Clubs -> Neighborhoods

[Matai]

Loving these discussions and am excited to help support next steps!

I realize that a lot of the points below are things to discuss and explore on a longer time frame, so wanted to focus in on an approach for launching local clubs as a more immediate next step to prioritize alongside @savkruger’s awesome idea for the the Peer-Learning Neighborhood Guild, ahead of other more exploratory recommendations discussed below.

I recently shared this introductory post about my background for anyone curious is learning about me and how I got involved in Cabin. tl;dr, been a community member for 1+ years deep in the web3 coliving space, and recently join Cabin as a full time contributor on the Cabin Labs pod .

My Summary Response

As an attempted summary that builds on the replies above while diving into some other areas, I think we can:

0. Develop a shared an understanding of current state to better explore how we can sustainably foster more community engagement. To dive into details here I’ve posted separate threads to share more about my background via a personal introduction, and my perspective on Cabin’s current state in the forum.

1. Reinforce the Gatherers Guild to support IRL and Online activations. We have upcoming Cabin Community Events on the calendar, but how can we help more meaningful connections and experiences occur? I dive into some ideas to help and have started DAO proposal drafts that we can evolve to support Supper and Local Clubs.

2. Launch the Peer-Learning Neighborhood Guild @savkruger introduces so well in her post above. Here’s a Telegram group chat we can invite interested folks to as we plan next steps as a start. Will also include an invite into this weeks newsletter.

3. Empower the Creators Guild to create more content relevant to Cabin’s story by highlight efforts from across the network. From my perception, so many awesome people are doing cool things across the network, yet content is only shared / featured from a small percentage. How can we encourage more story telling around individual and collective projects to educate, inspire and connect with others?

4. Explore how to financially support these efforts, working to seed projects within Cabin Labs as an incubator, with DAO proposals for separate $USDC funding and/or ₡abin governance token requests, and by exploring ways to diversify Cabin’s incoming revenue streams to avoid relying solely on membership growth to drive financials.

5. Set up dedicated community calls to discuss next steps live while building off discussions in the forum and elsewhere. We could start with weekly calls, aligning on the agenda and supporting other breakout meetings as needed. Proposing we meet next Wednesday Feb 7th at 12pm PST as a starter.

More detailed responses that tie into the above #s follow.

0. Current State

This part was quite lengthy so I wrote about my background here and a perspective on Cabin’s current state here. In summary I pose the following questions and proposed recommendations:

@Matai

*A. Question: Is growing Citizenship the most important objective we should be focused on?
Recommendation: We should 1. emphasize existing community engagement as our top priority, creating meaningful opportunities for connection and experiences, while 2. create plans to drive higher membership renewals along with new sign ups.

@Matai

B. Question: What organizations are needed to achieve Cabin’s vision?
Recommendation: 1. We should focus on empowering a more decentralized team of active community leaders. This could be done through Guilds on a contextual level and Supper / Local Clubs on a regional level. 2. We should explore incorporating a 501c(7) Social Club Non-Profit to manage the annual membership model.

@Matai

C. Question: What should Cabin provide community members to foster lasting and meaningful engagement?
Recommendation: Focus on improving opportunitieis for engagement online and IRL through the Gatherer’s Guild, Supper / Local Clubs, Neighborhoods, and other initiatives proposed through a collaborative community design process.

More details on ways to activate follow.

1. Gatherer’s Guild, Local & Supper Clubs

Current Cabin Community Events consist of:

• Cabin led gatherings like past DAO Camp’s and this year’s Network Camp where Cabin contributors and volunteers are responsible for the majority of the event.
• Collaborations curated by Cabin Pod contributors and volunteers, but hosted alongside activations with other events like ETH Denver, Vibeclipse, FWB, Boys Club, etc.
• Supper Clubs hosted by Cabin Citizens with some remote support from Pod Contributors or other community volunteers, with hopefully more Local Club activations on the way.
• Informal gatherings of community members that aren’t socialized across the network, but where Cabin Citizens are gathering / would be happily welcomed.

I think we could improve the experiences with other contributors helping to coordinate and execute these events. Right now it feels like I am taking the lead across all of these categories, but its been hard for me to focus on details of gatherings beyond ETH Denver, while having other events on the runway, along with most other Communications, Social Media, and Community Engagement projects on my plate.

I would love to think about how we could establish a Gatherers Guild to share more of the responsibilities, along with support planning for launching:

A. Supper Clubs as its own funded proposal as its runway within Cabin Labs is limited by the overall budget. I plan to work on a proposal that:

• summarizes the Supper Club program to date, including what we’ve achieved with areas we want to improve
• proposes target goals for attendees and new Citizen sign ups
• requests budget to support reimbursements and operations of the program

B. Local Clubs first as a seed project with Cabin Labs to continue helping people explore:

• what they want to gather to do more of as a community
• how Cabin can support them in this
• how the relationship can be mutually beneficial

As we refine the program within Cabin Labs we’ll explore what additional DAO proposal(s) would help further establish the program, prioritizing first working with local community leaders to co-design the program from the ground up.

