"Voice" Guild H1 2023 Budget Proposal [Draft]

KeenanL · December 6, 2022, 12:03am

2023 H1 “Voice” Guild Budget

an abstract representation of voice, vibrant, galactic themes, extreme detail

Covering DXvoice and DXbiz squads. Spreadsheet Link: Voice Guild Budget

Budget Request Duration: 6 Months

Introduction

This page encompasses the DXdao “Voice” Guild’s six-month budget request, which is composed of the DXvoice and DXbiz squads. It will outline their goals, responsibilities, and compensation for contributors, as well as any other relevant costs that need to be assessed and approved by the DAO.

Guild Structure

Networks: Ethereum, Gnosis Chain

Platform: DAVI Soulbound

Guild governance members:

Entity	Soulbound %
0xKLOM.eth	20%
whatt4.eth	15%
International Blue	15%
BorisBlock	7.5%
Skymine Labs	20%
Metronome	15%
Caneyfork.eth	7.5%

Governance rules:

Cannot earn additional governance power past 25%
One month of full-time contributions to Operations guild earns 2.5% of soulbound governance power in the Operations Guild
Need 5% to submit a proposal

Vision and Mission

“Voice” Guild Vision

The “Voice” Guild aims to establish a threshold of non-technical “services” that can be utilized to grow content, brand and image for DXdao and its products. It envisions a collection of superheros able to coordinate and facilitate the “voice” for not just DXdao, but for the entire DAO ecosystem.

The “Voice” guild will initiate DAO priorities that expand DXdao nameshare, brand cohesiveness, and reach in order to accomplish its goals.

Squad Missions

DXvoice: The DXvoice squad provides a “voice” to DXdao and its products through a strong baseline of marketing, branding, and other content-related talents that can facilitate and grow DXdao in accordance with its priorities.

DXbiz: The DXbiz squad is focused on opportunities that create value and expand awareness of DXdao and further the success of DXdao’s products based on DXdao’s Priorities Board.

Overall Guild Milestones and goals

Coordinate on mission and vision statements in accordance with Phase 3 of DXdao’s restructuring
Create better communication flows surrounding the community, both “internal” and “external”
Establish direction for DXdao and Product Guilds to facilitate growth of both brand and user base
Broaden the range of non-technical roles integrated within DAO culture

Summary of Costs

Budget Summary - “Voice” Guild
Budget Document link
Reference DXD Price $523.00

Comparison to 2022

Squad Metrics

DXvoice Squad

DXvoice has identified a multitude of operational challenges, both internal and external, that have resulted in non-optimal deliverables and significant communication gaps. Structurally, DXvoice has placed large importance on solving these coordination issues and rectifying their possible downstream effects. As such, DXvoice will be focusing on baseline growth and unification of branding throughout H1 of 2023.

You can view the recap of a presentation on the topic here.

Key Milestones and Goals:

Note: DXvoice aims to facilitate establishing DXdao’s overarching vision and mission ahead of the 1h 2023 proposal.

Delivery milestones are considered met when DXvoice hands the content to the relevant squad.

Deliver an operable demo/mockup and viability statement of the recently passed “flagship” focus in collaboration with DXgov and other product teams
Launch and support Swapr Expeditions initiative
Finalize and deploy Carrot Branding – Incl. design, landing page, marketing video
Work alongside DXgov to deliver DAVI branding – Transition focus to “flagship” brand scope if determined a priority
Produce and/or finalize branding as determined by DXdao priorities – Omen, Aqua, Jolt, etc
Formally launch Operation Decentralization and deliver at least 3 episodes
As determined by DXdao priorities, deliver/collaborate on a go-to-market strategy for relevant products, incl;
- Target market identification, value proposition, MVP priorities, marketing/brand awareness, and community engagement methods.

