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Bi-weekly Bay Area Polkadot Meetup Proposal

4 years ago

Short description:
OAK Network proposes to host a series of bi-weekly Polkadot meetups in the Bay Area, U.S..

About us:
OAK Network is a blockchain startup from San Francisco since 2017, and has been researching on Polkadot and Substrate for 10 months. Early last month OAK was awarded an open grant from the Web3 Foundation to build an innovative crowdfunding module for the Polkadot network. We face challenges in recruiting and expanding our network, so do many fast growing teams in the Polkadot ecosystem. That’s how the idea of organizing local meetups came to our attention. We have experience in organizing blockchain events for up to 500 people in the past several years, in both the U.S. and China.

Photos from past events:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hfni3NBIbsqUk5fvQjKQHmem26CS0WGW?usp=sharing

Past event hosting example:

[Epicenter Blockchain After-party at The Battery]
We hosted an exclusive Blockchain event at the renowned members-only club, The Battery, in San Francisco in 2019. 410 guests signed up and 300+ attended. The event covered topics such as Defi applications of the blockchain and mass adoption of the blockchain technology. The event started with two panels and is followed by fireside chats and networking. Speakers were:

  • Will O’Brien - Advisor at Blockchain Capital
  • Alex Shin - Partner at Hashed
  • Lily Liu - Cofounder at Earn.com
  • David Chen - Founder and CEO at MOAC

Link to the event:

https://www.facebook.com/events/274063659881939/?acontext=%7B%22event_action_history%22%3A[%7B%22mechanism%22%3A%22calendar_past_events_unit%22%2C%22surface%22%3A%22bookmark_calendar%22%7D]%7D

Background:
We wish to organize bi-weekly Polkadot meetups in the Bay Area to bring startups, developers, enthusiasts, investors all together to get inspired by each other about the future of Polkadot. We plan to facilitate meetups (host 20 to 50 people) biweekly and bigger events (host 80 to 250 people) semi-annually. We hope to build a strong Polkadot community in the Bay Area and prepare for a potential semi-annual event if the pandemic situation eases.
We plan to design the meetups to be both educational and informational. In the past, we have worked closely with students from Stanford and UC Berkeley. Chris Li, founder of OAK Network, was invited to be a guest speaker in a Stanford CS course covering the topic of DAO. With deep connections with the local universities, we plan to bring students who are interested to the meetups and introduce them to the Polkadot community.
We will also collaborate with Google and Microsoft Blockchain communities to potentially put some of the meetups with tailored topics on their campuses in order to attract attendees.

Meetup Topics:
The meetups will cover a range of topics from the introduction of Polkadot to the latest Polkadot news. In the beginning, we’d like to start with more basic topics and will gradually grow into more focused subjects. A few ideas on the topics:

Rules to attend:
We plan to keep the meetups exclusive and small to drive the participation. The biweekly meetups are by invitation only. Each attendee will be eligible to bring two guests after their first attendance, and each guest can invite two more guests, and so on. The meetups are free to attendees. However, in order to drive the usage of Polkadot wallets, we require attendees to pay in DOT to reserve a spot on the attending list, and will refund them in person at the end of the meetup.

The meetups:
The meetups are designed to bring both inspirational conversations and good vibes. We will organize the meetups to be a fun experience for the attendees. The series of meetups will be organized each from a different venue, and the venue will only be announced one week before the event. Potential venue includes: private rooftop BBQ in downtown SF, private group wine tasting, sunset yacht tour across Golden Gate Bridge, etc. In the beginning we will only be able to host small parties, but will consider more public venues when the city further eases the COVID-19 restrictions.
Each meetup will start with an informal 30 minutes to 1 hour sharing session, by either one keynote speaker or a panel of speakers on the main topic, followed by free chats and mingling. Food & booze will be provided to attendees.

Expected Outcomes:
For the next six months, we plan to host 12 local meetups in the Bay Area. Each meetup will host up to 50 attendees, so the total meetups will attract up to 600 attendees. The first 30 attendees are eligible to invite 2 guests each, and their guests can further invite 2 guests. After two rounds of invites there will be ~210 members in the network. The network is built through invites and the relationship is reinforced through offline meetups on a regular basis, the members are more likely to form a close community.
This network forms a base for Polkadot enthusiasts and professionals in the Bay Area, and it will provide potential opportunities for Polkadot projects to hire developers, investors to get to know about the projects, and Polkadot fans to learn about the ecosystem, etc..
Meanwhile, we will capture great photos and videos from the meetup to post on our social media, and to share with Polkadot on social media (Twitter, medium, FB, Discord, etc.) after each event, and potentially open some events up for online audiences. In this way we will not only build a local meetup group but also be an active group in the Polkadot community. We plan to collaborate with other local communities (in China and Germany for example) on hosting bigger events in the future.

Budgeting:
A conservative estimate of expense:
Image
Total Amount (in USD): around $3,000 each meetup (on average), and $36,000 total for 12 meetups over 6 months.
Total Amount (in DOT): 141 DOT each meetup, and 1,692 DOT total for 12 meetups (estimated as of 06/19/2021)

Contact us:
Please let us know what you think, and we are happy to talk about any concern you might have. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Leah Li
Head of Marketing, OAK Network
leah@oak.tech

Chris Li
Founder, OAK Network
chris@oak.tech

Comments (2)

4 years ago

Hi, thank you for posting this! A few comments:

  • The link to the photos from past events is not working: could you fix it?
  • I don’t know if the exclusive meetup attendance rules and the DOT payment will work if you want to grow and consolidate a Polkadot community in the Bay Area - I like the idea of driving the usage of Polkadot wallets, but maybe there is some other way you can do this? Confirmation of attendance with a remark call or something similar.
  • Do you have a list of potential speakers you want to invite? Could you add it here?
  • I would leave the amount in FIAT for now. Once the proposal has received enough feedback, on submission day you can use the 30days avg tool by Subscan to calculate the rate and the total allocation of the submission. Furthermore, you have posted this proposal on Polkassembly Kusama: if you are applying for DOT treasury, this proposal should be published on Polkassemly Polkadot.
  • What do you think about organising the first 2-3 events ad-hoc and being rewarded by the treasury via tips, gather some metrics on attendees, topics, etc and use these as proof the plan is successful? I feel the Council would feel much more confortable voting on a proposal from a team that’s already showing results.

4 years ago

Hello, thank you for the comment, great suggestions!

  • Yes, here's an updated link of previous events photos;

  • On using DOT payment to reserve spots, we'd like to discuss the feasibility with you. If the attendance rules are too strict, we can maybe help the attendees to download the Polkadot wallet by making a tutorial before the event, and complete the remark call at the registration desk.

  • Here's a list of potential guests and speakers:
    Developers at Web3 Foundation;
    Developer Advocate at Parity Technologies;
    Dan Reecer, VP of Growth at Acala;
    Sandeep Nailwal, COO at Polygon(previously Matic Network);
    Calvin Liu, Strategy Lead at Compound Labs;
    Olaf Carlson-Wee from Polychain Capital;
    Will O’Brien, Advisor at Blockchain Capital;
    Kartik Mehrotra from Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator

  • I've moved the discussion over here

  • Organizing fewer events to start with is a good idea. We will make a smaller proposal with trial meetups.

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