*Part 1 - Proposal Submission (Mandatory)
Name of Project:
[The Data Economist] “The Ocean Minute” Video Series
Proposal in one sentence:
The Ocean Minute will be an ongoing series of brief videos that expand awareness of Ocean Protocol by summarizing recent happenings in the Ocean Ecosystem, and engages the community to curate and consume content for these videos.
Description of the project and what problem is it solving: (You can give more details in “proposal details” section farther down.)
The Ocean Minute will be an ongoing series of brief outreach videos that summarize recent news in the Ocean Ecosystem. They will be targeted at new community members (people unaware of Ocean or minimally-aware of Ocean), existing community members, and potential data curators, with three goals: 1) Increase awareness of Ocean Protocol; 2) Increase participation in the Ocean community; and 3) Increase Ocean Market data curation. Each video will be 60 seconds or less, and published on Twitter and YouTube to maximize reach and engagement. By keeping videos brief and engaging, the project aims to solve the dual problems of potential Ocean info-consumers not having enough time to adequately follow Ocean-related news, and the fact that Ocean-related news is often difficult for a non-technical audience to understand, or engage with.
Grant Deliverables: (Target deliverables for the funding provided.)
- Create “The Data Economist” Twitter account that will focus on promoting news related to the new data economy.
- Create “The Data Economist” YouTube channel with the same focus as the above Twitter account, and promote it on Twitter and in various Ocean related social media channels.
- Create and manage a crowd-sourced, “Ocean News Submission” system that uses Twitter to drive news submission and curation, by asking potential “News Curators” to tag @dataeconomist_ and use #OceanMinute when tweeting (or re-tweeting) relevant news stories related to Ocean Protocol.
- Produce and publish at least 4 videos per month called “The Ocean Minute” on “The Data Economist” YouTube channel, for a total of at least 12 videos per quarter. “The Ocean Minute” will summarize recent news in the Ocean Ecosystem, and is intended to be as close to a weekly video series as possible (frequency will be determined by how often there are newsworthy items to share).
- Publish each of “The Ocean Minute” videos on “The Data Economist” Twitter account at the same time as they are published on YouTube, in a tweet thread that, in addition to the video, also has links to all source material.
- Create and manage a “News Curator Tracking” system that uses Google Sheets to track the number of times each “News Curator” has a submitted news story included in “The Ocean Minute.”
- Create and manage a “News Curator Ocean Rewards” system that uses Google Sheets to 1) track the number of times each “News Curator” has a submitted news story included in “The Ocean Minute” and 2) rewards “News Curators” for every included news story, by giving 25 Ocean tokens per included submission.
- Measure engagement metrics for all content and channels. On Twitter, measured engagement metrics will be followers and impressions. On YouTube, measured engagement metrics will be subscribers, video views, and watchtime.
Engagement goals by the end of Q1 2022 for this project are as follows:
Twitter:
Followers of “The Data Economist” = at least 500 followers
Tweet Impressions = at least 100,000 tweet impressions
Account Mentions = at least 50 account mentions
YouTube:
Subscribers = at least 100 subscribers
Video Views = at least 4000 video views
Watchtime = at least 1000 minutes total watchtime
Which category best describes your project? Pick one.
Outreach / community / spread awareness (grants don’t need to be technical in nature)
What is the final product?
This grant will fund three final products.
Final product #1 will be the organizational foundation for outreach/marketing that promotes Ocean Protocol. This foundation will not only benefit the outreach and marketing described in the current proposal, but it will also be used to support future outreach/marketing efforts in future rounds of the OceanDAO. Specifically, final product #1 will be the establishment and development of “The Data Economist” Twitter and YouTube channels, both of which will be dedicated to publishing accessible and timely news/analysis related to Ocean Protocol and the new data economy.
Final product #2 will be new content for Ocean outreach and marketing, namely a series of videos called “The Ocean Minute” and corresponding Twitter threads, designed to highlight and interpret recent news in the Ocean Ecosystem for an audience that is not yet very Ocean aware.
Final product #3 will be engagement with this new content. Both content consumption (tweet impressions and video views) and content curation (community members submitting news stories - measured by account mentions on Twitter) will be measured to determine engagement. Increased engagement will not only strengthen the Ocean Protocol brand, but it is also hypothesized to drive an increase in data curation.
Question on “value add” criteria: which one or more of the criteria will your project focus on? Why do you believe your team will do well on those criteria?
This project will focus on three value-add criteria: viability, community activeness, and adding value to the overall community.
First, this is a very viable proposal. The basic idea is very simple - we ask the community to curate Ocean news, and then we produce/publish short videos highlighting the news as often as we have enough news submissions to produce a meaningful video. The team has the capacity and skill to produce/publish these videos, and by incentivising the community to submit news stories, it’s very likely that this will happen.
In terms of community activeness, the project lead (@Deep_Data_Diver) is already very active on Twitter, generating significant Ocean content regularly. The project advisor (@realdatawhale) is also very active on Twitter, collectively having a sizeable following and experience in Ocean outreach/marketing. This community activeness should lead to fast engagement and rapid audience acquisition/expansion.
