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Community Nest Proposal [Season 1, 2022]

Index

Community Nest - Season 1 2022

Authors: @bradwmorris @Pepperoni_Joe @StepvhenH @0xMitz @catjam @Hammad1412 @kindeagle

Reviewers: Index Council, Finance Nest

Introduction

This proposal identifies and details the Primary Objectives, Projects, and success metrics for Community Nest in Season 1. This proposal has also been shared with the Index Council and Finance Nest and the feedback provided by these groups has been reflected in this proposal.

Community Nest exists to support Index Coop to maximise the value of its people. This can be broadly split into two buckets.

We will be pivoting our contributor strategy to be laser focused on identifying, filling and retaining high impact contributors, while ensuring they have the best tools and processes to effectively coordinate and deliver results.

In addition to this, we will be aggressively experimenting with community led growth strategies to create and grow an engaged and passionate community around Index Coop products. Up until now, the Coop has invested very little in non-contributor community growth.

The product can be forked; People and Community cannot.

Primary Objectives

Community Nest Pods and Project are all focused on supporting the following Index Coop Primary Objectives 4 in Season 1 (Feb 1st - June 30th).

  1. Identify role gaps
  2. Attract high impact contributors
  3. Retain high impact contributors
  4. Enable contributors to work effectively together
  5. Improve decision making
  6. Experiment with a community-led growth strategy

Each of these objectives are owned by the Pods.

Structure (Pods)

Community Nest is broken down into four major pods, with three additional ‘community brands’ to allow autonomy for community growth experimentation.

Community Nest Reporting

Following Finance Nest 1, Community Nest will be providing monthly updates on major project progression per pod. We will also provide a more comprehensive quarterly report detailing our progression toward the overarching Nest Objectives.

Talent Pod

The primary objective of the Talent Pod is to ensure we get the right people in the Coop to enable us to become a successful, multi-billion dollar protocol.

The Talent Pod will be looking to gain a deep understanding of the role gaps we currently have by working closely with both the Index Council and each of the Nests. In Season 1, we anticipate these role gaps to be heavily oriented around technical, product-focused roles.

Within Community Nest, while we still believe it is important for us to leverage the Coop’s reputation as one of the industry’s leading DAOs, we will be shifting our recruitment efforts to focus on quality and suitability over quantity.

Working in tandem with Community Pod, our new joiner call will be disbanded and this regular engagement event will be refocused towards education around our product value proposition for new community members.

Objectives:

#1 Identify role gaps

#2 Attract high impact contributors

Projects/Deliverables:

The Coop needs more technical expertise and Smart Contract capability. The Talent Pod will work closely with Product Nest and Set to identify and coordinate the recruitment of technical roles.

  • Implement a Repeatable Recruitment Policy (internal job listing/ + external job board) @Lfeld

Broader than just for Technical Talent, we will design a framework that can be repeatedly used to proactively identify, vet and onboard contributors into key roles. This will include liaising with relevant internal stakeholders to develop a job listing which will be first presented internally, then to external partners and relevant high visibility job listing platforms. The Talent Pod will proactively engage potential new contributors and manage the end-to-end recruitment process

Our current DAO onboarding is widely recognised as industry-leading. Our new V3 onboarding flow will serve the dual purpose of driving product adoption by educating new community members on the benefits of crypto index products and supporting Index Coop’s recruitment efforts for key roles.

Responsibilities (ongoing):

  • Talent Scout V2 (role gap/expertise opportunity focus) @bradwmorris

Talent scouts are high context contributors with a deep understanding of projects, goals and objectives undertaken in different nests. The Talent Scouts have played a crucial role in helping us maintain a solid cross-nest relationship and are responsible for continually identifying potential role/bounty gaps, monitoring new applications and facilitating recruitment and onboarding for their Nest.

Performance Monitoring:

The impact of the Talent Pod will be validated using the following success metrics.

