Yes, it could also be called merchandise. That line item is for non-Event SWAG to give away in things like community contests. The stuff we give away at events goes under Events. In Cycle 7 we spent nothing on non-Event SWAG so it was part of the $74,458.79 carried over.
I changed it from SWAG to Community. That’s probably a better name for the category. Recently we’ve been giving API3 tokens instead of merchandise as tips for community contests.
Is there a breakdown of what exactly the non-grant estimated expenses are? I only that for the events you’re looking at supporting the efforts at KBW, which iirc comes to around 5k of expenses maybe, so I’m wondering how the remainder of the 100k came about
Same with PR, advertising, content, etc
The events budget is based on what it cost during the cycle when we sponsored ETHDenver, which is a high-end estimate. A rough breakdown would look something like:
It doesn’t mean we will spend that much this cycle. But if we don’t have the money allocated then we have to wait until the next cycle to request it and some of this stuff has to be paid for months in advance which means we would not be positioned to sponsor an event. $100k feels like a reasonable budget to work within. Money not spent is carried over to the next cycle.
The Korea Blockchain Week trip for you, Ashar, and Ry is the only thing we’ve committed to that would come out of the Events budget.
PR is mainly for help getting earned media coverage. That’s been reduced significantly from previous cycles. Due to market conditions we ended a contract with a PR firm.
We’ve spent nothing on advertising in previous cycles. Now that dAPIs are available on mainnets we intend to do a small amount of paid advertising.
Content is for outsourced content creation. The majority of it is planned to be website and animated video work from Entrecasa.
TY for the reply and sorry for the late response as I know you want to put this out there soon
Is there a breakdown of what exactly the costs of outsourced content creation would be like? I can see that it was 25k for last cycle - what was this spent on exactly?
Advertising seems like a rather small amount so I think that’s justified; where do you think you will be putting up ads at?
As for events, I think the high estimate wouldn’t make much sense for this cycle because I don’t think we’d be going to many events beyond KBW and some Lisbon related things - I don’t see us doing any major sponsorship either because I can’t think of a major release that is coming up
I understand that it won’t be used in its entirety but this would rather be about optics. I would say just having a cycle where it seems that the marketing budget is below 200k would look good from an outside pov, so I would mainly recommend cutting down the events budget by half unless otherwise justified
And for that section I have a question related to last cycle - how did the $15k expense in swag come about? I assume it was related to the ale and stuff from Denver
Overall I think it’s cool that the marketing team has consistently been cutting down on costs since Denver where possible, but I’m just looking at all the expenses beyond grants and seeing how there’s scope for it being toned down
ETHDenver payment deadline was November 1st last year.
ETHcc had to be paid by February.
There is also messari mainnet (potentially?) for which we should have some tickets included in our membership.
It makes sense to have the cash ready, since it will be carried over anyway.
We don’t know the deadlines and ETHDenver could just as well be asking for money in October.
The events budget is not an estimate for event expenses. It’s an amount available, in case we need it for events during the cycle, without having to submit a new proposal. It’s in the same spirit as the hot wallet. Often you have to pay for these things months in advance and they cost less if you pay early.
I’m fine with reducing the events budget if the consensus is that it’s too high but don’t confuse it with an estimate or money that will necessarily be spent. We would use judgement on what to actually spend. The budget is just the maximum and anything unused would be carried over, reducing the amount requested for the next cycle as usual.
If we do reduce it by half, why would that be more justified? Why not just limit it to $5k for KBW? My perspective is having some available, if needed, for strategic event expenses is valuable. But how much is subjective and debatable.
It was 23,123.27 last cycle. About $19k of that went to Entrecasa for design/web dev work for API3.org and the new API3 Market site. The rest went to animations and video editing, videography at EthCC, and a small amount of copywriting since we didn’t have Tom at the beginning of the cycle.
Where do you see a $15k expense for SWAG?
