Support for Community Gatherings & Neighborhoods [old version]

[Matai]

This post is being archived to start a new one with an improved proposal to simplify the comments section. The new proposal can be found here: Support for Community Gatherings and will be updated soon.

Support for Community Gatherings & Neighborhoods

TL;DR

This is a proposal for a 3-month experiment to run May through July to support more decentralized community gatherings by:

1. supporting community gatherings in a more decentralized way
2. helping 450 people gather across 30 Cabin community events
3. onboarding 20 new Cabin Citizens
4. establishing 20 Neighborhood treasuries for neighborhoods that two or more Cabin Citizens call home

This proposal requests:

• 17,000 USDC to reimburse hosts, support gatherings and pay contributors
• 5,100 ₡ABIN to reward those who help bring community together

Join us Wednesday 2024-04-17T15:00:00Z for a live community call to discuss this proposal before it goes up for vote (click here to receive a calendar invite).

Background

Gatherings of people is core to Cabin’s culture, embodying our Guiding Principles & Obvious Truths.

@jxn

Cabin is building a network city around three guiding principles, supported by six obvious truths. These truths are informed by observed behaviors from the community:

1. Live in Community
   1. We are our best selves when we live with people we admire
   2. We can find our people online and gather in person
2. Integrate with Nature
   1. Touching grass is good for our wellbeing
   2. Regenerative local communities are the best store of value
3. Create Together
   1. Creating means doing
   2. Co-creation grows culture

Since fall 2023, Cabin has been intentionally supporting planning and reimbursements for Supper Clubs, with what started out as dinner parties, evolving to support community meals of all kinds, with over:

• 500 people coming together across 35 gatherings in 10 countries to date
• 200 community members interested in hosting an upcoming Supper Club
• 6 community members hosting repeat events (@matai, @jon, @savannah, James W., Saswat, Joachim)

At each meal hosted (aka Supper Club), community members gathered to share in activity, discussion and connection. To date, ~$8000 USDC has been reimbursed, with each host airdropped a surprise 25 ₡ABIN for event gathering hosted. In exchange for sponsoring the meal, hosts are asked to introduce Cabin as a sponsor of the event, offer attendees a feedback survey, submit receipts, and post a photo of the event on X (Twitter).

Supporting Supper Clubs up until Mar. 25th has been to assigned one Cabin contributor (@Matai) to support community members along their journey of hosting Supper Clubs. This has led to an overwhelming amount of inbound interest (600+ interest surveys), without an effective way to support each interested community member along their journey, both from a process and technical perspective. Approval of what gathering should be supported has also been the responsibility of @jon as the Steward of the the funding from Cabin Labs, creating a 1-person bottleneck, and 1-person team for supporting events.

Recently @savkruger was contracted part-time within Cabin Labs to support community engagement (see the Cabin Labs - Spring 2024 roadmap) which has already helped provide more support for the process, but the beauty of a DAO is that we can design support structures that are more inclusive, effective and decentralized.

This proposal aims to activate an approach to progressively decentralize how community gatherings are supported, while growing Cabin Neighborhoods and Citizens.

2. Team

• Sponsor & Steward: @Matai
• Community Guides: Cabin Citizens who support new community members becoming hosts through onboarding process and beyond
• Community Hosts: people who take the lead on hosting the event
• Supporting Gatherers: people who help support the events, but don’t take the lead

3. Goals

The overarching goal of this proposal is to support community gatherings that align with the vision of Cabin’s Guiding Principles & Obvious Truths, while helping demonstrate the value of Citizenship, and convert new members catalyzing collaboration with other people in your neighborhood.

• Objective 0: create opportunity for Cabin community members to access funding for gatherings
• Key Result 0: 30 hosts are able to plan and host Cabin community gatherings
  __
• Objective 1: decentralize how Cabin community members can be supported hosting events
• Key Result 1: onboard 10 other community guides, Cabin Citizens who are equipped to help other hosts onboard and plan events
  __
• Objective 2: invite others to get involved in the Cabin story
• Key Result 2: add 450 new community members to the newsletter through gathering RSVPs, social posts, and forum stories (assumes each event will reach an average of 15 people)
  __
• Objective 3: support onboarding new Citizens to support the community gatherings program
• Key Result 3: onboard 20 new Citizens as community members are incentivized to purchase Citizenship to continue hosting events and activating neighborhood treasuries
  __
• Objective 4: supporting developing community neighborhoods through recurring events
• Key Result 4: activate 20 neighborhood treasuries through a reward of $5 per person who completes a feedback form when Citizens host events in their Neighborhood