Finally, the value-added for the overall community is significant. As detailed earlier, a barrier for growing engagement with the Ocean community is that official marketing is often written for a technical audience, and can feel inaccessible for people who are either unaware or have limited awareness of Ocean Protocol. By producing a series of ongoing short news videos about Ocean Protocol that present the news in a format that is very accessible, and by also providing helpful commentary about what the news means and why it’s important, this project can be a needed onramp for more people to become engaged in the Ocean Ecosystem.
Funding Requested: (Amount of USD your team is requesting - see the available funding levels here)
USD $3,000
Proposal Wallet Address: (must have minimum 500 OCEAN in wallet to be eligible. This wallet is where you will receive the grant amount if selected).
0x80083f2B6D9A748b44eD58D6374414934dcA600d
Have you previously received an OceanDAO Grant? If yes, please specify what round(s) and how much was granted each round.
No.
Team Website (if applicable):
N/A
Twitter Handle (if applicable):
@DataEconomist_ (new for project)
@Deep_Data_Diver (project lead)
Discord Handle (if applicable):
N/A
Project lead email:
Country of Residence:
United States of America
Part 2 - Team
2.1 Core Team
For each team member, give their name, role and background. An example is below.
Name: Andrew D (@Deep_Data_Diver on Twitter)
- Role: Team lead, marketer, guerrilla journalist, educator, community builder
- Background/Experiences
- Active in the Ocean Community on Twitter as @deep_data_diver
- 5 years in marketing (both as a marketing agency owner, and as the Director of Digital Marketing for an international health and wellness supplement company)
- 3 years in higher education
- 3 years in guerrilla journalism, and associated community building
- 5 years as a crypto enthusiast
- 2 years as a data economy enthusiast
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Deep_Data_Diver
2.2 Advisors
Name: Moritz F (@realdatawhale on Twitter)
- Role: Project advisor
- Background/Experiences
- Project Lead for Data Whale
- Data Whale Website: https://www.datawhale.online/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/realdatawhale
*Part 3 - Proposal Details (Recommended)
3.1 Details
Details of the proposal:
A recent informal poll of Ocean community members on Twitter (by user @Deep_Data_Diver) discovered that the Ocean community believes Ocean marketing and outreach efforts have had limited effectiveness (https://twitter.com/Deep_Data_Diver/status/1462644462237147146?s=20). Yet, over the last year or more, Ocean Protocol has been regularly communicating news, and delivering information on their various communication channels (Official Website, Medium, Twitter, Discord, YouTube, etc). So, why is there a disconnect between community perception of Ocean marketing/outreach effectiveness, and the degree to which Ocean Protocol has been communicating news and information? I believe the answer is that most official communication is not accessible enough for a non-technical audience.
To solve this problem, The Ocean Minute will be an ongoing series of brief outreach videos (60 seconds or less) that summarize recent news in the Ocean Ecosystem. By producing and publishing news in video format, this project aims to increase the accessibility of information related to Ocean Protocol, particularly for a non-technical audience. Increased accessibility of information will lead to increased awareness, and increased awareness combined with clear calls to action will lead to increased participation in the Ocean community and eventually, increased data curation in the Ocean Market. By keeping videos brief and engaging, the project aims to solve the dual problems of potential Ocean info-consumers not having enough time to adequately follow Ocean-related news, and the fact that Ocean-related news is often difficult for a non-technical audience to understand, or engage with.
The Ocean Minute will be published on Twitter and YouTube, and targeted at new community members (people unaware of Ocean or minimally-aware of Ocean), existing community members, and potential data curators, with three goals:
-
Increase awareness of Ocean Protocol
-
Increase participation in the Ocean community
-
Increase Ocean Market data curation.
The project lead has both the experience and the capacity to produce and publish these videos, so the biggest challenge for the project’s viability and scalability is information curation - being able to generate and evaluate enough news stories on a regular basis to produce videos on a near-daily basis. The proposal solves this challenge by incentivising the community to curate and submit news stories for inclusion in “The Ocean Minute” in the following way (see attached “News Curator Ocean Rewards” infographic for a simplified visual representation):
The project will establish a “News Curator Ocean Rewards System” that rewards people for submitting news stories (tweeting while tagging @DataEconomist_ and using hashtag #OceanMinute).
When people tweet a news story, tag @DataEconomist_ and use hashtag #OceanMinute, they become a “News Curator” and their tweet will automatically be written into a Google Sheet using the Twitter and Google APIs. This will provide the project team with an easy way to view recent news stories and select from these stories when producing The Ocean Minute videos.
When a submitted news story is included in the production of The Ocean Minute, the News Curator who submitted it will earn 25 Ocean tokens. To track this, whenever a submitted news story is included in The Ocean Minute, the project team will mark that in the Google Sheet, and the Google Sheet will automatically write the News Curator’s information to a “News Curator Ocean Rewards” Google Sheet that will keep track of the number of times each News Curator has submitted an included news story, and their balance of News Curator Ocean Rewards.