Good points. I do see the value in having an arbitrary amount but I guess my point was more that we probably won’t be having an ETHDenver-like event so I’m not sure why we’d want something as large. But as Ugur said it makes sense to have cash on hand, though I think just sponsorship should be enough. All in all it’s innocuous and ultimately just a quibble but I thought I’d ask about it, and the amount selected looks like what would be a reasonable upper limit
Is the new content fund reserved for Entrecasa again?
Yes, most of the content budget is intended for Entrecasa for website development and explainer videos.
The 15k for SWAG/merch in my rough breakdown was not specifically from ETHDenver. That was just a contrived breakdown of what an event sponsorship with a significant presence might cost from experience.
Midhav, taking your feedback into consideration I reduced the amount reserved for unplanned events from 90,000 to 65,000 and reduced the amount to replenish the community tips wallet from 12,000 to 8,000. I suspect that will still be plenty in case we need it for events, and 12,000 was probably more than we will need for community tips. I hope that helps.
To be clear, that events money wasn’t allocated to be spent. It was a part of a reserve to enable currently unplanned efforts to happen mid-cycle and only if needed. I learned from ETHDenver that having to wait for the next cycle or passing a new proposal for that stuff can be inefficient and more expensive so I would like to have some reserved just in case.
I updated the budgeted expenses section with more detail to clarify what the intent of each amount is. Thanks @Midhav, @LikeTheJar & @Emily for the feedback!
you’ve def made some valuable changes - gg
yep, got it
this is p useful thx
Updated @Marcus 's role from Community Lead to Analytics & Community. This reflects a transition he’s been making from the community lead role to focus on measurement and reporting of marketing team and growth efforts. We feel this is more valuable to the DAO. He’ll still be involved in the API3 community and run community activities.
I’ve already decided that I’ll be in favour of this but I’m still wondering about a few things
Animated explainer videos - how often? What quality? What content? I assume @T.W is in charge of this
Also Tom you mentioned supporting other team members with content - would that be for interviews?
What are the plans exactly with the developer-targeted advertisements?
Since bringing in devs would be a key deliverable for the team, how do we plan to measure how successful we are? I assume that’d mean just tallying the number of devs that have come in - though this can be attributed to simply making our offerings known rather than targeted ads
@Marcus
Overall just curious about the plans
Being responsible for Communications, Tom could assist with anything content-related, such as assisting in writing the scripts for the videos. Regarding the quality, I have recently elaborated on that in this post. The ultimate goal is to have a video series that explains the API3 technology, DAO and different components of the ecosystem.
It’s mentioned that Tom is going to support other team members’ written content -if that’s what you are referring to. That could include reviewing articles, AMA / interview scripts, community initiatives, announcements, tweets, newsletters and more.
Yes, that’s why we are putting a strong focus on analytics in this cycle. I am currently working on a thorough documentation on how to effectively utilize Google Analytics (and additional tools) to measure our marketing efforts, observe user behaviour and traffic and identify our strength and weaknesses. Tom is also going to assist in that regard. This documentation will be an ongoing effort and expand based on our experience and research as we move on. Complementary to that, I am working on a demo analytics project to provide a short-term deliverable that will demonstrate how Google Analytics can be used in practise to measure and compare the outcome of different marketing efforts.
Added more specific deliverables to the scope section which should have been included in the first place and should help answer some of the questions above.
Updated the reserved budget for unplanned events from 65k to 40k. Previously there was a chance we would need more for Devcon but a decision hadn’t been made. Now I’m comfortable removing that from the budget.
Updated Ry’s role from Social Media to Community Engagement to reflect changes in how we’ll manage the official API3DAO Twitter handle and LinkedIn page.
He will help of course but I’ll be in charge of them.
Anything team members want his help with but he was hired first and foremost for writing.
No detailed plans to share on here but at a high level, now that we have data feeds and the API3 Market live it makes sense to inform developers, get them to visit, and track it the best we can.
0 voters
thx for the replies, no other questions at this point
i’ll have to look at the results from the new elements of the scope by next cycle and add my thoughts then
saw her swooping into the maxis chat with this, me like