4. Proposed Budget

USDC

The requested budget is 17,000 USDC, based on the following summary spreadsheet with line by line rationale below:

• $6,750 USDC ($15/per-attendee x 450 people) represents the estimated host reimbursement. As a reference, so far we’ve reimbursed ~$8000, with slightly under 600 people in attendance across 37 events hosted over 6-months, with an average of 15-attendees per gathering.
• $3,500 USDC in discretionary funding for gatherings approved by the proposal Steward. While as per the Cabin labs Spring 2024 roadmap, contributors will no longer be focused on conference side events, I think it would be awesome for Cabin to accept requests for gathering funding offered on different conditions than the standard $15-per-person-up-to-30-people reimbursement. We hosted houses and gatherings during ETH Denver that cost ~$15,000 for housing 16 people and hosting six awesome events, connecting Cabin community members in meaningful ways with more >400 people in town for the conference. This budget will be used to help support other opportunities that community members would be interested in leading, and has the potential to support the proposal goals by enabling events other than standard gatherings. What would you want to facilitate with funding for a special gathering this summer?
• $3,000 USDC to pay for @matai’s contribution time to support and execute this proposal over 3-months ($1,000 x month). As of May 1st, Matai will no longer be a contributor at Cabin Labs after his resignation from his role, this compensation is to continue having his support activating community gatherings.
• $2,250 USDC in rewards to Neighborhood Treasuries. Estimated to be 450-people x $5 USDC per attendee who completes the feedback form form. Neighborhood Treasuries will require two associated Citizens to be set up, and funding will only be allocated after feedback forms are completed, incentivizing more Citizens to sign up, and more thorough follow up discussions with gathering guests by the hosts. See the approach section for more details on how to qualify for a Neighborhood Treasury.
• $1,500 USDC to reward Onboarding Guides who support new members hosting events. For the past Supper Clubs, @matai helped onboard most new hosts via a 30-minute call and some email/DM conversations. What would it look like for us to open up this role to any Cabin Citizen? This proposal would establish rewards for guides of $15-per host they help to onboard and prepare for an event, and an additional $35 for each event that that host executes. Assuming 30 hosts are onboarded who each host 30 events, this would require $1,500 in funding.

Any USDC budget not allocated for a community gathering by August 1st will be return to the DAO treasury, or rolled over into a new proposal for continuing to fund community gatherings.

As additional rationale, we have 209 people currently interested in hosting Supper Clubs:

• If we assume each host hosts one (1) event, and that the average # of people attend (15) the gatherings, then we’d have over 3,000 people and > $47,000 in reimbursements (as potentially realistic best case scenario)
• If we assume each host hosts one (1) event, and that the max # of people qualify for reimbursements (30) the gatherings, then we’d have over 6,000 people and > $90,000 in reimbursements (as an upper bounds)

Based on this, the $17,000 budget seems to be a more reasonable target request. The question is: can we rise to meet the demand for all of these gatherings? … Strength in numbers → lets get more people involved

How?

• funding a decentralize team of community contributors to support gatherings
• rewarding community members for introducing guests to Cabin by funding Neighborhood Treasuries as a new mechanism to incentivize multiple Citizens collaborating within their neighborhood
• distribute ₡ABIN governance tokens more as an additional incentive

₡ABIN

The requested budget is 5,100 ₡ABIN, based on the following summary spreadsheet with line by line rationale below:

• 1,800 ₡ABIN would be awarded to folks who support and host gatherings: (25 ₡ABIN x 50 hosts) + (10 ₡ABIN x 50 supporters) + (25 ₡ABIN x 30 guides), expanding ₡ABIN token rewards to not only hosts, but also to guides and supporters who help the host.
• 3,000 ₡ABIN would be a discretionary distribution for the Proposal Steward to allocate as an additional incentive to facilitate more Cabin community events. This allocation will be used to reward community members who step up in significant ways to help support this proposal and community gatherings within the Cabin ecosystem.
• 300 ₡ABIN per month would be allocated to the Proposal Steward as contribution for their efforts (100 per month)

This spreadsheet includes the tables referenced above, as well as a list of each Supper Club to provide details.

5. Timeline and Deliverables

What are the milestones to achieving this goal and when will it be completed?

