Bounties Network x Kickback Idea: Call for meetups

Introduction

Aragon is one of the brave companies who used our bleeding edge Kickback platform during DevCon4 for their “Aragon dream DAO party”. When I first asked Tatu Kärki (Aragon communications lead), he initially showed concern using Kickback, as he wasn’t sure if he would have enough people to cover receptions, and this is a very valid concern.

In normal meetups, how event organisers handle check-in varies. Some event has “military grade security” while other event check-in is very loose. As long as the venue has enough capacity to handle, event organisers tend to let people in regardless of registration status and sometimes they don’t even bother crossing off names.

This is a bit problematic for Kickback because participants could lose their committed ETH even if they turned up at the event.

Kickback meets Bounties Network

To solve this problem, John Light, the event host of the Aragon Dream DAO party, actually recruited three reception staff using Bounties Network . Many blockchain companies conduct “world tours,” traveling country by country. They may know someone locally in advance but may not know enough people in every city they visit. It would be great to be able to crowdsource their event staff as they go.

Or to take this idea further, what if you can even crowdsource the entire event? You may have someone interested in your project in every city in the world but you wouldn’t have the time and budget. What if, instead, you ask your community members if they are interested in organising local events?

These are the steps I have in mind.

1. In your community channel (telegram, slack, name your chat channel), ask around if anyone is interested in organising local events in their hometown.
2. If someone raises their hand, then help the person (local organiser) setup a bounty asking for venue suggestions. The venue size may vary depending on city but i suggest a 10–20 suggestions and you choose the winning venue from the suggestions.
3. Once the venue, date, and volunteers are set, create an event on Kickback and announce the event.
4. On the day of the event, setup a video chat channel so that you can present your project remotely, followed by remote Q&A. Make sure you pay for beer, pizzas and the event fee to Kickback :-)

What could you bounty?

1. Venue

Whether you rent the venue or some companies offer one for free makes a big difference in terms of the overall cost of your meetup. Pubs and Bars could offer the venue for free in exchange for catering but may not be ideal if you would like to do a proper presentation with a projector.

Other crypto friendly companies may open up their offices if the size is not too big.

You could do a quote gathering bounty where venues submit estimates for your spec, which means you could start the bounty with a nominal amount And then set it to the winning bid (increase prize) and accept the winning bid submission Keep submissions private so there’s no race to the bottom. (You can make it public if you want them to compete for the lowest)

2. Volunteers

Ideally you may want at least two people, one at an entrance checking names, and another at the event room setting up projectors, etc. Making someone cover reception check-ins during the entire meetup is unrealistic depending on the venue, so you may want to make it explicit that participants have to be in the building within a certain time limit (eg: within 30 min from the event start time)

3. Catering

It may be overkill to use Bounties network if all you need to order is beer and pizza, — which you can just order online — but it may be useful if your event requires something special. When I organised the ENS hackathon, the most difficult requirement was to find a caterer who served coffee.

4. Recording equipment and/or staff

In more casual setting, you can just livestream from your phone or your laptop. However, videos are the ones people enjoy even after the event, and you could attract sponsorship if you can edit and put the sponsor logos in the video content itself. If that’sthe case, you may want to find someone with more professional knowledge (and hopefully equipment).

How much would it cost?

As mentioned earlier, whether you can secure a venue for free or not is a big factor in lowering your event cost. Assuming you don’t pay for the venue, here is the “back of the napkin” calculation.

• $30x3 people for bounties
• $100~200 for beer and pizza
• $20 for fee to Kickback (if 20 people turn up)
• Airdrop your token to the participant (optional)

I assume it won’t cost $500 to organise an event. Imagine you do this in 10 different countries, I think it would be a lot more cost effective than traveling around those 10 cities. As another option, you could spend $5000 on one large event or conference, split among dozens of sponsors. You may still want to visit in person for larger cities, but this is definitely is more feasible for non major cities. You could even host “satellite” events in nearby cities to purely supplement capacity limit of your main event.

Summary

Organising events is one of the easiest things you can do without much technical knowledge, which could be the perfect answer to the article “Please Don’t Let Ethereum Be The Next Burning Man: Reflections On Devcon 4”.

“The ring at the Council of Prague was inspiring to me, but I was left without any idea of how to do similar organizing work as a nontechnical person. How do you attract people to your Ethereum Meetup group who don’t know what blockchain is, let alone Ethereum? And what’s the hackathon equivalent? “

We recently had pleasure to present our project at the event Simona Pop of Bountes Network organised and we are keen to continue more collaboration.

If you are interested in experimenting with new ways of forming meetups, please email us at hello@kickback.events