I would vote all my dot in favor of this.
Very good thinking!
So, the Ambassador Management you referred to earlier, would be these 5-6 full-time employees that could be funded via the same mechanism as the other roles?
We would have to be quite careful with the naming, expectations and role descriptions for each, to avoid further confusion. For example, the full-time managers are strategic coordinators, whereas the part-time working group leaders that you refer to as “mentors” are operational coordinators. Perhaps each of those levels could have “max spend” as one of the adjustable parameters and it could start with e.g.:
- Managers: Full-time strategic coordination (up to 10K USD / 28 days)
- Working group leaders: Part-time operational coordination (up to 5K USD / 28 days)
- Agents: Any active contributor producing needed results (up to 2.5K USD / 28 days)
Once there are clear guidelines, budget and initial parameters set for these different roles and levels, I think this would be a fantastically agile and scalable approach.
This could be then harnessed to drive the Polkadot ecosystem strategy that e.g. @replghost and @alice_und_bob have been hinting at. If it’s adopted without strategy, my worry is that it will just increase the randomness and chaos in our open governance.
As for the “Bringing legitimacy, title, and rank to members in our community”, the work has started already. @tom.stakeplus was funded to start Phase 1 of the Agents Program he introduced a year ago. In fact, the agents could have their own ranks and one of them could be Ambassador. Just saying…
Can’t believe I missed @shawntabrizi 's vision a few months ago, among so much noise, these best ideas just get lost.
Feels to me just the right level of what ambassadorship should be, of course we’d probably some down sides with time but this is such a solid basis for a positive program including all building power.
Got all my support.
Thank you @replghost for sharing thoughts on this, this should be the hand book of everyone joining any on-chain token-weighted vote power governance, very insightful and positive.
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@shawntabrizi I like your ideas and think they are very workable.
That said, having been involved in the AAG call yesterday and knowing there is a meeting of the HA’s today to find a way forward, don’t you think the timing of this public post is a bit off?
They will now wake up to perhaps see this shortly before (what I assume will be a public and recorded) meeting that has already been planned, and once again find themselves scrambling and on the back foot in front of the community.
I imagine many of those on the call might agree with you, but the timing of this may now serve to blindside or undermine those same people, and it certainly takes the wind out of the sails of today’s meeting.
If the goal is to convince people of and shape the above ideas, then aligning with the people in today’s meeting would surely be the most effective route. Could you not have reached out to members of the group and offered these ideas to them to first digest, along with potential support, and answered some of their questions?
After that, by all means, post it publicly and take the kudos.
While holding the very well-earned position of influence and respect that you do, anything you say holds huge gravitas and publicly delivering direct and pointed ideas on how to shape the program—especially at such a critical time—is quite different from staying hands-off and convincing people of philosophies. Something to consider: are we the altruistic thought leader, a bit of a (perhaps accidental) headline grabber, or somewhere in between?
Again, I like your ideas. Sometimes taking things by the scruff of the neck is exactly what’s needed. In this case, however, I don’t think this was the most appropriate method for dissemination.
Thanks for your hard work as always.
I disagree with the fact that it undermines current collective efforts.
All work done will not be in vain if it is made in a way to be successful for the overall ecosystem (ie not specific to current structure), there should be a retroactive funding proposal to reward work being done from current collective.
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What i meant is that it undermines them in todays meeting (which sounds to be a pretty significant effort) and probably makes them look a bit out of the loop or silly. For sure i agree that other work can still stand up and probably work very well under Shawn’s program.
@Murphy it is not my intention to blindside anyone by my post and presenting ideas.
My first proposal about the ambassador program vision (which is half of the idea above) was written in July, so certainly nothing new there.
The second idea bout an Ecosystem Agents Fund was brought up a few weeks ago by Basti suggesting use of the old Gov1 pallets, and here I am just presenting some more concrete way that pallet could be used for allocating funds. You will see conversation around these ideas in the other posts over the last weeks.
I disagree that the appropriate way to present ideas is to message them to individuals and small groups. The point of our open community and this forum is exactly to present these kinds of ideas to everyone. I really wish that more people would be willing to work in the open.
Yeah, it would have been better for me to type this up weeks ago, but certainly it is better for me to type this up and present it now rather than later.
I hope that by presenting these ideas publicly, that we can start to instill the philosophies of the ideas into the existing HA conversations, rather than the ideas themselves. I think there are other ways to implement a good ambassador program than what I have specifically suggested above, but I think all good implementations will share themes around inclusion, merit, outcomes, and accountability.
