Indian Ocean Outreach Program - R14 Proposal

OceanDAO Round 14
#1

Name of the Project:

Indian Ocean Program [as per R-10 title]

Proposal in one sentence:

Coming off a highly successful Indian Ocean campaign since Round10 of Ocean DAO, we intend to continue the outreach initiative and engage with the active Indian community of builders and community leaders that we have engaged through our first epoch of activities since R-10.

Grant Deliverables:

[ ] Establish the Indian Outreach as a DAO ecosystem to continue growth & engagement with the Indian ecosystem of developers, web3 beginners & curious data-scientists.

[ ] Mentor the Indian Ocean Hackathon participants (not just the winners) to onboard the Ocean DAO and engage actively.

[ ] Mentor at least one successful grant proposal to win and guide them to complete deliverables.

[ ] Organize an ecosystem fund to continue bounties, grants & outreach activities.

[ ] Support the existing sub-DAOs, Working groups and the stakeholders in the Ocean ecosystem.

Project description & details:

History - Activities archive - Milestones achieved - Deliverables highlights:

Having started out outreach activities back in October, we started off with an ambitious set of goals to kick-start the Official Outreach within the Indian community with an intend to onboard more beginners into the AI*Web3 space, along with the Active Crypto-Indian Community. We were able to successfully pull off strategies that are atypical of an outreach program and our results display the same. We managed to steer through pivoting in view of COVID restrictions in place for physical events and we intend to continue our outreach efforts with a meaningful funneling towards the Ocean DAO ecosystem.

The aforementioned article summarizes our efforts and success metrics that we have covered thus far.

Project Socials:

Project lead full name: Dr. Prakash Kamaraj

Discord handle: drprk.eth#1527

Project lead email: drprakash@ieee.org

Country of residence: India

Part 2:

2.1 Core team:

Dr. Prakash

Github: https://github.com/drprk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drprk/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrJohnD0e

Background & Experience

  • Health-Tech Professional Consultant
  • Medical graduate, Masters in Medical engineering & Health-tech industrial experience
  • 6 years of Industry experience in Medical AI products
  • Active Ocean DAO participant
  • Member of Core-Tech WG, Project Guiding WG & Parameters-roadmap WG

Introducing new powerhouses from TPG:

  • Gnana Lakshmi

A Technology Geek, Innovator, Keynote speaker, Community builder.

She is also a Fellow Alumni at WomenWhoCode and started the WomenWhoCode Blockchain community She is currently involved in a few NFT projects as a Solidity developer and is the Blockchain Architect at a Decentralised Fantasy game org known as CoinFantasy.

She is an ambassador at various layer-1 chains like Aeternity, Algorand, NEAR Protocol as well as Covalent.

She is passionate about education and technology.

Nivedita vivek

Co-founder of an NFT Marketplace called Naksh. Worked with a Retail Start-Up, managing Social Media Campaigns, Strategy and Inventory Planning.

Responsible for Marketing Strategies, Planning of Drops/ Artist Collections, Onboarding Traditional Artists and Research on Traditional Indian Art Forms that can be added to the Marketplace. Also, leading the Phoenix Guild to empower women in Web3, part of the Ocean Protocol Ambassador program.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niveditavivek

Twitter: @VivekNivedita

Sri Lakshmi

Co-founder of an NFT Marketplace called Naksh. Worked in the Product Development Team at an Apparel Manufacturing Company.

Responsible for Business strategies, Brand Development, Financials, Onboarding Emerging Talent in the Indian Art Industry focusing on Digital and Urban art. Also, leading the Phoenix Guild to empower women in Web3, part of the Ocean Protocol Ambassador program.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/srilakshmi-tc

Twitter: https://twitter.com/srilakshmitc

2.2 Recurring Members & Advisors:

  • Sangeet Muralidhar

Head of Technology at Konma community

Blockchain Engineer at Dehidden

Credentials:

  • Cybersecurity specialist
  • Blockchain and Crypto developer

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sangeet-muralidhar/

  • Vinay devabhaktuni, Founder of Konma Community

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinay-devabhaktuni-b642bb90/

Lead and help in bringing developer outreach courtesy his close liason with Emurgo academy (Cardano foundation).

Access to some amazing materials and institutions that provide state of the art courses on web3 developments with Emurgo India.