Success metric Details (how do we measure?) Owner
Coordinate with Nest to clearly identify high impact role gaps and required expertise for each Nest. Talent pod has clearly communicated with each nest and Pod to understand and develop a listing for any role gaps. And received sentiment feedback from Owl Pulse Survey indicating other Nests “are confident in CNest’s ability to identify high impact role gaps” Beeradley
Create a formal hiring identification process and template. Index Council has approved the formal hiring process and template. Beeradley
50%+ of identified role gaps filled through the Priority Hire process Talent Pod has successfully filled 50%+ of the identified role gaps with the Index Council approving all candidates through the priority hiring process. Beeradley

Human Capital & Culture

The Human Capital and Culture Pod is focused on developing our People and making Index Coop an environment where contributors want to stay. We will be focusing on exploring and implementing a number of strategies to ensure we’re empowering high impact talent to upskill and progress while also incentivising retention.

Objectives:

#3 Retain high impact contributors

#4 Enable contributors to work effectively together

Projects/Deliverables:

  • Owl Pulse Survey [S1] Mary Q

The Owl Pulse Survey is a quarterly feedback survey designed to gather confidential feedback from contributors around their sentiment towards Index Coop, sense of shared goals and strategies, training needs, sources of pride and pain points. To inform research objectives, we will conduct interviews with representative Silver and Gold Owls.

To reduce instances of toxic interpersonal disagreement and make Index Coop a more supportive organization to be part of, the Conflict Management framework will allow contributors to seek guidance, coaching and/or redressal on their problems, concerns, issues or grievances.

To implement a formal process and mechanism to offboard existing contributors. Upon approval of the framework/process/tools we will begin to conduct structured exit interviews for contributors who are offboarding.

Develop a proposal for a Season 1 offseason conference to present to the Index Council and community.

Responsibilities (ongoing):

  • Upskilling and training @ MaryQ and @ Vanita

HC&C Pod is seeking to run focused training in areas identified as most problematic for decentralized, digitally native, non-hierarchical organizations.

Performance Monitoring:

The progress of the Pod in supporting Index Coop’s primary objective will be validated using the following success metrics:

Success metrics Details (how do we measure?) Owner
Establish and monitor contributor satisfaction/sentiment/feedback loop and baseline score to build upon in future Seasons. H & C Pod has launched two Owl Pulse Surveys at the start and end of Season 1 with a 60% + response rate from Gold Owls. Mary
Design and implement a V1 new conflict management process which is approved and adopted by the community. H & C Pod has successfully facilitated and managed three conflicts through the new conflict resolution process. Mary and Vanita
Deliver training sessions to Index Coop contributors H & C Pod has organised and delivered three training/upskilling sessions for Index Coop Contributors. Mary and Vanita
Develop a proposal for a Season 1 offseason conference to present to the Index Council and community. H & C Pod has proposed to the Index Council options for an end of Season conference. Mitzy
DEI training + Steward Model H & C Pod (incubated w/WIC) will provide training for IC contributors interested in becoming Stewards of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) work across the Coop. The goal of these sessions is to create at least three DEI Stewards who work across the Coop to integrate principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Meg and Chase (WIC) program

Operations Pod

The Operations Pod is focused primarily on optimizing the tools and technology used at Index Coop to enable contributors to collaborate effectively together, improve decision making and generally increase efficiency.

Last year, we identified several core tools which were taken through an uplift process. Notion, Discord and the Forum. More information here in the Core Tooling Redesign.

Objectives:

#4 Enable contributors to work effectively together

#5 Improve decision making

Projects/Deliverables:

Transition all the nests and pods onto the new Notion operating system and provide training on notion fundamentals. This will ensure that best practices on using notion are consistent throughout the DAO and will enable us to work more effectively to improve project management, accountability and speed of product releases.

Reorganising google drive into a nested model to be consistent with our nest structure and configuring permissions to folders appropriately. This will allow for better document management and security. Audit all current public-facing calendars that currently reside in multiple places (google, notion, discord, etc) and address overlapping information, and unclear ownership. Set up separate dedicated contributors calendars for C.Nest, G.Nest and P.Nest. Restrict access to these calendars to only active contributors at Index Coop.