1. Proposal Steward will be responsible for submitting monthly updates (one for May, June and July) on the number of
   – gatherings hosted,
   – hosts, guides, and supporters engaged
   – gathering guests
   – neighborhood treasuries established
   – new Citizens recruited

2. Community members who support events (includes all Proposal Team Members + other potential folks who support) will be asked to share their learnings on the forum (deadline is on a rolling basis, within one week of hosting/supporting an event)

3. Proposal Stewards will be responsible for documenting the approach, learnings and recommendations to foster more Cabin community gatherings (deadline is July 21, giving Stewards 3 weeks to consolidate learnings after the 3-month experiments ends in June)

6. Approach

The baseline for a more decentralized approach will involve:

1. Decentralizing how Cabin distributes funding by establishing compensation structures for additional roles from the current contributor model (new roles: Guides & Supporters), while also dedicating a set budget for community gatherings, evolving the Supper Club program beyond the Cabin Labs initial 3-month experiment.

2. Increasing the scope of events Cabin offers reimbursement for beyond community meals (Supper Clubs) to include any “appropriate” gathering. “Appropriate” in the sense that:
   – the gathering relates to our Guiding Principles and Obvious Truths
   – that it has the potential to create opportunity for community connection, without having any negative intentions
   – attendees of the event are introduced in some fashion to Cabin, and aware that Cabin sponsored the event

3. Improving the process for supporting Cabin community gatherings. To start, anyone can submit a gathering the Cabin Community Gatherings calendar, with only cohort members or Citizens able to get funding for multiple events. To help introduce people to the opportunity, we will create recorded video onboardings along with more comprehensive written guides to streamline the process (shout out to @camlindsay for the idea and effort to draft early improvements). We will also share content that illustrates the new support roles to encourage teams of people to form to support gatherings, and establish neighborhood treasuries.

4. Establishing a process for making decisions on what events get funding. Any Cabin Citizen who has hosted an event within the last 3-months can questions whether an event is “appropriate” to be funded by Cabin, resulting in a discussion with the Citizen raising the question and the involved proposal team members to arbitrate whether Cabin should fund the event. If consensus is not able to be reached amongst the involved Citizens, contested gatherings can be submitted as proposals for CABIN token holders to vote on to approve funding.

5. Creating a system for Neighborhoods to share treasuries. This proposal would enable additional funding to be allocated to Neighborhood treasuries under the conditions that Neighborhood Treasuries are only set up when there are two or more Citizens associated to a given Neighborhood. This is designed to incentivize Citizen hosts onboarding other Citizens to form Neighborhoods, while also encouraging hosts to onboard gathering guests through the feedback form. To start, Neighborhoods with two or more Citizens can set up a new wallet to receive neighborhood treasury funding. In parallel, we can explore better technical solutions like using the Hats Protocol to manage access to neighborhood treasuries. Overtime, Neighborhood members can onboard other community members to support and lead hosting events and other community activations, exploring how they could launch new governance models for local neighborhood treasuries as desired.

By starting to iterate and explore what works, we can continue our learning process to inform what support structures we roll out and how we enhance the Cabin App to support the process. For the MVP, we could trust the Neighborhood Steward to manage the inbound crypto, with them handling any fiat transactions needed for events.

7. Open Questions

These are open questions that we hope to address during the proposal:
1. How can help community members start hosting a wider array of events?

• the Neighborhood Stewards Cohort program is a great start
• building out event templates in Notion like what @camlindsay built for Supper Clubs as a supporting structure
• staying in touch with the 200+ interested Supper Clubs hosts who have complete the interest survey

2. How can we streamline the USDC and ₡ABIN reimbursements / rewards management process?

• New token standard ERC-6551 allows for ERC-20 balances to be held by an NFT. Hats Protocol might allow for access to a neighborhood treasury to be revoked should need be. Not sure if we need this… but with the proposal to allocate $5/per-attendee to Neighborhood treasuries, it feels like it could help streamline distributing and safeguarding funds. Hats Protocol may also be able to streamline and lower gas fees for distributions. Will check in with them and follow up.

3. How can we streamline Neighborhood Treasury Management?

• We can start with trusting the two Citizens to manage their neighborhood treasury how they deem fit, either as a single signer wallet, or multi-sig should they want to go through the setup steps.
• As the program matures, Gnosis Safe multi-sigs seem to be the most straightforward route, but there are others we could explore.
• We should also explore how to reduce transaction fees, with BASE as a target platform to streamline USDC transfer and minimize conversion fees from USDC to USD.

4. am sure there are others… look forward to ideas / feedback in the comments!

[Matai]

@jon based on our discussion I removed the suggested $3K USDC budget for Proposal Steward contributions, and increased the requested discretionary budget by this amount, as I think allocating $7K/month for community events, $21K total over 3/months, is still a worthwhile budget to allocate to support this experiment. This doesn’t mean we’ll be guaranteed to spend that much… as it relies on events being approved, and any special cases beyond the standard $15/per-person up to 30-people approach started with Supper Clubs.