Example: Sailor Dan submits 8 news stories. 5 of his submissions are included in “The Ocean Minute” videos. Dan would receive a total of 5 x 25 Ocean = 125 Ocean for his submissions.
Ocean rewards will accrue in each News Curator’s “Ocean Minute Account” which will be accounted for on the “News Curator Ocean Rewards” Google Sheet and visible via a public URL. Ocean rewards can be claimed during the first 7 days of the month, with a minimum of 100 Ocean needed to make a claim (to account for gas fees) using a Google Form.
Unclaimed Ocean tokens will be kept in the project wallet for up to 1 year after the user’s last activity in this project. (Activity will be measured as a news submission.) If a user’s Ocean is unclaimed after 1 year of inactivity, the Ocean tokens will be considered forfeited and will become the property of the project.
3.3 If in Category “Outreach / community”:
(Please fill in all that apply)
At least 12 “The Ocean Minute” videos will be published at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEMkiauSVH6wMs8X5_NtxkQ (The Data Economist Youtube Channel)
At least 12 “The Ocean Minute” tweet threads (including videos and links to sources) will be published at https://twitter.com/DataEconomist_ (The Data Economist Twitter Account)
3.8 If the project includes community engagement:
Which channels will be used? For how long? E.g. “twitter, for 8 weeks”. Other details?
Until all project milestones are met and at least 12 videos are produced and published (through approximately Q1 2022), Twitter will be used to recruit News Curators to submit relevant and timely news stories about the Ocean Ecosystem. News Curators will be incentivized to submit news by rewarding them with 25 Ocean tokens for every news story they submit that is included in The Ocean Minute. This will increase engagement metrics, increase followers, and should generate a “flywheel effect” where increased engagement leads to increased followers & increased reach, which will lead to more engagement, and a repeat of the cycle.
3.9 Project Deliverables - Roadmap
Any prior work completed thus far? Details?
Yes. The following work has been completed on this project already:
Various Twitter accounts that actively discuss Ocean Protocol have been contacted to ask for support of this proposal. Support has been asked for in the following areas: 1) building a following on “The Data Economist” and 2) helping curate news stories. Most have replied, and all have expressed being willing and interested in helping.
Additionally, the initial Twitter and YouTube accounts for “The Data Economist” have been created as unbranded “shells” that are ready for the requested funding to drive the proposed additional branding and initial set-up.
What is the project roadmap? That is: what are key milestones, and the target date for each milestone. Please make sure that one milestone is about publishing your results, e.g. as a medium blog post.
This is conceptualized as a three month project, with the first month being dedicated to foundation-building and initial video production/publishing, and months #2 and #3 being when most of the actual marketing and outreach takes place. (View attached “The Ocean Minute” proposal infographic for a simplified visual representation of the project roadmap.)
Month #1 will focus on building the organizational foundation for outreach/marketing. Specifically, this will result in the completion of the following milestones:
- Create and do initial set-up for “The Data Economist” Twitter and YouTube channels
- Create a crowd-sourced, “Ocean News Submission” system to track news submissions into a Google Sheet
- Create a “News Curator Tracking” system to track the number of times each “News Curator” has a submitted news story included in “The Ocean Minute.”
- Create a “News Curator Ocean Rewards” system to reward “News Curators” 25 Ocean tokens for every included news story.
Months #2 and #3 will focus on initiating the proposed outreach/marketing strategy - creating/publishing content, and promoting engagement. Specifically, this will result in the completion of the following milestones:
- Produce and publish at least 4 videos per month called “The Ocean Minute” on “The Data Economist” YouTube channel, for a total of at least 12 videos for Q1 2022.
- Publish each of “The Ocean Minute” videos on “The Data Economist” Twitter account as tweet threads, when the videos are first published on YouTube.
- Promote content consumption and curation by publicising both “The Ocean Minute” and the “News Curator Ocean Rewards” on Twitter to encourage following/subscribing, watching videos, becoming a “News Curator” and sharing with others.
- Measure engagement metrics for all content and channels.
What is the team’s future plans and intentions? Is there maintenance? Possible extensions to the work?
The intention is that this will be a continuing project over many cycles of OceanDAO funding. The project’s goal is for community engagement and value added to grow over the long-term. Since this is an initial proposal, the goals are to do the work needed to start the project, sustain it over Q1 2022, and then measure and assess results. If the results show that this project adds value to the Ocean Ecosystem, the team has plans to 1) continue the proposed model so that “The Ocean Minute” could be produced and published multiple times per week as an ongoing value-add, and 2) expand the reach and scope of videos (i.e. add tutorials on anything relevant to onboarding new users into the Ocean ecosystem, summaries of OceanDAO proposals, etc) to build on the infrastructure and audience that will be developed by this proposal, and to further add more value to the Ocean Ecosystem.
3.10 Additional Information
Any additional information to add? E.g. custom fields or images? E.g. other grants or fundraising to date?
“The Ocean Minute” Proposal Infographic
“News Curator Ocean Rewards” Infographic
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