DAO O'Clock Retrofunding Request

Grants/Funding
1

Project Champion: monkeydlinks
Squad: monkeydlinks, memebrains
Purpose: public good
Affiliation: PM Guild, AV Guild
Authors: monkeydlinks
Date created: Sept 4, 2023
Date posted: Sept 4, 2023
Funds requested: 211,517 BANK
Project wallet(s): 0x74fa01a5D0ef8039f1E14F4d4C8f90e8602e07B4

Table of Contents

  1. PROJECT TEASER
  2. SUMMARY
  3. RETROSPECTIVE
  4. FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
  5. SEASONAL KPI
  6. COMMITMENTS
  7. BRANDING
  8. FURTHER PROJECT CHANNELS

PROJECT TEASER

DAO O’Clock made up for the limited DAO-focused events at ETH Toronto by creating a happy-hour event at a nearby venue. 125 people signed up and 75 made an appearance, showing the desire for DAO-focused discussion.

SUMMARY

Project Description

DAO O’clock was a happy-hour event held during ETH Toronto on Aug 15, 2023. We decided to hold a DAO-focused event because ETH Toronto was lacking in DAO content, and wanted to create a space for DAO-focused discussion and networking.

We had 125 people sign up (that’s 125 email addresses interested in future Bankless events), over 75 attendees, and 21 people mint the attendance badge. Average attendee satisfaction was 8.7/10 (based on a form we sent after the event).

During the event, we recorded interviews with 7 prominent DAO builders attending ETH Toronto, and plan to release them on social media through BanklessDAO (and CityDAO).

RETROSPECTIVE

Based on feedback from participants, DAO O’clock was a fun event that filled a gap in ETH Toronto’s event calendar. The following is our retrospective:

+ (things we did well)

  • A DAO-focused event was appreciated by event attendees who didn’t find much DAO-related programming at ETH Toronto.
  • The venue was convenient for attendees.
  • Attendees appreciated the snack provided, as there weren’t many restaurant options nearby.
  • Taking videos during the event allowed us to create share-able DAO-focused content that we can cross-promo with ETH Toronto.
  • Collaboration with CityDAO allowed us to pool resources to reduce costs and potentially increase marketing reach.

∆ (things we could improve)

  • We ran the event at the same time as Pizza DAO’s event, which effective halved both of our audiences. We could coordinate with other DAO events in the future.
  • Attendees were unsure if the food met their dietary restrictions (signs were suggested).
  • With more lead time, we could involve additional event sponsors including FWB or Nouns DAO.
  • Sound quality of the videos was bad in a noisy environment - look to get better equipment next time.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

Project Breakdown

We are requesting 211,517 BANK. A detailed budget can be found here: DAO O'Clock Expenses - Google Sheets

Compensation Breakdown

Compensation is for coordination, POAP design, and video editing. Details can be found in our budget spreadsheet.

KPIs

  • 8.7/10 average satisfaction
  • 125 emails obtained for future events
  • 75 attendees
  • 21 attendee badges minted
  • 7 interviews recorded
  • 50% of venue, food, and drinks covered by CityDAO

COMMITMENTS

This is the third BanklessDAO event I have run in Toronto, and the largest by far. This event brought BanklessDAO to the attention of the DeFi-focused blockchain community in Toronto, which is a positive step for our brand value. We hope to continue to run events in Toronto to help onboard more talent from Canada’s largest city onto the bankless mission.

We will also publish the interviews we recorded at the event through BanklessDAO and CityDAO channels.

BRANDING

BanklessDAO branding was used prominently on our event channels and at our in-person event.

FURTHER PROJECT CHANNELS

POLL: Do you support retrofunding DAO O’Clock event given the above KPIs?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Abstain
0 voters
3 Likes
2

I’m being nitpicky, but any reason why you think this is at an 8.7?

What you’ve done sounds pretty cool and my above question doesn’t have any bearing on my vote just curious.

2 Likes
3

Overall, this sounds pretty legit, a no brainer to me. I voted yes.

Got some questions that have entered my spirit.

Depending on how many of these events you have, could you potentially invest in better equipment maybe?

That’s 60 percent attendance, with the next event, do you have any plans to help bump that up to 65, 70 percent? As I think about it, 60 percent on 125 is pretty good! Where do you think you could see that number go to?

All the questions are pretty nitpicky, this just felt like a great time to ask.

Right on, yall!

2 Likes
4

The question was “how likely are you to attend another DAO O’clock event?” And we got 7-10 as the range of answers. So likely people were thinking “anything above 5 means I will attend again”.

Haha, yes I think we may have learned a lesson here. We are planning on putting subtitles in the videos to help for this round.

In general I expect about 50% of people to actually show up so this is not bad at all! I don’t plan on optimizing the RSVP percentage, though. It’s more important to me to have some DAO events in Toronto, so satisfaction and actual attendance is what I am looking at.

1 Like
5

DAO O’Clock is such a cool name.

  1. Can the emails collected be subscribed to our various newsletters?

  2. What’s the plan for the videos?

4 Likes
6

I see what you mean. In the grand scheme of things quality is always going to trump quantity, so I could see it going either way on growing numbers. Especially if the point of this is more exposure of crypto to who is there versus exposure of the event to as many people as possible.

Either way. Congrats on a successful event!

1 Like
7

@MemeBrains is the brains behind this one…I think he made it by putting together the bDAO and CityDAO logos.

Not as they are. In Canada, it’s illegal to use emails past the purpose they were given. If we want to use these emails for BanklessDAO newsletters, we’d have to give them an option to sign up for each newsletter.

After editing them (AV Guild is on it) share them on social media. Any other ideas?