Would love to discuss more about how we plan to manage broader community events though, as the Spring 2024 roadmap does not seem to incorporate it as a focus, and I think it will be important for us to find a sustainable way to continue our support for community events, as we have 200+ interested Supper Club hosts, and with us allowing for anyone to be reimbursed for hosting their first approved Community Gathering without Citizenship, I imagine interest in hosting events could rise even more.

The Spring 24 roadmap objectives to 2.2 building a pipeline and 1.1 support cohorts could both be supported by the community gatherings program recommended in this proposal, but the responsibility for who will manage it, and whether the current contributors have time to is something that would be great to discuss <3

[Matai]

@jon added additional clarity that events should be hosted with the intention of them being a part of recurring gatherings to support place based community building to better align this proposal with the Cabin Labs roadmap.

@Matai

Increasing the scope of events Cabin offers reimbursement for beyond community meals (Supper Clubs) to include any “appropriate” gathering. “Appropriate” in the sense that:
– the gathering relates to our obvious truths
– that it has the potential to create opportunity for community connection, without having any negative intentions,
– and with the intention that the gathering is a part of a recurring set of place based gatherings that the host intends to steward, supporting the Cabin Labs - Spring 2024 goal of enabling recurring events at Cabin Neighborhoods.

[jon]

Thanks for putting this proposal together @Matai! I think it looks good & am generally supportive of a fund for gatherings. I have some specific feedback on the proposal:

@Matai

Suggested multi-sig signers: Jon, Savannah, Grin, Jackson, Matai, Cam

I think it’s better to have a smaller, focused group control independent small pools of funds vs. a larger group with less operational involvement in the program. 3/6 multi-sig may be more complicated than needed for this experiment’s scope. @Matai + @savkruger on a 1/2 multi-sig seems like a good place to start to keep it simple.

@Matai

What are the OKRs for this proposal?

Love the clear goals! These seem like strong, aligned goals that we should support as a DAO. I’d also like to see them tied more explicitly to recurring events & neighborhood formation as part of Cabin Labs - Spring 2024

@Matai

The requested budget is 21,000 USDC, based on the following summary screenshot with line by line rationale below:

I support the $11,250 + 1,750 ₡ABIN for gathering reimbursement + $3,750 for neighborhood treasuries.

I don’t understand what specifically the $6,000 + 6,000 ₡ discretionary budget will be used for & don’t think it’s explicitly tied to the OKRs of the proposal, so I don’t support it.

[Matai]

Thanks @jon! I made some updates to address your feedback.

I kept the $6000 USDC and 6000 ₡ budget requests with the hope that we can:

• encourage community members to plan medium to large scale gatherings this summer
• have a Cabin budget to reward people who step up in significant ways beyond the standard awards

If the proposal passes with this included, any events funded or rewards distributed can be discussed as community members come forward with ideas, and we can sense check to see if the gatherings make sense to support on a case by case basis.

I’d love to see community members step up to host these gatherings in a more decentralized way, and hope this provides a playground for folks to explore and experiment , especially since we are stopping these activities as a part of the Cabin Labs Spring 24 roadmap

@jon

Stop

1. Operating rural coliving for nomads
   – Cabin Labs is not directly operating coliving experiences for nomads. Our network of properties are still accessible to citizens directly.
2. Conference side events & housing
   – Fun and can be valuable for brand, but takes too much time & effort for Cabin Labs members to justify spending time on unless we are hosting the full event ourselves (like TNS Camp) or can clearly justify how it will build the pipeline of neighborhood stewards

Moving this proposal to the public section for broader community review and comment

[Zakk]

@Matai thank you for sharing this proposal

Cabin has been hosting these kinds of events for a few years now and I’m skeptical that there’s much return on investment (as in the past).

In the past, these kinds of things really just built up good will / brand recognition without ever converting anyone as a customer in a way that made the expense worthwhile (buying a retreat, coming to stay at a neighborhood, etc).

I’m not opposed to supper clubs, but why are we hosting them and how they fit into Cabin’s funnel? What’s the conversion that we’re going for? Is it Citizenship? If so, do we have metrics on the conversion rate for previous supper clubs that justify doubling down on them?

[Matai]

Thanks for the questions @Zakk!