Part 3 - Proposal details:

3.1 Proposal detail:

During our initial outreach, we managed to engage with some significant stakeholders especially with the polygon community and we aim to sustain the developments that are in the pipeline.

Starting a community was fun, maintaining the energy can be more fun & challenging

From our learnings from our previous Epoch, we had overcome the difficulties of abstaining from physical events post the resurgence of Covid. We had a successful pivot by engaging with some amazing community interactions along with some mature stakeholder relationships.

Project Grant Report from R-10:

Project standing & Previous metric of achievements:

Social Media Outreach: Desired metrics of socials (achieved)

Events and Workshops: 5 Community calls, 5 Workshops 1 Grand hackathon

Builder & Ambassador community: TG & Discord Community

Project Proposal for this Epoch:

Expanding on the deliverables mentioned above.

  1. DAO outreach:

We intend to continue the successful templates that we were able to achieve through our past programs and events. Through the continued scaffolding of similar event strategies, we intend to continue the good work to complete our deliverables through a DAO-based approach.

  1. Ecosystem fund:

The ecosystem fund will be a first of its kind that will be offered to the active contributors in the Indian ecosystem.

  • Early stage funneling:

Sponsoring smaller events that spread awareness of the Indian Ocean outreach across multiple marketing channels including possible physical events with ongoing COVID situation notwithstanding.

  • Mid stage funneling:

Increase in awareness of the Ocean DAO ecosystem, additional bounties offered by the Indian ocean outreach to support Builders & Ambassadors to the Ocean ecosystem. Support upcoming projects through belief capital.

  • End stage funneling:

Mentor and support upcoming projects with strong value add to Ocean & that are suitable to the Ocean DAO ecosystem with high impact deliverables that cover Core-Tech, Building apps/Integrations on top of Ocean.

The initiative, if successful in achieving our missions could be a recurring theme by adding more value to the Ocean ecosystem.

  1. Project Guiding component to Ocean DAO:

An example of Project Guidance.

https://medium.com/@indianoceandao/how-to-write-a-really-good-community-outreach-proposal-in-the-oceandao-52d034f033cc
As a strong patron to the project guiding working group, we intend to offer more support to various initiatives such as the Core-tech WG by driving in proposals and helping them pre-reviewing and offering them hands-on mentorship prior to submitting proposals to the Ocean DAO.

  1. Bridging support to the working groups and other stake-holders in Ocean ecosystem:

Having a fair assessment of the Indian Ocean community and taking part in effective funnelling systems to onboard towards specific projects within the Ocean DAO ecosystem. There are a lot of active opportunities in the Ocean DAO ecosystem and connecting active builders from the Indian community would be a great way to synergise the Ocean navy.

  1. Service DAO: We are open to additional sponsorship during our events, community calls and any future hackathons. As a service DAO component, we would provide the Ocean Ecosystem members with mentoring from our Core team.

Previous Instances:

https://indian-ocean.gitbook.io/indian-ocean-outreach-program/oceandao-partners

https://indian-ocean.gitbook.io/indian-ocean-outreach-program/partner-tracks

Aligning with Values of Ocean:

  • Usage of Ocean: Through active community engagement & an effective Ocean DAO funneling bridge, we intend to continue the work and complete the realistic deliverables and keep the community updated on our exciting progress.
  • Viability → With clearly defined strategies, and achieving greater than 1 ROI on our previous proposal we have shown sufficient skin in the game to achieve this again during this Epoch.
  • Community activeness → Each of our core team members are active within the Indian ecosystem as well as within the Ocean DAO. We are also ably supported by Konma labs who have shown immense support in holding physical event outreach, we intend to carry this forward during suitable opportunities.
  • Adding value to the overall community → As mentioned above, we also intend to deploy tactics to bring in more successful proposals to the Ocean DAO and help Builders grow with Ocean :slight_smile:

Proposal Wallet Address: 0x254Ba7254366CA7afE007897358Ee0b45CA933E2

Break-down of the Amount Requested: 7400$ USD

  • Overhead from previous Epoch: 700$

Regardless of market action, we have completed all the intended deliverables including the prize money reserve without any bottleneck to the participants & upcoming winners. The incurred cost of overheads is necessary for us to retroactively cover the admin expense towards the end of our Hackathon efforts.