I hope this is not the case. I think the best way to move forward is for the existing group of HA to come to the conclusion about resetting the program with the right philosophies.
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Thank you @shawntabrizi!
It is obvious the “Ecosystem Agents Fund” ideas of @shawntabrizi are fundamentally more scalable and likely to have FAR higher impact than some revised ambassador program.
The “up to 10k” and Part-time is liberating. In fact, the “full-time”-ness of the presently elected HAs was never possible to take seriously, hopefully these simple ideas will be taken in as a good reset. I’ll bet 100 part-time Ecosystem Agents would be better than 10 “full-time” HAs and captures the spirit of what a collective was supposed to be about, and doesn’t have all the “do you deserve your rank” hierarchical audit baggage of Head/Senior/…
The Phragmen/old Gov1 council is appealing to the technocrats amongst us and appears more fair. Hopefully someone in the know will dust it up with a sense of urgency. Who is that?
People should be required to spend x% of their time reporting on their work, in “memos”, but this x% should be lower and upper bounded well (like, 1-10%, not 25-40%). OpenGov Tips aren’t scalable relative to the ecosystem fund because x goes way above 10% and also wastes a lot of voter time. If you keep x low, and provide real value, it should basically be an expense report after a trip.
For me , this is the dual of “Optimistic Project Funding”, except its about PEOPLE rather than PROJECTS. Like the typical country’s government spending, maybe half of it will be wasted! But because we get MORE people and MORE projects involved, we should accept this “waste” and a year or two later try to reduce waste.
I think there need not be any requirements here. People need only report enough to ensure they continue to get voted in for the next election. Some people’s work are so public, so well known, so immediate, that their reports probably can be pretty sparse, and still get the support of the community.
Some people’s work are so behind the scenes, with delayed outcomes, and perhaps even NDAs, that they may need to write extensive reports to describe their values, their goals, and the work they are able to share.
End of the day, with a public voting system, the ecosystem will come to an understanding of what kind of reporting is expected and required to make it into the set. It also allows these things to evolve over time.
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I will admit, Shawn incepted the idea in me since the July post. I am glad it has attention now. We have to both boot up a productive program to start execution and welcome back ambassadors, but it also needs to be a fair meritocratic program that induces the right ideals in people.
I have also thought about a fund that can fund anybody in the ecosystem, independent of Shawn and Basti’s ideas. As I have dived into the ecosystem for the past three months, I have really noticed that nobody works directly for Polkadot. Everyone works for a company in Polkadot, or a project in Polkadot, or their own company that somewhat overlaps with Polkadot. That is because in order to get paid, you have to be working for a funded entity, and those entities have their own goals, which somewhat align with Polkadot but are fundamentally separate.
This is a problem, because there is almost no one who is responsible to the long-term health of Polkadot (on the non-technical side), and so many improvements are needed here. There are so many things I have come across over my past three months diving into the ecosystem that are holes in what we do (BD, marketing, project management, product management, voice of the customer, onboarding support, strategy, HR, culture, etc.) because no one works directly for Polkadot. The only choice people have if they want to directly do something for Polkadot is to do it for free.
The Ecosystem Agent fund can change that, immediately, while we boot up longer term solutions (e.g. more collectives).
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Hi there Six thank you for the message , yes ii continue spread Polkadot throghout in the climate areas and green, im happy to try as SA yes, how can i apply ?
Hey @shawntabrizi , I really like your ideas and thinking about the HA program. Currently, I am also missing structure. Going through several discussions, proposals, and following the AAG livestream, it feels like the program is more about egos, individuals, and the shape of the program. I believe the program should support the vision of Gavin (JAM). Polkadot is about technology but the current market situation is, unfortunately, still more about hypes and memes. The past has shown that Polkadot didn’t really increase awareness through marketing initiatives. Also, there has not been significant Business Development so far - which would be important though – in order to onboard new projects, create use cases for enterprises, and reach the next level of mass adoption. As this is a long-term process and key to mass adaptation, the Head Ambassadors should mainly focus on BD from my POV. As far as I can see, this is a full-time and very demanding position. You will need candidates with
- 10 years+ experience in sales and BD
- proven track record of successes in previous jobs
- ideally, access to an established crypto community, project networks, etc.
