Hi there, I appreciate your concerns. In fact I share the frustration that I wish we were further along. But at the same time, I will say with no reservation that we have done the best with the almost zero resources that we have at our disposal. Many months I’ve worked 20+ hours instead of the “expected” 5 hours/month (I track my time, so this is a reliable estimate).
We are attempting to move forward in several ways:
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Generate ideas for potential builders.
This is the primary purpose of the ZOMG Whitepaper published in June. We had a call with about 10 builders this week and they’ve raise their hands for projects like building a DeFi platform and writing a Mastering Zcash book. I will provide an update on this once i sort out the meeting notes -
Push ZF on greater support, so we can create a really great, smooth-running grants platform.
We need someone who can help with grant due diligence, reviewing milestones, etc (see below for a longer list). We have asked ZF for a full time person, but they have told us they will afford us part of the time of a Ecosystems Relations manager who will work for ZF on a number of other responsibilities. I prefer being able to make this call on a full time person ourselves, but it appears that some stakeholders’ interpretation of ZIP 1014 says that we cannot do so. (@lawzec to your question on example of being constrained)
Just so you know, this is the wishlist of things we want help with. We provided this to the ZF before they published their Ecosystems Manager job description.
“Marketing” and comms
- Twitter (or other digital venue that becomes relevant):
- Publicize our grant activity (grant approvals, significant updates, finalized grant products that the community can start using)
- Monitor for action items (e.g. community suggestions)
- Tweet/retweet ecosystem news so that potential grant applicants keep us in their minds
- Forum: monitor for action items and surface to ZOMG at meetings
- Monthly or quarterly write up of what’s going on in our minds, significant grant decisions, etc. The community has voiced its desire for transparency from ZOMG activity
- Updating ZOMG members on any significant developments on the forum and various community calls (ZOMG may join some but not all of these calls)
- Possibly: market ZOMG to potential applicants by appearing on podcasts, virtual events, livestreams.
- Coordinate with grantees’ social media presence to promote ZOMG
- Helping recruit possible grantees or support for grantees through standard recruiting practices.
Grant QA
- Screen grants for basic omissions/errors/clarifications, before the ZOMG reviews them. Many grants so far have required re-working, leading to less efficient ZOMG meetings and delayed responses to the applicants
- Where appropriate, follow-up on milestones from grantees and gather short update reports from the teams (this is a weekly task). Summarize to ZOMG so that if any re-direction needs to happen to ensure quality for our money’s worth, we can act in a timely manner
- Communicate with grantees about the back-end grant processes such as payment timing/dispersal, where to post their updates, connect them to ZOMG/ECC/ZF individuals as needed
- Help with strategic actions like refining the grant template or a change in communication strategy. ZOMG members will be responsible for the strategic thinking behind this; the assistant would help with rolling out these actions/decisions
Administrative
- Before ZOMG meetings, prepare agenda based on items collected from sources like the Forum, grant page submissions, etc
- Operate the back-end processes on the grants website to approve grants submissions for viewing and acceptance/rejection.
- Note taking at ZOMG meetings and making sure action items are completed
Many of the tasks above are currently performed spontaneously by a ZOMG member. Given the 5-hour/month target, sometimes we miss things (even when some of us bust past the 5 hour target).
The ZOMG would be a lot more effective if we could rely on someone to make sure the train is running as scheduled, so that we can apply ourselves in ways that the community that elected us intended for us to do so, e.g. strategizing on what grants are approved, reaching into our networks to validate teams and hypotheses, etc.
You may also reflect that some of the tasks should be taken care of by the ZOMG members ourselves. This is correct. in fact, the assistant’s role is to be a reminder/accountability person so that important things don’t fall through the cracks, or are too delayed. We’d like grant applicants to be getting high quality and quick responses from us, but without an administrator that is focused on keeping the train running, it can be challenging to achieve this consistently.
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On a final note, I like this idea you have. Would you like to submit a grant where the task is to write up some bounties? I’d like to nudge our community members towards @hanh’s approach of constructive input