I think the ROI for this proposal is enabling the Cabin community to grow with more:

1. people empowered as community hosts, with a focus on those interested in fostering community in their local neighborhood
2. people introduced to Cabin through IRL events and content from events shared online

I have not attempted to estimate Citizenship conversions, as I don’t expect people to immediately want to purchase Citizenship after attending a community gathering. Supper Clubs, and the broader Community Gatherings support structure are not designed to immediately sell folks on Cabin Citizenship, but they are designed to:

• support activated community hosts in building local community, with Cabin as an enabler
• introduce people to Cabin and enter them in at the top of funnel through their RSVP’s and feedback survey

Objectives 1, 2, and 3 outlined above aim to quantify this impact by supporting 30 hosts across 50 events, with a target for 1,000 newsletter sign ups from the IRL and online attention the gatherings create. While not an explicit objective of this proposal, as hosts engage more around the Cabin ecosystem, hopefully many will choose to participate in the Neighborhood Stewards Cohort program and/or sign up for Citizenship to continue getting access to reimbursements for gatherings and support along their neighborhood building journey.

Formal support for Supper Clubs only started in the fall of 2023, and as far as I know, we haven’t had a new Citizen join after attending a Supper Club, but we have had at least 7 Citizens sign up to be able to host Supper Clubs.

To help improve the attendee → Citizen funnel, we are working on plans to improve how we equip hosts with knowledge to support guests on this journey, while also looking at how we engage with attendees online. As a part of this proposal, my hope is that by offering funding to neighborhood treasuries with $5/per-attendee-feedback-form completed, event hosts will be more compelled to interact with guest in a way that encourages them to talk about their ambitions for more local community connections support by Cabin, inviting attendees to participate in planning future local events and get involved with the broader Cabin ecosystem.

Since announcing the revised Citizen benefits this past winter:

… we’ve seen less than 20 new Citizen sign ups total, signaling a lack of ability to convert community members into paying customers with the current approach. As a community focused organization with a sizeable treasury and runway, I think this is ok for now, and would encourage us to keep supporting community gatherings as we figure out how Cabin can establish a sustainable financial model that aligns with its mission and values.

Based on conversations I’ve had with community members, I’ve found that most people are interested in Citizenship to:

1. visit / live at places in the network
2. get access to funding for community meals to help catalyze community building in their neighborhood
3. as a show of support for the community and organization

Since the Cabin launched Citizenship to its network city in May 2023, the cornerstone was access to global coliving network, but with the Spring 2024 roadmap pivot in focus:

@jon

Rural coliving for nomads (2023) → Neighborhood cohousing for friends & families (2024)

Cabin is in the process of revising the value proposition for Citizenship, focusing on offerings that aim to support more local community building opportunities:

@jon

Our core offerings:

1. Accelerator for Neighborhoods - a cohort-based program for neighborhood stewards
2. Neighborhood App (cabin.city) - a platform for local community building (profiles, events, etc)
3. Social Content - videos, images, words from neighborhood stewards as growth flywheel

while pausing new Citizenship features and outreach to onboard new outposts:

@jon

Pause

1. Citizenship: We will continue to offer Citizenship, but shipping new features for Citizenship is not the primary focus right now
2. City Directory: We plan to migrate the current City Directory listings to outposts - friendly global places to visit & connect with the community
3. Cabin community members can continue to list outposts and use the network

As we move forward with this revised focus:

@jon

Start

1. Neighborhood Steward Cohorts
2. Run cohorts - rural and urban
3. Whatever we can do to accelerate neighborhood stewards’ efforts
4. Work towards clear sustainable financial model
5. App flow built around neighborhood pipeline & user activation

we have been brainstorming Cabin membership models that aim to provide more value locally to help improve the perceived value of Citizenship. Some early ideas being discussed are:

• access to a third space where local community would bootstrap costs through a local model
• sharing membership revenue between the Cabin DAO treasury and local neighborhood treasuries to incentivize local recruiting
• lower cost membership tiers to offer options with less of a financial barrier
• costs for access to the Accelerator for Neighborhoods

… but the current approach yet to be evolved beyond Citizenship as it exists today, and the current $420 yearly cost of membership is a high barrier for new people who haven’t yet embraced the Citizenship value proposition.

I believe that the best way we can help show people the value of Cabin is by inviting them to awesome gatherings and coliving opportunities. This proposal aims to provide a support structure that will allow for community members to be reimbursed for the cost of hosting gatherings, while encouraging them to help onboarding more people in their local neighborhoods to the mission of living within a 15-minute walking distance of friends.