Given the risk of such a position in Crypto, and comparing the salaries of similar positions in the tech industry, 10k per month is a relatively low compensation if you want to attract well experienced professionals. But on the other hand, you need to avoid grifters. You can do so by
- every HA must apply with a go-to-market strategy and proven track record
- once on the job, come up with a monthly milestone plan
- monthly reporting about current pipeline and achieved goals
- as BD is a longterm process, I would give an HA a chance to prove for at least 6 months
- split the 10k salary into a fixed and a variable part
- 1st year 50:50 with a 10% increase of the fix salary every additional year, so 2nd year 60:40 etc.
- longterm HA 6 year + have the chance to gain a salary of 120k fix and 30k variable
- salaries need to be reviewed depending on the current market conditions
As I can’t figure why it should be 21 HAs (and not more or less) and since the program shouldn’t be about titles but supporting the current mission and vision of the Polkadot ecosystem, I would keep the program short and simple in the beginning, based on the regional market potential, for example
- 2 HA European market
- 2 HA Asian market
- 2 HA North America
- 1 HA South America
- 1 HA Africa
- 1 HA Australia
These 9 HA focus on BD.
- 1 HA Marketing
This HA focuses on marketing, including events, social media etc. and directly supports the 9 BD regional HA in their business activities.
- 2 HA Management
These 2 HA focus on managing all other ambassadors. I wouldn’t create too many seniority levels of positions in the beginning, like Senior, candidate etc. to not make it too complex. An ambassador is everybody who is contributing to the ecosystem. That can be part-time or full-time. In the end, this contribution needs to be incentivized. The 2 HA Management can be seen as partner managers, helping onboard new ambassadors and supporting them in contributing to the ecosystem. These 2 HA own a monthly budget. The amount of the budget will initally be decided by the community and then issued to the ambassadors by the 2 HAs Management. The potential contributions and the issued amounts need to be clarified for the program. Like a potential lead for a proof of concept 250 DOT. These leads can then also be further qualified by the designated regional HA. In order to be transparent to the community, a monthly report will be released by the HA on which amount for what contribution will be issued.
I am willing to put more effort and thoughts into this if this approach finds support. Enjoy your weekend!
I thought long and hard before posting this, but I’m a hyperactive person, and if I have the opportunity to contribute something, I believe it’s better to do so.
I think we should merge Shawn’s ideas (The Full-Time Employee, The Part-Time Coordinator, and Recognition Agents) with what the currently elected HAs have accomplished so far (100-day plan).
In my mind, this makes a lot of sense, but we still don’t have a clear picture of who among the current agents or others can offer what we’re looking for in leaders for Polkadot.
So I thought of the following:
What if we have them run for elections based on their skills and experience?
For example, a Head Ambassador in Technical Education should have enough experience to educate other ambassadors to achieve the goal of growing the developer base in the ecosystem through various resources. The idea is for each candidate to present their proposal, and the community chooses. It would be the same for each department.
The idea of the managers comes from Shawn’s vision in Ambassador Program 2.0 (Shawn’s Vision), please read that entire section.
The concept of each department was inspired by the current ambassadors’ 100-day plan, although I’ve expanded on it and added some of my own ideas.
I think each department (management) could be assigned 10K monthly (which can be occupied by 1, 2, or 3 people) Head Ambassador and Senior Ambassador, working together to coordinate.
If we allocate 10K monthly to each department for 12 months, that equals $ 1.2M.
With 3 managers at 10K monthly, that adds up to $ 360K.
The total annual program cost would be $ 1.56M.
I also believe that the work done by the elected HAs should be equally recognized. This should not be taken as something ill-intentioned, I just want to see things keep progressing. We have a common goal.
I think many, if not all, of those who are already elected could fit into each department, and that way, they can demonstrate the specific skills they have in each area.
I am really happy with the responses so far!
I want to clarify something explicitly which may be obvious to some, but maybe not to others.
I am in big support of us thinking about and creating specific roles that we want in our governance and ecosystem. I really like the verticals proposed by @tomi:
- Outreach
- Adoption
- Governance
- Engagement
- Technical
I like the idea of roles, experience requirements, and reporting requirements.
I like the idea of people taking on leadership roles across verticals like @lilymendzdev just posted.
What I don’t like is any program / idea needing to create any on-chain logic which rigidly defines these verticals, roles, budgets, etc…
This concern goes back to one of the philosophies of Polkadot, which is that the best blockchain today is not going to be the best blockchain tomorrow.
The same can be said for any kind of structure or plan we define here.