Propose the separation of Index Coop Discord into separate contributor and community servers. Pro’s and cons for each option. Depending on sentiment, execute separation or take action to better serve the community in the one server. Ongoing audit and adjustment of roles and channel permissions for both contributors and community discord.

  • DAO tooling Audit

We will create a database/audit of current tools, access levels and costs. This will involve reviewing, updating and removing old users from Notion and GSuite, and also preparing a database breakdown of tools for finance nest review during Season One.

Responsibilities (ongoing)

The operations pod will continue to explore DAO tooling opportunities and implement tooling which benefit and improve operational processes. A centralized database of DAO tooling opportunities will be created and this will provide a holistic view of tooling currently in the web3 space. A great example of DAO tooling that Ops Pod identified and engaged was Parcel - with implementation then led through Finance.

Performance monitoring:

The success of the Operations Pod in supporting Index Coop’s primary objective will be validated using the following success metrics.

Success metrics Details (how do we measure?) Owner
Seek community feedback on separating the Community Discord and Contributor Discord into two separate servers. Ops Pod has delivered Discord separation options and roadmap to the forum. If community feedback is in favour of a separation of the discord separation, Operations Pod have completed the migration. Beeradley
Complete GSuite upgrade for both Drive and Calendar Ops Pod have created and permissioned separate Contributor, Community, & Nest Calendars, audited and updated GSuite permissions/roles and implemented a Nest drive GSuite framework. Hammad
Develop an operational efficiency benchmark score, obtain operational/tooling sentiment feedback from every Nest Ops Pod have obtained and shared operational efficiency benchmark score from every Nest Lead or Coordinator with the view to incorporate % improvements on the benchmark in additional seasons Beeradley
Clear and consistent adoption of all Nests using the updated Notion operating system: Ops Pod have setup all Nests using the new Notion operating system to project manage their Nest proposal, projects and tasks, use the planning dashboard to drive accountability at meetings and keep notes. Beeradley

Community Pod

The focus of the Community Pod is to create and grow an engaged and passionate community around Index Coop and our product. Unlike Talent, Ops and HC&C, Community Pod’s focus is on non-contributors.

The Community Pod will continue to support Product Launches (the GMI launch is a great example of this), provide technical support, answer general queries and make our Discord a safe and welcoming environment. It is worth highlighting that a significant allocation of time and effort in Community Pod currently goes into ongoing product support.

As the Community Nest evolves in Season 1, we will be experimenting with a number of initiatives to understand, measure, engage and grow our community in a way that demonstrates greater product adoption. This engagement activity will largely take the form of Live Events, Written Content and Education engagement activity, focused on the growing communities within the supporters of our products.

The Community Pod will be experimenting with the creation of a subcommunity model, creating a repeatable template allowing us to initiate and grow healthy subcommunities for each of our products. This will drastically reduce time and financial resources required for active community management as we incentivise subcommunities themselves to market our products and field technical requests.

In Season 1, several existing initiatives are merging with Community Pod and becoming sub pods to align their effort with our overarching community objectives. The benefit of this sub-pod model is it allows us to leverage our diverse customer base and interact and engage this community with content that most resonates with them. These sub-pods could almost be seen as “Community brands” which enable product adoption across a variety of interests and groups.

We recognize that historically demonstrating the impact of community growth on product adoption has been difficult. As such, in Season 1 we will be laser focused on demonstrating the impact of these efforts through a data-led approach we call “Community Growth Attribution”. This attribution strategy will look to answer the question “what specific community engagement activity leads to greater product adoption”.

Ultimately we hope Season 1 will demonstrate that community growth matters and can become a powerful part of Index Coop’s value proposition in future.

Objectives:

#6 Experiment with a community-led growth strategy

Projects/Deliverables:

To validate the impact of Community Growth initiatives, we need to be able to attribute this activity back to product adoption. We will work with analytics to incorporate POAP tracking from engagement events and use this to draw attribution to product adoption (i.e. did attendance at community events lead to greater product adoption).

