Caden Rain Worker Proposal 5/17/2021- 7/31/2021

Caden · May 13, 2021, 6:22pm

This is Caden Rain (cadenr on Keybase and Caden#3651 on Discord). I’ve been following DXdao for some time, and I have a lot of ideas for how I can contribute to the Marketing efforts here, specifically to Omen. I was formally introduced to the community by @JohnKelleher and have talked with @KeenanL about projects to work on during my trial period. I also discussed my contribution plan with the Marketing and Communications team as a whole on the most recent call.

I’ve been a user of various online prediction markets, and I understand the pain points the online prediction markets community struggles with. Omen provides excellent relief from the problems associated with the most popular online prediction market, Predictlt. Omen has significantly lower fees, no betting limits, and is decentralized. But despite Omen’s numerous benefits, the platform suffers from few users and low liquidity. My primary focus will be on closing this communication gap and allowing Omen to realize the full potential of its underlying technology! In the next 2.5 months my goals are to start and execute on the following initiatives:

Acquire users for Omen
Increase awareness of Omen within the online betting community
Provide marketing and writing support for a variety of projects

Time-frame:

Trial Period: 17th May 2021 - 27th May 2021

27th May 2021 - 31st July 2021 (contingent on the trial period)

Responsibilities

Conduct marketing and build awareness for Omen across a variety of channels including online prediction markets-related Telegram chats, Discord servers, and the comments section on PredictIt
Write Tweets for DXdao and Omen
Assist with a variety of projects where I can apply my marketing and writing expertise such as the DXdao rebranding, updating the copy on the DXdao landing page, and any other projects that may arise

Deliverables

Marketing page comparing the differences between PredictIt and Omen (this is a very favorable comparison for Omen)
Guide to Omen for users who’ve bet on PredictIt or another online prediction market before, but are new to Omen
Guide to Omen for users who are completely new to betting on prediction markets

The marketing page and guides I create will be essential for Omen to acquire additional users and realize the full potential of the platform. I will also use the comments section of PredictIt to inform PredictIt users about the low-fee alternative of Omen. This has been a highly successful strategy for Omen’s leading competitor Polymarket, it’s how I found out about Polymarket , and Omen would be wise to learn from this success. I’ll also conduct guerrilla marketing and awareness building across a variety of other channels including prediction-markets related Telegram chats, Discord servers, and more.

Compensation

Level 3, Full Time

Trial period (50%):

Base Salary: $1500 DXD: $1000 REP: 0.0417%

Contingent on successful trial period, following two months (80%):

Base Salary: $9600 (80% x $6000/month x 2 months), 50% to be paid at the beginning of the work period and 50% to be paid at the conclusion of the work period DXD: $6400 (80% x $4000/month x 2 months) REP: 0.2666%

Worker Experience

My professional experience is in marketing and writing, and I have a Bachelors in Business Administration from Northeastern University. My work experience can be found here:

Link to Resume

Link to LinkedIn Page

Some articles I’ve played a key role in editing during my time at Dell include the following:

I had a hand in writing and scheduling many Tweets from the Dell Technologies Services Twitter account during my time at the company, which can be found on Twitter.

cure0000 · May 27, 2021, 5:39pm

Your longest marketing position held was with a Dell Internship for 7 months, is an experience level of 3 warranted?

A level 2 feels more appropriate: " I have some work experience, but I have not yet developed specialized skills. Perhaps I have worked in a related industry, but I might lack direct experience in Web3/DeFi/DAOs. I’m eager to get more expertise in my vertical."

I don’t see on your resume or LinkedIn where it states you have direct experience working in web3/defi/daos

I’m excited to see talent such as yours join the DXdao work force, welcome!

Caden · May 27, 2021, 8:17pm

Hi Cure,

Thanks for the welcome!

Some experience I didn’t mention directly in my proposal is that I have over a year of marketing experience working as a Co-Founder on startups including College One and Boston Cookeria. I also have a four-year degree, a Bachelors of Business Administration from Northeastern University, where the primary focus of my studies was on marketing and business and a secondary focus of my studies was on data science (see the “relevant coursework” section of my resume). This relevant coursework includes marketing classes where I wrote social media posts and writing classes where I wrote articles similar to the Medium articles I’m now writing for DXdao.

