First off, thank you to all of our students and LEARNcommunity members who have posted in support of the experience offered at Crypto Learn Lab. Knowing we are light on google reviews and other info, I asked our community to bring their thoughts to this thread after the request was tabled in the last meeting! At this point, the majority of our community members are relatively new to crypto, and are eager to learn about the protocols that are here to stay, such as Zcash.
@covfefe I definitely appreciate you putting more weight behind the thoughts of established community members, thank you for doing your research on Crypto Learn Lab. For more context, the idea behind Crypto Learn Lab is to offer a physical location for communities such as Zcash to penetrate mainstream audiences. We have a 1,300 sqft street-front retail spot in a historical 5th st. building with murals, gallery-staged art, mounted screens for visuals or NFTs.
I launched the venture in March of this year at SXSW 2022 so it is still the early stages, we do not have any other community affiliations, investors, or grants at this time. It is 100% self-financed by me, this grant request will be my only request for financing until denied. Zcash has been my preferred store-of-value for about five years now, and I would love to be able to go all-in evangelizing for this community.
@gottabeJay I totally respect your concerns about superfluously spending funds on meetups no-one attends. There is no guarantee on attendance at the events, however there is a considerable web3 community here in Austin that we can attempt to tap into. I am a member of ATX DAO which regularly hosts in-person events with +150 attendance. If the timing is right I can pitch the Zcash events there in person. There are also Bitcoin meetups etc. To assuage this worry, I would consider setting a minimum threshold on attendance where the grant does not payout for an event if attendance is under a certain number. Finally I GUARANTEE the community will have way more fun at our spot than in a public coffee shop. We even have a coffee machine!
Additionally @gottabeJay, here are some thoughts on drawing new audiences to the community based on our first quarter. First of all, it is tough to get most retail customers (read my crypto-illiterate friends) to pay for crypto educational seminars, let alone attend. So first off it is great these will be free classes. But I have found success in inviting the public for free events / parties where they begin to identify with the space & community. At the events I am able to light a spark of interest in a casual setting and drive eventual seminar attendance. Only then has attendance been solid at the educational seminars. This is why I think it is important for the events & educational seminars to go hand-in-hand. Put simply learning has to be fun and the students will appreciate the Zcash community providing that opportunity to unwind and celebrate crypto.
TLDR: the real holy grail in my mind is to draw in audiences that did not know they needed or wanted to know about crypto before attending. What seems to work is to draw the crypto-illiterate in with a ‘cool’ in-person experience that builds an attachment to the space & community in general, without a slide show or presentation at first. Then they can be incentivized / driven to come back for the educational piece more easily.
Thanks for all the time everyone.
tlogs
P.S. anyone from the community that would like to come see the space is more than welcome. Our instagram has some decent shots and video @cryptolearnlab.
We are filming our first course this weekend and will post here once edited!