In essence we’ve already started this process by having discussions with Supper Club hosts about how they could evolve into more areas of community collaboration

2. Peer-Learning Neighborhood Guild

I am eager to support all of what @savkruger outlined in her awesome reply above, so will try to avoid restating those areas to explore, and am happy to help:

• get interested folks talking about this is Telegram: https://t.me/CabinNeighbors
• set up additional calls and organizing tools to help folks connect and dive in

Some random thoughts for consideration related to how people interact with places across our network city:

A. In the real world outside of Cabin lore, I think Neighborhoods can be multi-property community spaces with varying levels of privacy and access across them. As we evolve the app and lore, I’d suggest we accommodate Neighborhoods defining themselves at the meta level (e.g. Neighborhood wide Code of Conduct), while also being able to create unique directory listings for any given property. In database relational terms: One neighborhood can have multiple City Directory listings. I currently live at one property 20minutes away from another, but our communities share space weekly. We’d love to list ourselves as one neighborhood with 2 unique properties and more to come if all goes well.

B. I think we should be more transparent in our communications around what access to City Directory listings that Citizens get. Some people have assumed that members access to stay at listings is included with membership. We should be explicit that each listing can establish its own visitation and overnight policies, and that what Citizens get is access to communicate with caretakers for the properties.

C. I think we need to expand the 7-nights free Citizen benefit to allow Citizens to choose their participating home Neighborhood. Currently Citizens get 7-nights free at Neighborhood Zero outside of Austin, TX a year, but this perk is not easily accessible to a global audience. Negotiating access and figuring out the logistics to accommodate Citizens having 7-nights free at their participating home Neighborhood from the Cabin City directory would be awesome. Cabin could choose to allocate part of that members subscription fee to support the home neighborhood, helping the neighborhood cover expenses for they stay and improve the property overtime. That being said, if a Neighborhood says their expenses for 7-nights free are > $420, Cabin is now operating at a loss for the member… that leads well into my next point.

D. I think we should to do more to support people living and staying at Cabin City Directory listings, both caretakers and residents. I’ve seen some awesome handbooks created for some neighborhoods, but not all have them, and I’m not sure to what extent they are used beyond initial onboarding. Tangible support is manifest with the example of helping to find a Gatherer for Integrating Cobana in the Cabin network, but what else can we do, and how should we prioritize it amongst the backlog of other roadmap and newly proposed initiatives?

Look forward to diving into these discussions more.

3. The importance of content and opportunities to activate the Creators Guild

In 1996, Bill Gates predicted the emergence of the Creator Economy in his article “Content is King”. While I’d prefer a less patriarchal framing, say maybe “Content is the Key” … content today is the driving force behind most consumer behavior, influencing what we spend our time doing and how we spend our resources. While tons of new content modalities have emerged, a lot of it boils down to the importance of storytelling, opportunities for education, and moments of entertainment.

Without content that shares what the Cabin experience is like, we would rely on word of mouth and first hand experiences at gatherings to introduce new people to our communities way of being. Part of my job over the past 3-months has been to lead sharing content across Cabin’s socials, and its been challenging to effectively:

• allocate enough time to curating our social calendar given the need to address other events and comms
• source diverse content showcasing experiences from across the network
• be able to appropriately incentivize great and consistent content

Supper Clubs have been our most effective way of sharing more about life amongst our network city, but group pics and testimonials from hosts and participants only go so far.

@jxn’s Campfire Podcast trailers have been some of our best performing content, offering more in depth dives into ways people are imagining new ways of living, but there is still a gap in sharing what the actual Cabin experience is like, and how people can tap in to co-create the community spaces online and IRL that we want to frequent.

To address this I’d propose we explore establishing a Creators Guild that focuses on encouraging and empowering content creators across the network to help better share the multitude of stories that compose the Cabin experience.

4. How can Cabin financially support these efforts?

Well Cabin already is, through:

• the legacy of impact and momentum from past initiatives
• current contributor pods working on this
• and community access to funds for programs like Supper Clubs

… but is there an appetite to do more? I think clearly so, and luckily we have Cabin labs to help incubate ideas, the DAO proposal process to fund initiatives, and an amazing community of people who are eager to get engaged.

And while more funding sounds great, we don’t have access to an infinite well… so what can we do about that? I think we should diversify Cabin’s revenue channels. The current goal is for Cabin to be self-sustaining from a yearly membership model. Given the reach, diversity of backgrounds and creativity our audience, I think Cabin can explore other revenue streams that will help meet its basic operating needs to put less pressure on membership growth requirements. Some of those ideas include:

1. Monetizing a shared YouTube channel or other content streams overtime, sharing profits with contributors who helped bring the content to life
2. Exploring brand partnerships as a way to fund more activations, instead of relying on ticket sales or members covering costs.
3. Launching a 501c3 Non-Profit as an education and impact focused arm of the DAO to accept tax deductible donations that will support community led efforts.
4. Embracing our inner Regen + Degen, looking at ways we could activate the DAOs treasury to generate revenue by intelligently investing, trading or staking its resources.
5. Seeding financially sustainable community projects. I have a friend who rents 10 houses in LA, running them as coliving network that has sustained itself before and through COVID. While I don’t know the exact $ #s, it employs people and provides people with places to live. I don’t think Cabin needs to rush to own its own land, but I think Cabin could empower community leaders to pilot localized coliving and or third space projects that could generate a return on investment to the DAO overtime, while creating more spaces for community to gather. Neighborhood Zero was one attempt at this, but what else could we try?

5. What’s next? Lets keep talking

Woah, that felt like a lot to write down, and I’m sure there’s more to cover and things to revise. Would love to hear what other people think. Please share your thoughts in the comments. and lets jump on a call next Wednesday Feb. 7th at 12pm PST for anyone who’s interested in talking more about these points (click here to add it to your calendar). If interested folks can’t make that time, we can adjust and/or set up additional sessions.

Onwards