This experience is in addition to my time at Dell. You’re correct that my time at Dell started off as a type of full-time internship (Co-Op), and my manager decided to keep me on longer beyond the contract length of my Co-Op because I excelled in the role.

Upon discussion, I believe that my experience fits into the guidelines for a Level 3 worker.

These are the level 3 guidelines:
“I’ve been around the block and know how to work independently, but I still need help coming up with a scope of work and working with people outside of my area of focus. I’m eager to grow horizontally and vertically.”
I feel that I’ve demonstrated the ability to work independently during my time at Dell, College One, Boston Cookeria, and Northeastern University. The level 3 guidelines don’t mention any DeFi experience requirement, but I qualified for the 1inch.exchange, Ruler Protocol, and Bankless DAO airdrops, and I got my $MKR liquidated by borrowing on Aave when it was only about $500/MKR (a decision I regret to this day, haha!)

AugustoL · May 27, 2021, 9:22pm

Hola Caden, so you trial period already passed?

What have you done during that period that bringed value to omen and dxdao? I see nothing related to that in the worker proposal.

I would like to see here why other members of the community think this is important and why do we need a full time worker for marketing.
mention to the ones who gave a like to this topic (@KeenanL @Melanie @corkus @Powers @fluidDrop @adamazad )

Do we really need to pay a person 10kusd per month to work on those three responsibilities and goals?

To be clear, this is nothing against you @Caden, your professional resume looks good!. I am asking these questions because in my eyes having a marketing person writing tweets is what ICO useless token projects do, It would help me understand if I hear from other dxdao members why do they think we need it.

Melanie · May 27, 2021, 10:22pm

Hola @augustol ! The main reason for my “like” was because Caden created/formatted his proposal appropriately, by contributor guideline standards. As you know, one function of my role is to guide new contributors through this worker proposal process. Caden provided the correct content for the post and the rest is for the community to decide on. Granted, he could have provided more color around his trial period, and maybe I am responsible for this, but I know now better for next time.

I have also had the opportunity to work with @Caden on preparing content/tweets for 0xHack and he is working on a Medium post for the event as well. He has been a pleasure to work with thus far.

Nevertheless, as previously stated, this will be for the community to decide on.

Caden · May 28, 2021, 12:37am

Hola @AugustoL,

Thanks for asking, I realize I should’ve included this in my post. Here’s the progress I’ve made so far in my trial period:

Working closely with @KeenanL on Tweets and Discord announcements, which I’ve made promoting the Omen Medium article I wrote that I’ll mention below as well as the 0xhack announcements. Thanks for all the help Keenan!
Completed Omen competition Medium article. Thanks for your feedback on this btw @sky . The article is published here: https://medium.com/omen-eth/omen-is-paying-10-000-for-your-best-market-ideas-e71c419d7fd5
Worked with Melanie on 0xhack announcements as you mentioned, and for the Medium article I’m working on right now I should have its first draft ready tomorrow. This article is based in the content John presented in his 0xhack presentation, and I’m expanding the segmentation to appeal to a wider audience of crypto newbies. Thanks @Melanie it’s been a pleasure working with you so far too!
Meeting with @Tammy and Keenan tomorrow to begin process of updating outdated DXdao documentation with their assistance. My experience editing technical articles at Dell should be useful here.
More to come, hopefully

cure0000 · May 28, 2021, 1:08am

Your two week trial period consisted of 40 hrs per week, 80 in total, give or take. How many hours did the Twitter and Discord announcements + the 485 word medium article take?

Can you give us any example of new users you’ve acquired for Omen?

Caden · May 28, 2021, 2:03am

Hey Cure,

You’re correct that I did not spend every single hour of my trial period writing Medium articles, Tweets, and Discord announcements. You got me there bud.

What I have done is I’ve done everything my fellow contributors have asked me to, in addition to the ideas I came up with myself, like the Medium article based on John’s 0xhack talk. I’ve also found a variety of additional things to work on that will fill up my days going forward.

People who don’t write professionally understandably don’t understand the time it takes me to write a piece. It’s not that I just sit down and BAM, out comes 400 words. There’s a lot of research, revising, tweaking, and just plain contemplation involved. For example, look at the info I put in the Omen competition article, like how much more effective prediction markets are compared to polls, how Kleros operates, etc. That was all information that I first had to research.

