[Archived] Recurring Writing Contest

🏦 Budgets/Grants
1

Authors: K.#1570

Summary

This proposal aims to define a recurring writing contest for the D_D blog. The goal is to get more content and viewer on the blog and add another exciting event to D_D that fosters education.

Motivation

The word in the D_D Discord was that the vibes were off in the DAO, end of Season 1 and the first half of Season 2. Blog engagement, especially from writers, is a bit down too, and even after we started to write sponsored articles for season partners in-house, members are still complaining that they are too “shill-y”.

I propose a writing contest for the blog, where members can show off their skills and win prizes. This way, the blog gets more content, members write about topics they find exciting, and the best would be rewarded.

Scope of Work

This proposal concerns a recurring writing contest called

Developer DAO Drafting Derby

The idea is a hackathon for technical writers. Each season the contest would have a new theme, which could be related to a hot topic in Web3 at that time. Members submit articles, vote on which they like the most, and win prizes.

The writers must be (KYC’ed?) D_D members and submit their articles to the D_D blog. Each member can submit one article, and each piece has to be at least 2000 words long, follow the current theme of the contest, and adhere to the D_D CoC.

Community Prizes

There would be community prizes, chosen by D_D member vote, which look like this:

  1. place X $USDC
  2. place X / 2 $USDC
  3. place X / 3 $USDC

Season Partner Prizes

Season partners can also choose their own winners that get prizes independently from the community prizes.

Funding with Season Partnerships

The contest becomes an alternative to the sponsored articles. Expenses and prizes are paid with the partnership funds.

Tasks

Tasks the contest coordinator has to do each season:

  • Defining contest theme
  • Finding sponsors
  • Designing assets
    • POAPs for participants, winners, and voters
    • Images for Twitter posts
  • Advertising the contest on Discord and Twitter
  • Gathering articles
  • Reviewing articles
    • just ensuring that it follows the theme, has enough words, and doesn’t breach our CoC
  • Publishing articles
  • Gathering member votes
  • Gathering partners votes
  • Announcing winners
  • Distributing prizes

Timeline

The timeline for this contest is about one month:

  • Contest Preparation
    • Finding sponsors
    • Designing assets
  • 1 week of hyping members on Twitter and Discord
  • 1 week to gather and review submissions
  • 1 week to gather votes from members and let partners choose
  • 1 week to announce winners and distribute prizes

Costs

Contest Coordinators: Y $USDC
Design Bounties: Z $USDC

7 Likes
2

great proposal! this sounds like a fun initiative that could bring more content and engagement to the D_D blog. the scope of work is well-defined and the timeline seems reasonable. full support. good work @Kay :writing_hand:t2::rocket:

1 Like
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Hey @mannyornothing, @Colin4ward, @kempsterrrr

would be cool if you could give your input on the two directions I lined out in the proposal. Thanks!

1 Like
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Thanks for the proposal @Kay :saluting_face:

Very much like the idea of further gamifying content creation and your effort to consider the existing Labs business model (of which the blog is a part) in consideration for this idea.

I don’t believe this needs a proposal as the blog is within the scope of the Labs, which has already been ratified via Governance. It is an internal question for Labs. If this will require us using more treasury funds the Stewards have confirmed a new process for requesting smaller funds here.

The work @Billyjitsu and co have done with mini-hackathons is taking us in the right direction and away from "shilly’ content IMO. This model is not taking more funds out of the Labs profit margin whilst still achieving the same goal of generating more, less “shilly”, member generated content. I’m hoping we double down on this direction with all partners to continue the trend, as Members seem to enjoy it a lot.

That said, I can see there may be room for creating another element of our partnerships package to sell blog bounties - interested to hear @mannyornothing thoughts on this.

In the meantime, I’d propose we simply starting issuing $CODE rewards for the blogs with the highest traffic on our website as an MVP whilst we figure out the above.

To achieve that you’d simple need to submit a request to the stewards via the form in this page.

5

Having just move on to read [Draft] D_D Blog Rewards what I’m suggesting at the end here as the MVP is what you’re suggesting there.

IMO rolling out what you’re suggesting in D_D Blog rewards would be a good MVP and then we open a discussion between the Labs team regarding further incentivising more blogs to be written by Members.

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Partners would love this. We would love to roll this into our partnerships package and you could own this and run this for them just like a mini hackathon. @Kay

2 Likes
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I am a big fan of this and more writing in general :hearts: Happy to support/help with this anyway.

2 Likes
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@kempsterrrr @mannyornothing Cool, cool! I edited the draft so it only reflects the season sponsorship approach. Would be nice to get some input from you on the budget for the community prizes and expenses.

@0x24bF6580ED276b6ff3 would be awesome to work with you on this!