Its a long journey to improve how and where we live, but most of us live near people… so lets go host more gatherings and make more friends

[Matai]

Sharing FWB’s most recent funding proposal which allocated $45K to support decentralized community events as a reference for what other DAOs are up to:

https://snapshot.org/#/friendswithbenefits.eth/proposal/0xd27556eaab21f00ef43b43805748bee779194f44405fb53bba673f183efe696b

The summary deck they produce about past efforts is also informative for how we could better track engagement: Event Keys Report 12.2023.pdf - Google Drive

Few interesting takeaways:

1/ We could try to apply for keys to support a collab event

2/ They offer $500 for hosting online events, 2x their offer for small-medium scale events like dinners, happy hours, etc. This makes me think we should activate more online events to help folks stay connected globally.

3/ They share that FWB member engagement at events is low (83% of ~6300 attendees were non-members), we don’t have this data for Supper Clubs, but I’d imagine its similar.

4/ They showcase top event hosts … would be awesome for us to celebrate hosts more

5/ Their ops team consists of two council members + tasks for the FWB core team

[Ktando]

@Matai

To help improve the attendee → Citizen funnel, we are working on plans to improve how we equip hosts with knowledge to support guests on this journey, while also looking at how we engage with attendees online.

Would love to see this expanded on in the proposal with more specificity. Without this being more flushed out, it feels premature to invest in just trying to host more dinners.

[Ktando]

Love the idea of being more data driven and sharing how things perform within the DAO. Is there anywhere we can read about past experiments, what our goals were, and we performed relative to those? Bringing this information forward would also help build trust and credibility for future proposals, which are hopefully routed in learnings garnered from earlier experiments.

[Ktando]

@Matai

I believe that the best way we can help show people the value of Cabin is by inviting them to awesome gatherings and coliving opportunities.

I think this is the point that @Zakk is contending. Which is that these efforts have happened before in similar shape with limited success. Are there specific things we have learned with meaningful data or insights that gives us the confidence to try them again and invest further in them?

[Matai]

This is the best place to learn more about past experiments that I’m aware of: History of experiments

Will respond to your other comments soon! Thanks for jumping in to share your feedback

[Ktando]

@Matai

These are open questions that we hope to address during the proposal:
1. How can help community members start hosting a wider array of events?

• the Neighborhood Stewards Cohort program is a great start
• building out event templates in Notion like what @camlindsay built for Supper Clubs as a supporting structure
• staying in touch with the 200+ interested Supper Clubs hosts who have complete the interest survey

2. How can we streamline the USDC and ₡ABIN reimbursements / rewards management process?

• New token standard ERC-6551 allows for ERC-20 balances to be held by an NFT. Hats Protocol might allow for access to a neighborhood treasury to be revoked should need be. Not sure if we need this… but with the proposal to allocate $5/per-attendee to Neighborhood treasuries, it feels like it could help streamline distributing and safeguarding funds. Hats Protocol may also be able to streamline and lower gas fees for distributions. Will check in with them and follow up.

3. How can we streamline Neighborhood Treasury Management?

• We can start with trusting Neighborhood Stewards to manage their neighborhood treasury
• As the program matures, Gnosis Safe multi-sigs seem to be the most straightforward route, but there are others we could explore.
• We should also explore how to reduce transaction fees, with BASE as a target platform to streamline USDC transfer and minimize conversion fees from USDC to USD.

My understanding was we were deemphasizing crypto from onboarding for the time being. Are we anticipating that hosts will have wallets, will Cabin have to help those without one set them up? What’s the technical/admin lift and financial costs to build in some of these proposed efficiencies? Are we prematurely optimizing something that we don’t have enough information on to know if it will be a big issue going forward? If easy and cheap, makes sense. If it’s a distraction and costly, then probably should wait imo.

[jon]

hey @Zakk and @Ktando, great to see you on the forum! Thanks for the feedback : )

Getting groups of people together for gatherings is core to what Cabin is and does. That said, I mostly agree with your concern about the ROI of gatherings that aren’t clearly tied to bigger goals. While we’ve discussed this a lot internally at Cabin Labs recently, I agree that we haven’t clearly represented how this ties to the larger goals in the proposal.

I’d love to see us more explicitly show how this proposal has learned from our experience with Supper Clubs and how the program is evolving in response to those learnings. Sounds like @Ktando is asking for this as well:

@Ktando

Are there specific things we have learned with meaningful data or insights that gives us the confidence to try them again and invest further in them?