Objectives and Responsibilities:

Proactively engage and influence product squads at an early stage throughout maturity
- Create and refine baseline content strategy; incl. branding, image, voice etc.
Facilitate execution of all DXdao social channels
Maintain and further develop content strategy, including regular written pieces for DXdao and its products
Maintain Thursday community initiatives, incl. Community Call and Operation Decentralization. POAPS!
Maintain and expand upon DXdao documentation through DXdocs
Begin early processes for DXdao rebranding initiative
Expand upon community communication avenues, including chats and forums
Perform maintenance on content, brand, and image

DXbiz Squad

Key Milestones and Goals:

Find and drive opportunities that create value based on DXdao’s Priorities Board
Serve the Product Guilds and Operations Guild with any relationship based opportunities
Be a set of links that connect all the different Squads and Guilds within DXdao’s community promoting information flow throughout
Develop two key partnerships that positively impact DXdao
Present DXdao and/or its products at 2 key Ethereum events
Actively work with Product Guilds to form their paths forward, help communicate this to DXdao, and work to achieve the plans
Facilitate the creation of and produce a strategic plan for each DXdao product in accordance with priorities board
Support Swapr Guild to increase Swapr usage and awareness
Identify and prioritize chain expansion opportunities for Swapr
Identify & explore opportunities with Carrot Guild to introduce Carrot v1 into communities and get an external community to use Carrot v1 (if available)
Identify & explore opportunities with DXgov to introduce DAVI into communities, share into this communities and bring an external community onto DAVI (if available)

Objectives and Responsibilities:

Run any DXbiz related meetings, presentations, discussions and events
Deliver the ongoing implementation of the weekly DXbiz Huddle (and channel) where we strategize and prioritize ongoing and future opportunities.
Prioritize and regularly communicate DXdao’s opportunity field
Coordinate DXdao’s opportunities while acting as a main internal point of contact for all things related to these opportunities.
Represent DXdao, its products and ecosystem at Ethereum events and in relationships with other DAOs, funds, projects, and partners.
Coordinate ongoing and futures DXventures opportunities

Guild Personnel

Individual contributor lists, contributor level information per approved guidelines, and time commitment as percentage of full time.

Contributor	Level	Time Commitment	Description of Role
0xKLOM.eth	Level 7	40 hrs/week	Keenan concentrates on the coordination and execution of “voice” related initiatives. Initialized the DXvoice squad and has a breadth of knowledge and participation across DXdao and its active initiatives.
Whatt4.eth	Level 4	40 hrs/week	Wayne started as a community support and broadened his scope towards writing, socials, and support of all things content.
International Blue	Level 7	40 hrs/week	Int Blue lives as a director of design, crafting and executing upon creative decisions, such as landing pages, videos and swag.
Boris	Level 4	4 hrs/week	Boris Block has been a long time support of DXvoice design, primarily focused on social related content.
Skymine Labs	Level 8	22 hrs/week	Sky focuses on the coordination and execution of DXbiz related opportunities and supporting initiatives across DXdao
Metronome	Level 8	8 hrs/week	Nylon brings outside perspectives, identifies opportunities and runs the regular DXbiz meeting
Caneyfork.eth	Level 8	6 hrs/week	CaneyFork is often found supporting both DXvoice and DXbiz through governance expertise and his memorable voice!
Totals		160 hrs/week

Addendum

Spreadsheet Link: “Voice” Guild Budget

Budgetary Process Proposal: Phase 3: DXdao Budgetary Process v1

KeenanL · December 6, 2022, 10:20pm

Made some minor adjustments ahead of the Governance call tomorrow, including more precise communication of implied responsibilities and goals. Expecting this to be expanded upon further after deliberation on the call.

See you soon!

0xVenky · December 7, 2022, 7:01pm

Hey,

I appreciate the effort that has gone into the proposal, but I feel that the Voice guild should be taking a more proactive role in leading and creating initiatives around sales and marketing. The proposal currently lacks clear key results and ownership for the guild to lead the DXDao products.