As part of this Attribution work, we will also launch a Community Health Dashboard and combine it with data from other community engagement channels such as active wallet addresses per product, Discord engagement, Twitter Followers, Email Subscribers to feed into an overarching Community Health Dashboard.

Create a repeatable template/framework for launching and bolstering subcommunities for each of our products (trial with at least one product in S1). Engage with all existing methodologists to gain an understanding of potential value add of incentivising the growth of our product communities in-house. We hope Index Coops capability in community building becomes a core part of our value proposition.

Responsibilities:

There is an ongoing need for Community Pod to provide support for product launches (everything from events and giveaways to fielding technical, purchase, staking questions from new and potential product owners). We will work with product and growth nest to create a community-focused GTM strategy to mobilize the community for new product launches (notion templates, Discord AMA’s and event reminders, Giveaways etc).

This is a clearly defined community manager role and playbook with transparent expectations. Index Community Managers play an active role in Product Launches and general ongoing community support.

As we tackle more aggressive launch targets and grow our active products, we are going to need to think more strategically about how we provide a world class product support experience for potential, new and existing holders.

In addition to maintaining our current 24-7 product support, we will be exploring options with our methodologists and branding partners to grow and empower sub-communities that help us provide exceptional product/technical support . In an effort to scale these support services, Community pod will create and maintain a product FAQ sheet that we can refer community managers and customers to. This is also an additional asset for product launch templates.

Success Metrics:

The ability of the Pod in supporting Index Coop’s primary objective will be validated using the following success metric.

Success metrics Description (how do we measure?) Owner
Develop baseline community engagement health metrics and dashboard Community Pod has identified at least three core community engagement/health metrics and delivered a dynamic dashboard to monitor these metrics. Beeradley
Develop and implement a community growth/product attribution measurement Community Pod has created an attribution system (POAPs, NFT’s) to link community engagement initiatives with increased product adoption, cross-sell, upsell and retention. Beeradley
Launch a repeatable subcommunity template/framework for one of our products and one of our existing products/methodologists Community Pod has created a repeatable template/framework for launching and bolstering subcommunities for each of our products and implemented with at least one of our existing products. Beeradley and Mitz
Develop and launch a Community engagement GTM strategy for at least three new products. Community Pod has created a template and SOP for engaging community during product launches (everything from events and giveaways to fielding technical, purchase, active product questions) and launched with at least three new products. 0xMitz

“Community Brands”

The Community Brands is a new initiative which enables the formation of autonomous groups who engage and build awareness with specific aspects of the Index Coop community.

We also recognise we have a diverse community and so some specific engagement activity is best driven through small targeted engagement groups - which we call “Community Brands”.

In Season 1, the these “Community Brands” include:

  • Women & Non-Binary in Index
  • sCoop (newsletter strategy)
  • Owlchemy AMA
  • DeFridays (Growth Led)
  • Conversations with the Coop (Growth Led)

This enables different community-focused groups to have the autonomy to focus on direct engagement with our diverse and varied community - with these initiatives being supported by the Community Pod and having their impact demonstrated through the Community Pods attribution strategy.

Working in collaboration, Growth and Community Nest are proposing the revised “Engagement Mining” rewards menu for community focused activity across both C.Nest and G.Nest. These rewards may change over time.

Engagement Mining Reward Target across all Flagship Community Brands in S1
Impressions $0.005 per impression 1 million impressions
Readers (medium) $1 per read 3,000 readers across all written content
Event attendance

Content|$5 per attendee|2,000 attendees across all events|
|$250 bonus if the content is linked to / used in the newsletter|Content from 20 events used in the newsletter|

Regardless of level of engagement (i.e. attendance) payment for any single event, article or tweet cannot generate more than $5,500 in total reward

Engagement at events will be tracked by Community Nest and engagement rewards will be distributed to the teams responsible for each Community Brand. The core team for each community brand them have the description to allocate fund to teammates and speakers as they choose.