Some of the learnings we’ve discussed internally (@Matai @savkruger please add others as well!):

1. Recurring events are the main driver of effective neighborhoods like Fractal and Radish. The goals are currently oriented towards total events / attendees, which is fine, but I think it would be even better to tie the goals more explicitly to recurring events & neighborhood formation, our core Cabin Labs - Spring 2024 goals.
2. Dinner parties are a big lift — they are much more work and more expensive per person than simpler types of gatherings. I’d love to see us orient more towards easier to plan & execute, cheaper, simpler gatherings that we can do more consistently vs. bigger lift gatherings that happen less frequently. This also requires less budget per attendee.
3. Doing events in public places (eg Coffee and Donuts in the Park) is often a better fit for local neighborhood building than in a private space like a home for the reasons outlined in that post.
4. There are still logistics issues with Supper Clubs that have kept us from consistently capturing info from attendees (eg see Cam’s thoughts here: Oakland Supper 3/26 || Recap and Reflections). While this proposal attempts to address some of those issues, I’d like to see better execution on info capture and follow up, and worry that a more decentralized approach will make this difficult.

@Matai I would love to see us incorporate these learnings more into the proposal & update the metrics to reflect a goal around conversion to neighborhoods.

[jon]

We are definitely deemphasizing end user facing crypto. If crypto is useful infra for creating shared resources for a neighborhood, we will use it for that. But we will not expect individuals participating in gatherings/neighborhoods to have a wallet or use crypto directly.

[Matai]

This post summarizes my feedback to recent comments, appreciate everyone’s engagement!

1. Community is more important than profit

By increasing community engagement through in-person events, we are increasing the perceived and actual value that Cabin is delivering as an organization, giving us more capacity to find sustainable financial models in collaboration with our community down the road.

@Ktando to further address your and @Zakk’s questions around ROI, Cabin is an unincorporated non-profit association, and I believe that its ok for certain initiatives to not have direct financial drivers. I’ll add a statement to the proposal to clarify the high level goal, and have already articulated the goals around increasing Cabin’s community engagement metrics to a greater extent that proposed in the Cabin Labs Spring 24 roadmap.

I think its a fair point to request more info on how we’ll improve the community gatherings process from what Supper Clubs started. Had a great conversation with @camlindsay about the topic and will update the proposal with more details soon.

Update, added this to the proposal:

@Matai

To help introduce people to the opportunity, we will create recorded video onboardings along with more comprehensive written guides to streamline the process (shout out to @camlindsay for the idea and effort to draft early improvements)

2. Gathering community is the goal of this proposal

This proposal aims to establish a clear goal of supporting many community gatherings to offer value to our community. The diversity of opportunities for meaningful and frequent gatherings is the most valuable part of the Cabin ecosystem, and I think the DAO should continue to support a broad set of gatherings while Cabin Labs - Spring 2024 explores what it means for the new proposed bets around the Neighborhood Stewards Cohort program.

To respond to @jon’s comment below,

@jon

I mostly agree with your concern about the ROI of gatherings that aren’t clearly tied to bigger goals.

If I understand, the “bigger goals” mentioned are Cabin Labs - Spring 2024’s objectives (screenshot accurate as of Apr 4. 2024):

expanding on the original Cabin Labs proposal to run experiments:

From my perspective, Supper Clubs was the only proposed bet that showed success so far, with:

• 500+ people attending Cabin Supper Clubs
• and newsletter subscriptions rising by 30% (+1000 people)

… having the most direct impact on manifesting opportunities for Cabin’s Guiding Principles and Obvious Truths to be experienced in-person by community members from any other active contributor initiatives.

I think that its a good thing for this proposal to stand independent of the Cabin Labs Spring 24 roadmap. Affirming Cabin DAO’s support for community gatherings of all sorts being up for discussion. I hold this perspective given the lack of a clearly articulated roadmap for how the Spring 2024 goals will contribute towards Cabin achieving a sustainable financial model, with very little progress shown around the cohort program’s ability to effectively introduce our offer value to new community members through Citizenship.

In lieu of all this, I plan to remove language from the proposal that suggests gatherings should only be funded if they are a part of the cohort pipeline, keeping a wider aperture to allow for other types of community building gatherings to be supported by this proposal.

Update, reworded what is defined as an appropriate gathering to this:

@Matai

Increasing the scope of events Cabin offers reimbursement for beyond community meals (Supper Clubs) to include any “appropriate” gathering. “Appropriate” in the sense that:
– the gathering relates to our Guiding Principles and Obvious Truths
– that it has the potential to create opportunity for community connection, without having any negative intentions
– attendees of the event are introduced in some fashion to Cabin, and aware that Cabin sponsored the event

3. More gatherings will help more people be interested in Citizenship

Thinking about the potential for Cabin DAO to act as a public goods organization… as someone with the means, I would be happy to pay for Citizenship if I knew it would support others gathering around the world in the name of building community, and I think that many other community focused builders would agree.