Few questions I have:
Can we expect the Voice guild to lead the launch strategy for Carrot?
And what is the strategy for increasing Swapr’s user traction?
In addition to expeditions, what regular marketing drives can we expect for Swapr? From the past marketing initiatives, if we had any, what was learnt that we will not repeat?

I understand that the guild’s talks about supporting initiatives, but I believe that the guild’s expertise in sales and marketing should be utilized to hunt and lead initiatives that the guild and its personnel specialise in. Almost everyone is a Level 7+ and there seems to be very feeble plan on how DXDao will lead in sales / community building / marketing.

Regarding growing overall DXDao awareness, how do we measure this? It seems that attendance in community calls has not increased much (maybe 7 to 10 non contributors) Should we consider setting a goal for this?

Additionally, what opportunities and partnerships is the guild currently focusing on, and how do we determine their value and potential impact on the new budget? Taking a very specific product Swapr that I am very opinionated about, It would be helpful to show a list of specific actions and initiatives that the Voice guild plans to take for Swapr.

I hope this feedback is constructive and helps to improve the proposal. Thank you.

KeenanL · December 7, 2022, 8:10pm

I appreciate this reaching the open discussion! Let me address this from the DXvoice perspective (I imagine the DXbiz side has similar thoughts, but I will not speak on their behalf):

As mentioned on the Governance call today (great watch if anyone didn’t attend; assuming a recording will be live sometime today), there are a few key ideas that I didn’t correctly translate into this format/template, particularly concepts from DXvoice’s “Operational Inefficiencies” presentation from last week. Perhaps a DAOtalk thread would be beneficial in supporting those concepts.

The primary takeaway, which I am looking to better communicate in the above proposal, is that previously DXdao did not entrust or give agency to DXvoice to make decisions related to marketing and design (which DXdao is actively passing proposals in favour of). It also had awkward and/or unclear delegations of ownership and influence, often resulting in DXvoice focusing on initiatives that, in the end, did not accurately reflect the priorities of the DAO, and often resulted in wasted resources.

The critical thing we want is to have this proactive role, one that we felt has existed in limited or challenging capacities in the past due to a variety of factors. DXvoice wants the agency to designate (or guide, if the product prefers) actual product decisions from the very beginning of ideation, not just after a feature has been shipped. If it can’t, why should the squad, and by extension an entire “services” arm, even exist? The answer I gave on the presentation is that it shouldn’t, provided DXdao can’t overcome the idea of delegated agency.

To answer question specifics:

Absolutely, but in accordance with priority. The most recent information I have on Carrot is that there is an unclear delegation of ownership and challenges in execution. If established as a high priority, which I imagine it will, DXvoice will execute the following as a deliverable (DXvoice owns and drives, not the product, although product should be tightly attached to the process):

This is arguably the most difficult product to cement a strategy for in the current state of restructuring discussions – especially juxtaposed against @Zett providing a three-option approach for the product that is yet to be qualified (to the best of my knowledge, if it has, it is yet to be communicated with me).

The range of these strategies stretches from pure “marketing maintenance” to an evolving product approach alongside a new go-to-market strategy (liquidity.eth). We agreed that the decision of DXdao surrounding Swapr and its respective budget would dictate our action here, to avoid the exact situations described in the “Operational Inefficiencies” presentation.

The following comments/questions also fit into this bucket:

Surrounding the following:

Again, I can only speak on behalf of DXvoice, but this is mentioned strongly in the above budget as a key focus. We want to strongly target DXdao priorities to create a robust baseline of branding and imaging for key product focuses instead of focusing purely on social numbers. We want to introduce brand cohesion and better external communication rather than see our Twitter numbers rise exponentially right now, as we personally identify this to be a far greater issue. This definitely can be communicated better; this does not imply that there will be no social strategy, just that it’s not a key metric to us currently.

As mentioned at the top of this thread, I did not do a great job of communicating much of this in the proposal and will be utilizing your constructive criticism to communicate our goals better here (and already have in a minor capacity with language adjustments). I appreciate your thoughts, both personally and here in the forum.