  • Community ecosystem fund: 2000$

This would be a first of it’s kind ecosystem fund that would be governed by accountable people from the Indian Ocean & Ocean DAO ecosystem. The ecosystem fund will be largely targeted towards Builders & also encouraging initiatives that help scale Ocean. We also encourage people to reach out to us for further support/ grant request help. A detailed update regarding the ecosystem fund logistics will be published on our Medium blog posts.

  • Marketing and Outreach: 1500$

We intend to cover a lot of community calls and promotional activities as responsible ambassadors of Ocean Protocol. Further community calls similar to the previous epoch will be in continuance in light of more viability for virtual events. Our Gitbook summary has outlined our strategy so far that have been deployed with respect to our events and marketing strategy.

  • Content outreach (rolling bounties) : 800$

We have had some amazing responses in getting quality blog posts written by our community members, guest writers, community call reviewers & bounties and quests that were part of the hackathon. We intend to increase more drive in this regard. The content based outreach would be slightly different from the Ambassador program based rewards. The content outreach would act as a flexible corpus so there is flexible distribution that is pertinent to the non-formal community call reviews (example: https://medium.com/@shachindra/wolfdaoxoceanprotocol-paving-the-way-for-community-driven-daos-baa45a68da27) and hackathon based beginner bounties ( example: https://indian-ocean.gitbook.io/indian-ocean-outreach-program/indian-ocean-hackathon/writers-bounty )

Example: The ambassador program has a specific set of structure and standard that needs to adhere to a set of native KPI that is fine-tuned to a certain quality and we will avoid overlaps of activities that are related to the activities of the Ambassador program. Likewise we would take part in complementary content activities to the existing activities within the Ocean DAO ecosystem.

  • Admin expenses: 1600$

Admin expenses for applicable infrastructure costs and a suitable mechanism to retroactively reward the active contributors to the Indian Ocean DAO for the epoch.

  • Reserve: 800$

Belief Capital: We also intend to use part of the running reserve to support a select few project teams who would need to hold reserve Ocean in their Eth wallets so that you don’t have to worry about the Ocean holding requirement as long as you can concentrate on high value project submissions for the Ocean DAO :slight_smile:

3.3 & 3.8 Category sub-details:

Outreach publishing channels:

Socials: https://linktr.ee/IndianOcean
Content updates: https://medium.com/@indianoceandao

Community engagement: https://indian-ocean.gitbook.io/indian-ocean-community-tracker/

Gitbook: https://indian-ocean.gitbook.io/indian-ocean-outreach-program/

3.9 Project deliverables & Roadmap:

  • Engaging with all the participants of the hackathon so that the Final hack doesn’t become a one-off event with distribution of bounties
  • Forming strong values within the Indian Ocean DAO with accountability established in governing the ecosystem fund, that would be the first of it’s kind in our roadmap
  • Interact with more stakeholders within the Ocean DAO and increase more networking with the Indian ecosystem of stakeholders.
  • Support the ambassador program & leverage off each other without much friction

3.10 Additional information:

  • Hope you enjoyed exploring on our Hackathon efforts towards the end of January

  • To know more about the hackathon progress, keep in touch with our socials to find the Final Hackathon report & the relevant post-hackathon activities.

  • We would have regular bounties offered to our community and if you would like to support us & get work done in exchange for bounty efforts, we would be open to that.

  • Reach out to us at indianoceandao@gmail.com and we would be glad to support external bounties to our community as a service DAO, and we would take no fee in exchange for the service. This approach would also be open towards the existing Ocean DAO projects & the Working groups within the OceanDAO as well.

  • If you have read this far, and you’d like to support our program. Do take part in our ongoing Hackathon as well :). We have a few challenges that are still open. We had some amazing entries for most of the tracks, albeit requests for extension of the deadline until Feb of 5th Midnight GMT.

  • Enjoy going through our challenges and win attractive USD$ bounties in Ocean, while participating in the Ocean DAO voting at the same time.

4 Likes
#2

Hi @drprk, thank you for submitting your porposal! I have registered it for Round 14, and it has been Accepted.

All the best!

1 Like
#3

Hi @drprk,

Thank you for submitting your proposal for R14!