By Cabin taking an honest stand to support community gatherings, we can help create an integral community support structure that our community can build on as a foundation while it explores pathways towards financial sustainability, with some form of Citizenship being the target that seems to makes the most sense.

Through this proposal we can also continue to support gatherings for nomads, a core part of the Cabin community that are being deprioritized by the Cabin Labs Spring 2024 objectives. It is my hope that all nomads find where they want to call home, but this process is a journey, and Cabin has the potential to continue to serve its initial goals with the launch of the Network City by helping people connect to awesome community gatherings around the globe.

As any successful community project will attest, patience is a virtue, but the time to act is now.

[Matai]

I agree that we don’t need to emphasize the crypto part.

The main reason why I support establishing shared Neighborhood Treasuries is to help provide people an opportunity to steward shared resources, and to think as a team vs as individuals.

Its way easier and more fun to host gatherings as a group.

[Matai]

After more thought on this matter, I think I wasn’t fully thinking through (1) the potential for these programs to increase interest in Cabin Citizenship, nor (2) more progressive steps towards decentralization that we can take, (3) the fact that no other active proposal has any documented ROI financial metrics or goals.

(1) Community Gatherings can drive interest in Citizenship

The fact that Citizens can access reimbursement for community gatherings in amazing. More people should want to become Citizens to support more local gatherings near them. Anyone can host their first gathering and get reimbursed, but follow up ones require joining a cohort program, or Citizenship. To encourage Citizen sign ups, I’m proposing we:
– make it required that neighborhood treasuries can only be activated when two or more Citizens are assigned to neighborhood.
– offer to compensate Citizens as guides who spend their time helping other community members host Cabin gatherings (more below)
These new strategies will help us innovate on what was started through Supper Clubs to create more opportunities for gathering hosts to onboard guests into the Cabin ecosystem.

2) We can take more progressive steps towards decentralization

I updated the proposal to include a new contributor role “Gathering Guides” that Citizens qualify for. Guides will be able to support the role that was previously only held by @matai and now @savkruger, to help interested community members host gatherings.

I have also decided to resign from my position as a part of Cabin Labs, effective May 1st, in order to help allocate time towards supporting a decentralized approach to enabling more community gatherings beyond the focus of Cabin Labs Spring 2024 scope. I have added a compensation of $1000 USDC / month and 100 CABIN to the proposal as compensation for my time leading this effort. I have also reduced the overall target to 30 events over 3-months, reaching 450 people, to establish a target that I feel more confident about reaching.

(3) This is the only active Cabin proposal with any documented financial metrics or goals.

With a total cost of $17,000 USDC, if we successfully recruit 20 new Citizens, we’ll recoup $8,400 in membership tithing ($420 per member x 20), continuing our commitment to Citizenship as a way for community members to get more involved and access more benefits (gathering funding + neighborhood treasuries). We’ll also add 450 new people to our newsletter, increasing the broader funnel, while activating 30 community hosts.

As for ROI, this would be the only active proposal with a measurable ROI, as no other active proposal does, representing >$600K in investment for 2024 across: Cabin Labs Spring 2024 roadmap, the Campfire Podcast, nor Technical Needs proposal have documented metrics around financial returns.

–

@Zakk, @Ktando @jon curious how this addresses your ROI concerns? While this proposal doesn’t yet breakeven in this 3-month timeframe, I strongly believe that the momentum generated from continuing to support community gatherings will create much more value for our community long term, and that the scope of Cabin Labs Spring 2024 roadmap is too narrow of a scope, excluding current members of our community from opportunities that were promised to all Citizens, not just ones hosting recurring neighborhood events.

Look forward to hearing yours and others’ feedback, and reminder that we have a live call scheduled tomorrow as an opportunity to discuss

[Matai]

@camlindsay @savkruger, or anyone else interested, would appreciate your feedback on this updated framing of the proposal, and would be happy to add ya into the team section if you want to jump in to support in any pre-meditated ways.

[Ktando]

Thanks for the continued refining here. Excited to discuss further on the call. I think calling out that the other proposals don’t touch on ROI is important, and something that we should all push for more clarity on.

In the Cabin Labs Spring 2024 Roadmap, I see that Citizenship is an effort that we are pausing. Given that it is being paused, should the goal of the dinners/community gatherings be to get more Citizens?