Powers · December 8, 2022, 3:01am

Thanks for putting this together and presenting on today’s call.

As I mentioned on today’s governance call and yesterday’s DXvoice, I think it makes sense for the Voice Guild to commit to developing a go-to market strategy for each of the DXdao products (Davi, Swapr, Carrot). This will involve the product guilds themselves, as well as DXdao governance, but the ownership of that should fall to Voice (and, specifically DXbiz). It’s important to have something tangible that will be produced rather than just actively exploring these things. A forum post & call would suffice.
It’s important to remember that this is a six month budget. Several of the things @0xVenky mentioned should be something that is produced over this time period, not necessarily specific plans that need to be hashed out in this budget proposal now. It’s okay to commit to things and not work on them for three months. Balancing different tasks is where the Priorities Board will come in
It’s hard to measure several of the Key Milestones and Goals for the DXbiz squad. Many of them feel like more of a job description rather than output that can be measured. I’m not sure how DXdao governance can evaluate whether or not these were met or not:

Find and drive opportunities that create value based on DXdao’s Priorities Board

Serve the Product Guilds and Operations Guild with any relationship based opportunities

Be a set of links that connect all the different Squads and Guilds within DXdao’s community promoting information flow throughout

Actively work with Product Guilds to form their paths forward, help communicate this to DXdao, and work to achieve the plans

And similarly for some of the objectives and responsibilities. These seem a bit vague.

Deliver the ongoing implementation of the weekly DXbiz Huddle (and channel) where we strategize and prioritize ongoing and future opportunities.

Prioritize and regularly communicate DXdao’s opportunity field

Coordinate DXdao’s opportunities while acting as a main internal point of contact for all things related to these opportunities.

As a bureacratic trick, creating a milestone/goal/responsibility that reports findings back to DXdao governance is an easy way to ensure that there is commitment to explore/investigate something, rather than a commitment to find something specific.

0xVenky · December 8, 2022, 11:17am

Hey Keenan, thanks for the reply.

I agree that we should not blindly go by twitter numbers and followers. But thats a good start and we could do the same thing as how we did our Carrot campaign. Get the top 100 crypto twitter to follow us. Some other measure could be - How many new people are we bringing to the community call? How many new members are becoming active in our community? How many community members are converting from being active to contributing?

@nylon talks a lot about having measurable KPIs and OKRs. Would be good if the voice guild can discuss internally and figure out how DXDao should measure the effectiveness of our sales and marketing initiatives. Maybe better use of Nylon would be do this for his 8 hours instead of running the Bizdev call since its biweekly now and a Level 3 or 4 would be enough to effectively coordinate.

Some of the hints that I gave you earlier in May and August about how we could monitor are below. I would leave it to you guys regarding how effective or efficient this is. But there has to be the first step.

From back in May,

1. Increase in the medium subscribers for Swapr by 500%
2. Increase in the number of unique wallets that swapped with Swapr by 200%
3. Increasing new LPs by 200% and campaign stakers by 100%
4. Atleast 50% of the new wallets that swapped in 2022 do swap > 1000 USD per month
5. Gather feedback from community (sample size: atleast 1% of users)

From back in August,

Increase Swapr followers to 20K by end of year

Make 3 threads where engagement rate is 5% and has 400 engagements.

I know that setting goals and measurable milestones are very hard, but without those, we have zero idea where we are moving and what we are moving towards. Is Voice guild happy with how Swapr’s medium or twitter look like?

A lot of businesses go through this. There will be a huge marketing push and suddenly see businesses / products / features being shut down because of a variety of reasons. But that doesn’t mean that its an inefficiency, its just learning and preparedness for the time this will happen. Just remember the sporting events that was cancelled / postponed due to Covid days before, but the marketing and community engagement would continue on if the business (DAO, in our case) thinks there is a future. Again, we shouldn’t consider them inefficiencies but just take that in our stride and look forward. Bringing up efforts that has been written off to show what was done in 2020 and 2021 for why we will not commit to things in 2022 and the future doesnt sit well in my head, maybe I am wrong.