Women & Non-Binary in Index Pod

Women & Non-Binary in Index (WIC) is a group by and for women & non-binary contributors, collaborators, and community members at Index Coop. Our primary goal is to engage the larger women & non-binary crypto population and drive community growth at Index Coop. We also seek to attract high-value, diverse contributors and grow the brand of Index Coop as a safe and diverse place to work and invest. We primarily leverage event-based programming and content development to achieve these goals.

Projects/Deliverables:

Establish calendar, themes, and programming on Twitter spaces

Partner with similar or diversity-focused organizations in crypto and TradFi to build awareness and branding of Index Coop. Run sessions with our partners’ communities, which include discussion of Index Coop diversity initiatives and value proposition.

It is worth also highlighting that many existing WIC members will be working on projects initiated within WIC but which are now being worked on more holistically by WIC and C.Nest contributors as part of other Community Nest pods - in particular around POAP analysis and community event attribution.

sCoop

Since its inception, sCoop has been primarily focused on internal contributor communication.

sCoop has done this by helping attract high impact contributors by communicating role gaps and has enabled contributors to work effectively together by highlighting to the community important operational changes and updates (important tooling revamps and rollouts for example Notion and experimentation with new tooling), important upcoming events, and product launch details.

Moving into Season 1, the sCoop will be shifting its focus towards providing written content not only to contributors but to the wider community to increase our brand recognition and drive greater product adoption.

Projects/Deliverables

Each weekday (4x sCoop Daily, 1x sCoop Weekly) and proactively announce important workshops, calls, product launches, contributor opportunities and other key events such as Owl Pulse Survey, Leadership Forums, Governance Proposals.

  • Develop a Retail/Community external-facing newsletter kindeagle

Focused on highlighting Index Coop thought leadership, product 101s, organisational wins/innovations, partnerships, product & index-focused educational opportunities. This will be done in collaboration with Growth’s newsletter strategy.

  • Dashboard metrics and resource library kindeagle

In parallel, sCoop will work to improve its daily (internal) and weekly (external) format by providing new information (dashboard metrics), meeting recording library and also explore alternative channels ie sCoop Weekly via audio and video.

Owlchemy AMA

Owlchemy AMA is an ongoing AMA series where we dig into the inner operations of the Coop by interviewing existing contributors and partners. This gives us the chance to educate the broader community, open-source and showcase our DAO to the broader web3 ecosystem and increase our reach to potential investors.

The AMA’s will be conducted internally within our own Discord server, but will also be uploaded to Spotify and Podcast channels.

Key Focus

  • Increase internal education and awareness Brad Morris

By interviewing existing contributors, for example, Product Nest, MetaGovernance Committee, investment partners, we have the opportunity to educate our immediate community

  • Increase external awareness and attract investors Brad Morris

The AMA’s are also designed to tap into external audiences and showcase our DAO and products to the wider space, increasing product awareness and adoption as well as brand recognition.

In addition to these top-off funnel metrics, Owlchemy AMA will distribute POAPs, and use these POAPs to measure the effectiveness of the project in driving product adoption.

DeFridays

DeFriday’s are a weekly Twitter Spaces event currently designed to bring awareness to the underlying tokens/protocols which make up our products. $GMI is the current product of choice.

Some of the recent guests include founders from Ribbon finance, FEI protocol and Alchemix.

The DeFriday’s events are hosted by TheYoungCrews with frequent appearances from the beloved Crypto Texan and Lemonade A+.

Conversations with the Coop

The "Conversations with the Coop’’ series is a live recorded podcast that takes place in the Index Coop Discord and hosted by Crypto_Texan.

The podcast series aims to: (1) promote community engagement, (2) foster relationships with today’s leaders in crypto, (3) create high quality content for distribution, (4) gather insights by sourcing specific questions from the IC community, (5) drive new users the the Index Coop Discord, and (6) assist in business development by hosting potential, new, and existing partnership project leads.

Currently the podcast is published on Substack and Spotify.

We’d greatly appreciate any and all feedback to the outlined proposal. Once all Nest proposals are Finance Nest approved and live, we will move to IIP for final community vote.

Thanks, from CNest.

Protocol:Index
Date:February 14, 2022
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