It is certainly is possible that we can come up with the perfect plan for the biggest needs of Polkadot today, but in months, years, or even decades, those needs will change.
I am not saying that anyone is really asking for that above, but I just want to point out that one of the philosophies of my design is keeping things a little open ended.
For example, I like creating an on-chain system to put $10,000 in the hands of high quality individuals, but I don’t like limiting this to only “Head Ambassadors” or even people in the ambassador program (whatever that becomes).
We as a community could make a plan, and agree that the first people we will elect should be these leadership positions, but it should not be strictly enforced on-chain.
And I would even suggest that such a program should allow for some people outside of the “plan”, allowing for experimentation, and other kinds of scenarios which are not being discussed right now.
This is why I strongly believe we should be discussing two separate programs, whereas most people are still simplifying to one.
Those two programs should be:
- One for payment to individuals, decided dynamically by governance, to help make things happen for Polkadot.
- One for status / merit / title / rank, which simply acknowledges contributors from any area of expertise as having helped Polkadot be successful.
While I expect a large intersection between these two groups, I do not think it should be just one. Having two groups allows for much more flexibility on both sides.
- people who aren’t being paid, can still be ambassadors and move up the ranks
- for example, this program will start to include people like myself, other core developers, or long time contributors to Polkadot
- people who are being paid are not restricted to the confines of how we are currently define our plans
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My feedback to your bullet points:
- This is what I do most- Hence why on a recent submission for a speaking engagement I was offered I put down DIM, as this is something I am excited for and believe is another game changer.
- Yes and have given feedback, many times when not requested and didn’t feel a warm welcome when I 1st landed in eco. However I feel this tide is changing.
- I am always voting, but tend to not vote on “waiting for deposit” even when I 100 agree. I do not vote on everything and have asked for a single delegation mechanism per topic/ref…
- I try, being allowed entry to JAM in Brussels confirmed what I got from the gray paper and added more color to things I defiantly didn’t pick up on. I got to meet and talk to Web3 Philosopher because his teams work that is contributing to this blew my mind when I read it. Super grateful to Kukabi for making that convo happen for me. As a women sometimes people assume you’re a groupie.
- My current explanation as if I was talking to a 5 year old.- Polkadot is a software network protocol that has the ability to move transactions and data in a secure way due to encryption. Businesses can plug into Polkadot for this security, or consumers can use its applications built by developers for their personal data security. - When they’re intrigued the conversation gets more fun yet still simple with the references to video games, Mandala and Telegram. Krill has a hardware device for consumers that to me makes sense if properly packaged, I got the pleasure of chatting with him in Brussels.
JAM or other products or topics of conversation I have different ways of describing those. I find that our industry terms are difficult for people to comprehend, what this means to them. Something crazy simple as the word “Decentralized”, I got this question “what does decentralized really mean, or mean to me?” quite a bit and I was surprised by it. When I started to think about it more deeply I realized its because kids don’t have this in their vocabulary and this is why it isn’t discussed by the masses. - I hope you see the points I am trying to make? At this point I am a volunteer trying to make a difference. I am disillusioned with all of this Ambassador and Agent stuff, because if I was watching the drama or listening to these calls I wouldn’t be learning the good stuff that is being built. Many days I feel like giving up and I need to take pauses because this is all very emotional when you deeply care. However, I suspect many experience what I am feeling. I wake up some days in the middle of the night or can’t sleep because I can literally see end results and that lets me know there has to be a pathway to achieving it!
Appreciate you hearing my POV and ramble. I have not read this entire thread, however somehow I opened to your particular comment that I am responding too…
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Totally. Makes sense to introduce processes that support ANY structure and that can be parameterized and adjusted down the line.
This agility and adaptability is what I wanted to communicate with the next steps slide in the end of the Fellowships presentation.
The gist of the Fellowships approach is to allow people to focus on things that they love to do and what they are good at, ensuring open communication and synergies both inside the Fellowships and between them. Within their scope of responsibility, they are then free to evolve it in any which way it should go, and introduce roles that are needed, as long as it serves the common good and direction (hopefully soon) set together.
OpenGov would always remain the boss and decide/adjust the budgets for the Fellowships, based on the strategic direction and focus areas. A part (say 60%) could be left for OpenGov as it is now, and the rest of it could be divided as Fellowship-specific budgets. All these could be onchain parameters that can be adjusted periodically.