1 Like
8

Just trying to ascertain the final destination of the videos

1 Like
9

We haven’t talked to anyone in Marketing Department yet, but if the videos are good enough we could ship to the BanklessDAO YouTube and socials.

2 Likes
10

Glad to see more side events being run by the DAO in Toronto.

Are these interviews on youtube? if not I suggest we withhold funding till this is shipped.

Did we record pictures or other shorts content from this event? has it been posted to social media?

1 Like
11

Not yet, we are working with AV Guild to edit them and make them ready for YouTube

A few pictures are on social media, but none of the interviews.

2 Likes
12

gm! Cool initiative and thanks for dropping this ser, a few questions:

  1. What kind of metrics are you using to determine whether any of these efforts have captured value for the DAO?
  2. What type of measurements are you using for engagement, retention, DAO onboarding etc?
  3. Have any of these folks joined the Discord or contributed in any way to the DAO?

I love that this is a retro request, but with our renewed focus on results, would like some clarity around this before I vote. Thank you!!

2 Likes
13

Attendance and satisfaction are the metrics I was aiming for. I had a goal of 20ish people so the turnout exceeded my expectations.

Engagement is essentially our attendance and satisfaction metrics. Retention would be based on attendance as we have more events in the future.

The goal of the event was not DAO onboarding, but reach and brand visibility.

Not sure, I have no way to track this. As stated above, DAO onboarding is not a metric we were trying to optimize.

That being said we had several existing bDAO members come out (me, tomtranmer, RachelOpolis, memebrains, me1i0r, omen, ComebackKid, and more) as well as members of FWB, CityDAO, PoolTogether, SporkDAO, and more. In-person events like this tend to help solidly and strengthen relationships (it’s why remote off sites exist), so this is one way the event helped bDAO.

1 Like
14

Thanks for the info. As I learned from you and others, reach and visibly are great, but measurable results are even better. I like the effort and will vote yes, but imo KPIs should change for these kinds of events to measure impact.

1 Like
15

also, big preference for transparent polls pls

16

I’m sorry did I suggest to you at some point that reach and visibility aren’t measurable? If so I misspoke - you can create measures for both.

In-person networking events are also different from something like a weekly newsletter or seasonal writing cohort or an even an education-focused in-person event. Our goal was to create a space where existing DAO-minded people could congregate at a very DeFi-focused event, so it wouldn’t make as much sense for us to try to optimize for revenue or some other KPI like that.

What kind of KPIs do you suggest for in-person events? What kind of impact should these kinds of events have?

Honest question, I think it’s worth a discussion.

1 Like
17

measurable impact, sorry, my misspeak.

Yes totally understand about in-person events being very different than newsletters or cohorts, but I don’t think that means you can’t measure the impact of those events in relation to how they move the mission of the DAO forward. If your goal was to create space for congregation, obvs revenue wouldn’t be a useful KPI, but the number of folks onboarded into the DAO server could be. Maybe an easy way to do it is to have a placard w/ a QR code for folks to scan that links to our Discord, just for example…

Thanks for the invitation for some more thoughts. I think coming up with an analytic framework for IRL events/goals/KPIs/impact is helpful. So for example:

  1. what is the goal of the IRL event?
  2. what are some indicators of whether the goal was met and/or progress made?
  3. what KPIs can be used to measure the impact of the indicators?
  4. where the KPIs successful at capturing whether the goal was met / progress towards the goal made?
  5. is it different if the ask is proactive of retroactive?

For IRL events in general, I could see:

  1. Folks onboarded to server
  2. Sign ups for our media content
  3. Tweets about the DAO from event participants

Thoughts?

1 Like
18

Personally I feel the goal of an IRL event is to extend BanklessDAO’s reach beyond the online, into the real world. Just as Twitter and email extend our reach to users of Twitter and email, a real-world event opens BanklessDAO to people who prefer to engage in person.

Put another way, IRL events are another channel of engagement.

If you buy into that, then the core metric of IRL events is attendance (aka people who have engaged with the BanklessDAO brand in person). These map nicely to engagement metrics on Twitter (i.e. likes, RTs, replies) and email (i.e. opens, click-throughs). We had ~75 attendees to DAO O’clock.

Of course IRL events aren’t exactly the same as online channels like Twitter and emails. Marshal McLuhan’s aphorism “The medium is the message” is apt here - audiences on Twitter have a different expectation of engagement than those who show up at an in-person event. The barrier to joining a Twitter audience is low, and audiences on Twitter have expectations of easily-consumable, easily-distributable content. IRL events are higher-barrier to join (you have to move your butt), and so expectations are higher. Event participants expect to be entertained and inspired by like-minded attendees. So I would suggest another metric here: participant sentiment. DAO O’clock’s participant sentiment was 8.7/10.

I certainly agree we can make use of these IRL events to help push our other channels (i.e. come to DAO O’Clock, sign up for bDAO newsletters to stay in touch), AND I also believe that these metrics are secondary to the core metrics of attendance and sentiment. Even if we get 0 new newsletter signups and 0 new Discord users, the IRL extends the bDAO brand to a new audience.

If we want to onboard 1B people to crypto, we have to go where they are, and for many people IRL events are the place to be.

2 Likes
19

Even though I’m in Singapore and can’t attend. In addition to appreciating @links values, commitment, and energy. I voted yes because I feel that we could use more IRL bonding on all levels. IMO, the best way to get more people to join bDAO and make meaningful contributions is in person connection. My 2 cents.

1 Like
20

I’m just glancing at the numbers and this seems like a decent ROI for only 211,000 BANK (approx. 650 USD)

4 Likes