The basic idea
Communities are built on ideas but survive on rituals. This annual award and everything leading up to it will create enduring rituals that recognize and appreciate Cabin neighborhoods and local leaders while also building up a strong brand for Cabin, making us the first thing people think of when thinking about:
- Neighborhoods
- Placemaking
- IRL communities
- Network city
- Local friendships
- Local governance
Parallel goal
To recognize and encourage contributing members of local communities. To that end, would be good to use community members as judges and maybe even assign future voting points/weights based on previous award wins.
Alone or in consortium?
We could do this together with orgs like VDAO, Austin City DAO, The Ethereal Forest, Nouns/VRBS, Green Pill, Gitcoin, et al…. but I feel there is more value in keeping this fully Cabin-branded. Bringing in all those other orgs as sponsors or otherwise partners in this without drawing too much attention away from Cabin is a good way to get quicker universal buy-in, weight, coverage, reach, etc.
The ceremony
The cornerstone of this will be an annual awards ceremony — i.e. The Oscars of neighborhood building. At first can be done remotely, but ideally should be done in rotating Cabin neighborhoods — another opportunity to bring attention and appreciation to neighborhoods.
The prize
The prize… physical representation of our Cabin logo? Some random ideas on how it could look:
- Green like the logo
- Gold or glass, like prestigious trophies
- Living, like a Chia pet version of a cabin
- Colored/decorated differently based on the category
- Edible (placing emphasis on sharing with the community and that true neighborhood building success is in the human connections rather than physical achievements)
The name for the prize… I’m struggling with this atm:
- Cabi’s (sounds too close to cabbies)
- The Cabin (really on-the-nose and not that exciting)
- ….
How can we make collectively make this better? Remember, the goal is to make Cabin synonymous with neighborhoods, placemaking, etc.