Yesterday I presented a draft plan to get a Steem Ambassadors program up and running.
It was great to see so much interest and so many offers from people to get involved.
I will be doing a followup post on the Ambassadors scheme shortly but in the meantime I wanted to put forward a second complementary part to the Outreach Program for Steem.
As well as the Ambassadors presenting Steem at crypto conferences, Steem also needs people 'on the ground' promoting the platform at a more local level.
While it will be great in the future to have Steem representatives in every city and town, as a starting point it would be good to have people at country or regional level.
These would be Regional Leaders.
Regional Leaders
The role of a Regional Leader would be to promote Steem on an ongoing basis at a regional level.
This would include activities such as...
- Organising Steem meetups, and liaising and assisting with events others are organising.
- Promoting Steem to local and regional press and media.
- Sharing information about Steem to local and regional social media.
- Representing Steem at events in the region such as community festivals and freshers fairs.
- Networking and keeping in touch with Steemians in the region who like to be involved in regional activities.
That geographic coverage of a Regional Leader would vary according to country size and steem numbers and activity. In the UK there might be Regional Leaders for Wales, Scotland, the Midlands etc. For other countries like Nigeria or the USA it would likely be at state level.
Regional Leaders would be voluntary positions but they would be supported with resource materials, merchandise and training. The aim would be also to have small budgets for printing, venue hire etc. There would also be significant potential for the Regional Leaders to earn enhanced author rewards from posts about activities.
People suitable to be Regional Leaders would likely have at least nine months active presence on Steem and ideally have some experience of offchain community activity or organisation.
In the first instance volunteers would be invited and there would then be some form of selection procedure.
Once selected Regional Leaders would have a six month probationary period before being confirmed in their position.
Governance & Management
There would need to be some small coordinating body to oversee and manage the Regional Leader program.
That body would be involved in Regional Leader recruitment and selection, monitoring of activity, and overseeing any budgets attached to the project.
Attached to that body there would also need to be at least one program administrator to look after day to day tasks such as organising promotional materials, regular communication with leaders etc.
Any budgets and financial transactions would all documented openly on the blockchain for community scrutiny.
Regional Leaders would be expected to make at least fortnightly updates and report backs on their activity.
Budget & Funding
As the Regional Leaders would be voluntary positions there would not, at least initially, be a requirement for such a large budget as the Steem Ambassadors program.
It would however be useful to have some funding available to cover costs of venues, merchandise, promotional materials etc. Further consideration would be needed on this but a broad target budget might be US$ 1000 per Regional Leader per year.
As with the Steem Ambassadors it would be good to have a six month trial of the Regional Leaders program with perhaps six leaders in place.
Along with some central budget for design costs, materials and contingency this might require funding of up to US$ 5000. A bid for this could be put to the Steem Proposal System either separately or as part of an overall Outreach Program including the Steem Ambassadors project.
The term 'Regional Leaders' has been used here as it was borrowed, and parly inspired, by a similar program that is being run in the BAT/Brave community.
Alternatively the role could be termed Regional Coordinator or Regional Representative.
As with the new Steem Ambassadors project the Regional Leaders scheme might in due course find a home with the Steem Foundation.
In the meantime if people think this useful I am happy to work with anyone interested to get the project up and running.
Again, as with the Ambassdors idea, I can organise an open forum on MSP to discuss further and in more detail as required.
Comments welcome.
[ image from pixabay.com ]