Throughout my trial period, I’ve been available and responded quickly whenever one of my fellow contributors messaged me during my workday. I’ve also been available and replied to messages well outside of my workday, because of time zone differences. My work day is 8:30am to 4:30pm, and it’s 9pm for me right now, yet here I am… And whenever one of my fellow contributors has asked me to do something or for help with something, I’ve said yes!

So, Cure, do you have something you’d like my help with? If so, I’m happy to help, no hard feelings!

0xVenky · May 28, 2021, 7:54am

DxDAO is a pretty unknown entity right now (# of Token holders) and we have to perform major outreach programs for which we need more effort in marketing.

I feel we are a bit shorthanded in marketing and even though Keenan is being brilliant at it, his time is becoming more and more sparse. Building great products requires equivalent amount of effort in Sales and Marketing and without a strategy in either, our products will find it hard to stay relevant with the community. With OMN launch, Swapr Beta, SWPR token, DxVote, Mesa, governance initiatives, our DAO is only growing bigger in terms of the product development, but we have to be equally good in its sales and marketing strategy.

Keenan is acting both a community manager and a marketing guy, where it would be easy for him to share this with Caden. We cannot judge the effort of marketing by the words that has been typed in Discord or by the amount of tweets / posts in social media, but by the effectiveness of it.

Welcome @Caden !

levotiate · May 28, 2021, 8:43am

The DAO is already spending $$$ in finding a level 5 marketing manager, surely this manager would need a team to manage. Plus as a good as a job that @KeenanL is already doing, he definitely needs personnel to lighten his load, especially as there are a lot more initiatives that are coming out soon.

KeenanL · May 28, 2021, 6:31pm

Hey y’all. I wanted to chime in here.

As the current Communications and Marketing squad lead, I’ve had two separate dedicated check-ins with @Caden surrounding his trial period. He has been both responsive and eager to execute on his delegated tasks. Additionally he has taken the initiative to identify areas of need relating to Omen’s marketing strategy and plan accordingly. Considering that marketing tasks are generally informational in nature, he has been quickly learning about our processes, as well as DXdao and Omen as a whole. I believe we are very lucky to have found Caden, especially considering the onboarding challenges faced recently.

Regarding Caden’s worker level (and compensation? A bit confused here), Caden has demonstrated throughout his trial period that he is capable of contributing at level 3 as presently described in the compensation guidelines. It is clear he has capability to work independently, delegated tasks have been completed as expected, and our squad contribution processes have been followed closely.

Myself, Melanie, and Chris have been working on a contributor compensation overhaul that will address the level descriptions to be a bit more obvious where each contributor should fall and provide a wider range of description. Expect an update on this shortly, say next week.

As for if we “need” someone with a focus on these responsibilities, I’d like to once again speak as the current Communications and Marketing squad lead. As stated in my previous contributor proposal, operation of the squad has been exceptionally challenging as of late. We are ramping up to arguably the most important time for marketing at DXdao, which has been essentially handled by myself with support.

DXdao GAAS, Swapr launch, Swapr token, Omen guild, Omen token, Mesa launch. All of these things are happening in a short period of time, and in my professional opinion, each one requires a team dedicated to effectively raising awareness. Obviously, this isn’t going to be an option right away. My sincere hope is that the senior marketer PositionCo is searching for, along with Caden and possibly Kyle or someone else, is capable of handling these initiatives and campaigns. Even if I moved my commitment completely to Marketing, I don’t believe I (or anybody else for that matter) have the ability to manage the marketing objectives of what is essentially four different products alone. That is to say, at a quality level that DXdao deserves.

All of this is to say that Caden, the PositionCo senior marketer, and possibly one or two more squad members are critical to DXdao’s narrative, attracting new users to our products, and growth of the DXdao ecosystem. Please read my budget related opinion here for context.

If Caden is able to execute and expand upon his entire worker proposal is yet to be seen, but based on what has been demonstrated in the trial period I will personally be voting in favor of Caden’s first month proposal at experience level 3. If the quality of contributions declines, deliverables are not being completed to an expected quality or the new contributor guidelines suggest a different level of experience, changes can be suggested for the 2nd month proposal.