Based on the reasons below, I am happy to support your project, proposal, and look forward to continue seeing all the contributions that the outreach / regional program in India brings to the Ocean Ecosystem!

I have reviewed your proposal outline, grant deliverables, and value-added criteria. It’s great to see your Project Proposal for this funding round, your overview of how the Indian regional is aligning with Ocean Values, and a break down of the amount requested.

First, I wanted to provide some really positive feedback around Service DAO - This is a great idea. Besides hackathon and event sponsorship, are there potential revenue-generating activities to help Indian regional become more self-sufficient? Maybe set a target revenue for Service DAO to make it measurable.

The only thing I would provide feedback on, is making the deliverables more measurable. Here are some suggestions:

  1. Establishing Indian Outreach as a DAO ecosystem…* - How? Do you have a target for developers, or beginners to onboard?
  2. Mentor 1 successful grant proposal… - Great measurable outcome!
  3. **Organize an ecosystem fund…" - How many bounties? Do you have a target for more outreach activities (such as hackathon) that you are planning to host?

Based on the feedback above and the proposal criteria, here is my feedback.

  1. Usage of Ocean — It’s clear that the Indian Regional is aligned with increasing usage of Ocean technology via their hackathon, events, in addition to educational material to help new participants onboard into the Ocean Ecosystem. I believe hackathons and events are good activities to increase the number of participants using Ocean, and look forward to seeing how this evolves.
  2. Viability — I believe the India Regional can viably host events, hackathons, and increase traction with the local industry. My only feedback is to make the work and deliverables very measurable. Besides that, they have onboarded participants including a Core-Tech earmark project in R14 and I personally like the idea of a Service DAO in order to increase revenue-generating activities that may help the India Regional generate some potential revenue streams. Having revenue and sponsorship streams help them be more self-reliant and viable.
  3. Community active-ness — Prakash has been a long standing Ambassador, now PGWG Guide, and contributing to many of the Working Groups, including Core-Tech. The Indian Regional is helping to foster community and actively increasing the number of active participants inside of OceanDAO. As an outreach program, I believe they are succeeding in this direction.
  4. Adding value to the community — I believe Prakash has been leading a lot of good initiatives inside of OceanDAO and in the India Regional. His efforts are clearly leading to added value to the community, and I look forward to seeing how the Indian community evolves.

All the best!
-Idiom

1 Like
#4

Your work in the ecosystem does not go unnoticed and I wholeheartedly support this proposal because of the excellent and far-reaching impact to the OceanDAO community and beyond. Best of luck in this upcoming round.

2 Likes
#5

Hello Roberto, thanks for the feedback, really appreciate it once again for giving it a good read.

Service DAO would be a tactic that we will look to deploy, in terms of bringing more talents onto the community of our Builders group (Telegram community that has become more active currently with the hackathon). The key aim would be to retain talents with continuous bounties that we can keep sourcing from a lot of channels to increase the community GDP and bandwidth so that singular bounties/hackathons don’t become a Blackhole of sorts where we don’t have failure of converting the lead of talented developers that can continue to engage. Visibility first, revenue accrued would be a longer tactic that we could employ.

This again, is a core macro tactic, which is flexible to operate as to how the community would find it preferable. We hope to find a good mechanism to make this happen if our proposal gets funded.

Thanks for the question, I think we would look to target both. We have done quite a bit of scaling in terms of social growth, we would be looking to onboard lot of builders that we would like to engage with the Ocean DAO. The Core-tech earmark teams for this round are a fine leading example for that. We will look to set measurable goals through the ecosystem fund that we will look to create and fund perhaps at least 2 major squads that will continually work on scoping out products/grant initiatives.

As a measurable target - Bounties might ideally be at least 3 of them, that will be initially governed by the Core-team members initially and find areas and themes that are more accessible in the current Epoch. We would focus on the successful entries that have come up in the hackathon and look to incentivize them to form squads and invite more people from the Indian Community.

Thanks again for reading through the proposals, I’ve learnt well to format my proposal goals a little better and measurable with my experience with the Working groups and with your able support in the Working groups as well, hopefully I’ll be able to bring in more impactful members who can continue to lead more initiatives

Cheers,
Prakash

1 Like
#6

Thanks a lot @hebbianloop, your word of support means a lot to our team !

1 Like