This was only last Friday, were we working on a launch strategy before then? How invested is marketing in the products in terms of what the products are doing?

So, this was in mid October, and the needle keeps moving in business. There might be something new tomorrow or the next month and the thought process shouldn’t wait. Or atleast, there should have been something that is driven to finish up the 2022 roadmap. I find it hard to understand when this decision was taken that marketing will wait for marketing Swapr until a new approach is sent to you.

Wish you could join the Swapr weeklies, where we talked in length about the approach for the past 3 weeks. But I understand it was too early for you, but there was no intent to understand by asking and querying whats happening.

I think as a squad, you should still have a priority list and strategy (Content, marketing, social media) for all the products. Because the vision could be yours and with a little bit of direction, somebody else can pick it up parttime. But if the vision is going to be dependant upon the priority list, I am a bit worried for all the products that we will build in the future.

I would also like to propose to change our product strategy call every Friday and should alternate between Voice, Biz, Operations and Product strategy every other week so that all the strategic efforts are transparent and visible.

I would love to see the DAO getting better, getting better at coordinating together, contributing together and shipping amazing products. I sincerely hope only better things for the DAO and tried to address this in private chats, but I guess laundry in public is the only one that works for us effectively.

sky · December 12, 2022, 5:23pm

They are updated to be very measurable.

Key Milestones and Goals:

Find and drive opportunities that create value based on DXdao’s Priorities Board
Serve the Product Guilds and Operations Guild with any relationship based opportunities
Be a set of links that connect all the different Squads and Guilds within DXdao’s community promoting information flow throughout
Develop two key partnerships that positively impact DXdao
Present DXdao and/or its products at 2 key Ethereum events
Actively work with Product Guilds to form their paths forward, help communicate this to DXdao, and work to achieve the plans
Facilitate the creation of and produce a strategic plan for each DXdao product in accordance with priorities board
Support Swapr Guild to increase Swapr usage and awareness
Identify and prioritize chain expansion opportunities for Swapr
Identify & explore opportunities with Carrot Guild to introduce Carrot v1 into communities and get an external community to use Carrot v1 (if available)
Identify & explore opportunities with DXgov to introduce DAVI into communities, share into this communities and bring an external community onto DAVI (if available)

sky · December 12, 2022, 5:27pm

To add some additional color here, let’s look at en example?

Will the DXgov Guild team adjust its products, building and focus based on feedback and opportunities that Voice Guild has and will present to the Guild?

Or is the roadmap “already set” and building for the potential opportunities will only come much further into the future? (Likely post 6 months)

KeenanL · December 12, 2022, 11:06pm

I have updated the DXvoice section a few times to better reflect the discussions held over the previous week. Notable changes to language include:

Greater communication of product agency. You can learn more about this at the
DXvoice “Operational Inefficiencies” Presentation Recap or in the adjusted text above.
Language adjustments to ascertain the above messaging, largely moving from the miscommunicated “service” towards “initiate”, “deliver” and “produce”.
Cleared up pure deliverables and added context for the decision for a lack of social media related KPIs.
Fixed 2022 avg budget implication stat from $62,595 to $69,435.

I apologize that this wasn’t more clear from the get-go. The multitude of questions and feedback, both public and private, has been effective in clarifying our commitment from the DXvoice squad. Hopefully, the discussion surrounding the DXbiz side continues to be developed and clarified if deemed necessary.

If there are any remaining questions regarding DXvoice and its future commitments, please reach out to me.

Thanks!

KeenanL · December 19, 2022, 11:50pm

This proposal has been submitted and pre-boosted on Gnosis Chain:

It will be ready for voting without REP penalty in 24 hours. Thank you again for all of the input along the way!