Description
Outreach is an initiative focused on creating connections between potential new contributors and the SourceCred project/community.
Eventually, this initiative may also focus on creating connections between SourceCred and other communities/projects which may want to utilize SourceCred.
Current Outreach Issues:
- Skill and bandwidth bottlenecks need to be resolved so the project can continue to grow and it’s contributors feel supported in their work.
- Potential contributors of all demographics who are interested in SC are being lost to our community due to lack of: access to information, engagement from current community members, and a low-friction way to start contributing.
Current Outreach Goals:
- Reach out to, and invite in, specific demographics of contributors (one at a time) in a high-engagement and one on one style. Track feedback along the way, and create a guide/introduction flow for the specific needs of that contributor demographic.
- To create a framework/flow that will guide any type of new person into our community (with lower effort required by the Outreach team), and support them in their journey to become contributors/champions on SourceCred initiatives using the understanding collected through Goal 1.
Status
Championed and in progress
Champion
@LB (LBS on Discord)
Benefits
Currently, if new contributors can’t sort through our resources and teach themselves how to best engage with the project then they most likely float away from SourceCred, which means that we continually lack the skilled contributors we need to move our initiatives and roadmap forward.
By creating a flow that supports potential contributors in their journey to understand and contribute to the community, we create the opportunity for our team to grow and attract the skilled contributors/champions we need to make our project move forward. We’ll also build a good reputation for SourceCred, and support our core value of self-directed and low-barrier project engagement.
Implementation Plan
Overall Outreach Plan:
- Gather information - Learn about the tactics of recruiting new contributors.
- Strategy A - High engagement, feedback tracking, and guide/flow designing with every individual contributor demographic one at a time. (In order of most needed demographic)
- Strategy B - Design the overall outreach flow that can catch any new contributor and guide them into the community.
- Maintain and maintenance the outreach “machine” designed via strategies A and B, adjusting and repairing where needed, indefinitely.
Strategy A: High engagement of a single contributor demographic
- Identify where that demographic and SC already intersect. (I.e.: hacker-experts from Meta Game)
- Reach out to individuals of that demographic to connect and invite them to the SC weekly Community Call. (Track whether they attend)
- At the Community Call: engage them, answer questions they have, help them envision themselves in the project, identify their skills/interests.
- Follow up a day or two after the Community Call to answer any additional questions, get feedback on their experience of the call, and offer a specific point of entry where they can begin contributing and earning Cred. (<— may require input from Initiative Champions outside of Outreach)
- Keep tabs on, and support them for their first week or so of contributing/engaging with the community.
- Follow up for feedback on their introduction experience, and integrate that learning into the next round of outreach with this demographic.
- After repeating steps 2-6 a sufficient amount of times to understand a demographic’s onboarding needs, create a guide and/or “automated” SourceCred introduction flow for that specific demographic. Add this piece of automation to the “machine” that is Outreach’s long-term, ideal New Contributor Flow.
- Repeat this process for a different contributor demographic.
Strategy B: Building the “machine”
The strategy described above in Goal 1, while very personal is also very high-cost for the outreach team and not sustainable in a long-term way. Goal 1 produces two things: more invested contributors of a specific demographic, and a guide/onboarding flow tailored to that demographic. The aim of Goal 2 is to take these guides produced by Goal 1, and bring them together into an informed onboarding flow that can catch and guide any type of contributor demographic into the SourceCred community without placing large demands on the outreach team’s bandwidth.
Every week directly after the Community Call, Wendell and I have an open Outreach meeting in the “Side Room” Discord channel. While the main objective of these meetings is for the Outreach Team to coordinate and work, others are welcome to come listen in or contribute to the conversation in a way that doesn’t derail it.
Deliverables
This Initiative will be achieved when we:
- Have a solid framework that catches and guides new contributors into the project effectively.
- We see new contributors coming into the project and adding value where we need it most.
Dependencies
References
Contributions
- Links to meeting notes to be added.