both networks, maybe Polkadot more, and there has been heavy general spending of Kusama treasury lately.
• suggestion: rebalance spending across both treasuries.
• suggestion: hack Open Gov onto Polkadot by opening spend proposals in appropriate tracks with nominal rewards and the stated intention of spending DOT. If successful, open spend proposal on Polkadot for full amount.
• not perfect and not necessary but Open Gov is pretty sweet for scrutiny and at least some consensus.
• we still love our Polkadot Councillors, just a suggestion.

5. BUDGET

• hard to do! but how much should we spend on a strategy like Polkadot Citizen Media?
• suggestion: start with a number based on 10% of last year's total spending (~$5m worth of tokens -- $1m from Kusama, $4m from Polkadot).
• note that treasuries grew by $135m worth of KSM and DOT in 2022 at today's price.
• please somebody create an application for more accurately budgeting but ROUGHLY (tool used in vid)...
• $5m worth of tokens spent on Media in 2023 would kind of (sort of) be 1.12% - 2.61% of the total combined treasuries for scenarios discussed in the video.

6. CONCLUSION

• this strategy can serve 3 types of audiences.
• stories drive human behaviour.
• centralized media is dangerous.
• it's important that tokenholders fund media that's in their long-term best interest.
• good media drives or retains attention, users, brain power, and builders to the network increasing utility.
• Kusama and Polkadot can share funding of media.
• we began a budgeting discussion for the next 12 months.

These and any points are up for discussion below! Thanks for your care and attention.

Please, when in doubt, feel free to ask questions and build your understanding of this proposed strategy! Is there anything that was missed? Please begin a conversation below! Your feedback is essential to finding the best strategy for aligning Citizen Media with the long term success of Polkadot!