The programs (processes) @shawntabrizi suggests are great examples of cross-sectional developments where e.g. Governance Fellowship would own them and be accountable for implementing them, yet they would take inputs and feedback from both Engagement Fellowship and Technical Fellowship specifically. It is not meant to become a siloed structure but to boost collaboration.
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@tomi there is obviously a lot to gain by reusing names, but also a lot of confusion that is caused.
I think the disagreement on what “ambassadors” are come from the old, present, and now future proposals on what that word means.
There is a technical fellowship. There is a fellowship pallet that is used to manage it. But i really don’t think you benefit by calling these other structures fellowships as well, because I don’t think you can measure work and outputs similar to the technical fellowship.
I think the current fellowship system is built specifically for the execution of hard sciences, and won’t work for outreach, adoption, governance, and engagement. In fact, different styles of organization might be needed for each of these things given the nature of the work needed, and the outcomes achieved.
Anyway, I might be wrong about my comments above, but I really think it does everyone a favor to just say “Outreach Program” rather than “Outreach Fellowship”.
Don’t pre-paint a picture with the title of the program, paint the picture with the description of the program.
Perhaps the “Five Fellowships” should be “Five Pillars of Polkadot” or something…
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It is great to see professional discussion happening about the Ambassador Program. I’d like to enter this dialouge.
As someone experiencing the Ambassador Program for years and all the revolving situations around it I am sharing my reflections on it. Before addressing how we could potentially end up with a professional program, some key toughts:
- Restarting the program repeatedly from scratch would prevent any real progress. Each reset would erase hard-earned lessons and create a cycle of constant beginnings without meaningful growth.
- Success can only come from evolving what’s already been explored and worthy, using the positive aspects of our past to shape a viable future for the Program.
- There are many ideas here in this discussion that evolved from past failures - which is good. However live programs probably should not be running on a trial-and-error base, especially not when people are invited for a full time job.
- In the past Program (when it kind of worked), there were Working Groups and specific roles and responsibilities. It was not a big success program, sure, but we had Ambassadors all over the world pushing Polkadot and the drama level was way lower. I think this was possible because the structure was established and managed by responsible individuals.
We were thrown together by Polkadot’s community into a group and asked to figure out how the Program will work. 20 people and 20 different ways and the island effect started where people who have similar views initiated to shape the program their way. This led to an escalation of drama.
I wrote the insight article about the ecosystem for which barely any response arrive. At least those are positive, but people, especially publicly seem to focus on drama and fights rather than listening and evaluating for mindful moves. This needs to be different and I know it is not easy to change it, but:
Less drama, more success.
What I think we need to do is to have mindful discussions/calls exactly like this on this thread. Then, we can develop actionable plans by various individuals and teams for the Ambassador Program, allowing the community to vote on them.
It is the community’s responsibility to select the most professional and effective proposal on how the Ambassador Program needs to work. Unfortunately, this step was overlooked before the new program commenced and other than having a real job descriptions, clear responsibilities we got a text message stating only a few basic things.
I agree a new Program needs to be looked from a perspective that is not shadowed by the old one. Learning from past mistakes and failures, I think Polkadot needs to give one more chance to it, but this time it must become a professional Ambassador Program with clear:
- Goals and expectations
- Structure
- Roles
- Responsibilities
- Management
- Accounting
- Salary
- Defined working hours with reporting
If you look at any decent job in professional environments, you are going to find all these to be well answered and worked out in detail.
Regarding time and salary: I am brave enought to publicly say, at best from the 20 HAs only a few could have done potentially worked 40 hours a week since the program started. Honestly I am skeptical if anyone actually passed this - because I see our achievements. So far, I would not pay $10 000 a month for this work for myself or anyone else in the HA team - but some lower compensation or treasury tip for the past months I would. I think we need to be really clear on this and I find it a good idea to have full-timers and part-timers: most will fall in the latter one though.
For a real HA-like position where all the points I mention above are clear and everyone works their time off, a salary $10 000 is not a big number (consider after tax most get like ~$5000), but honstely, we are not there in this current shape. We can get there though.
I had really good 1-on-1 conversations with some of you responding here, happy to keep those going on and share refined reflections, ideas publicly.
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@shawntabrizi agreed, we need a common glossary to make sure everyone understands the terminology the same way. As for which term/name to use, I don’t have strong opinions. Pillars is just fine. You can also call them cats, dogs or platypuses.
Mind you, this is not my invention. Certain community member @gavofyork introduced the idea two years ago in the Fellowship manifesto (page 4):
