Please describe your proposed solution.

Introduction: We present this project, to establish a physical and digital Spanish-speaking community in Southern Europe (Spain) that promotes the values, principles, and adoption of the Cardano ecosystem through educational, informative, and social activities.

We seek to attract graduates from universities and educational institutions in the fields of computer science and programming to foster the development of new applications, infrastructure, and tools in the Cardano ecosystem.

Problem: Currently, there is no consolidated Spanish-speaking community in Europe that promotes Cardano values and encourages its adoption through education and networking. Every year, between 15,000 and 20,000 people graduate in information technologies from Universities, not counting those who learn in a self-taught and proactive way as digital nomads all over Europe.

Solution: Our solution is to establish both a digital and physical community in Southern Europe (Spain) which has an active presence on social networks, a community on Discord, and develops workshops, webinars, and strategic alliances with communities, universities, and educational institutions to attract developers to the Cardano ecosystem.

Implementation: Our first step in establishing this community is to create a social media brand. We have decided to have a presence on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Youtube and to use Telegram and Discord as spaces for community development.

Once the brand has been established on social networks and the community space developed for the interaction of the members, the next step is to define the strategies.

(Product) Networking Events, Webinars & Workshops: Our main bet is the development of technical and theoric webinars and physical workshops in different places around Spain, the physical sites, will be defined based on what the community demands, or based on the asosiaciones and partnerships that we will establish, the physical events will be made only if we can confirm to have an acceptable attendance, otherwise, we'll make webinars online.

Of course, there will also be meetings where networking will be prioritized, with speakers, projects, and other aspects of great value for the community.

(Place) Digital and Physical Community: The development of our physical spaces (workshops) and the digital community space (Discord and social networks) will require people in charge of Community Management, to perform the onboarding of members, encourage their engagement, and manage decision-making both within the digital community in Discord, as well as in the planning and execution of face-to-face workshops.

(Reach, Growth & Branding) Partnerships with Educational Institutions: This strategy seeks to increase our reach both as a brand in the Web3 educational environments in Spain, but also to directly reach future developers, systems engineers, and other professionals who are interested in adopting the vision and values of Cardano and transform it into tools, applications and infrastructure for the ecosystem.

To achieve this, we will contact Universities and Institutes and we will see how they can find interesting for us to prepare a workshop or live class to bring to their students or institution, we are flexible as we are looking for W2W for both parties.

(Reach & Branding) Strategic alliances with communities and organizations: We know that today, there are a large number of communities in digital spaces such as Slack, Discord, or Telegram, we believe that some of them can be of great value for our purpose, as there are professionals and self-taught students, natives and digital nomads.

(Reach & Growth) Social Networks and Digital Marketing: All the content that we generate that is relevant to the community or to attract our target audience to it will be published in our digital channels, which we can use ADS campaigns in the organic content generated to have more arrival. (Workshops and Online Seminars) almost all the material we develop will be recorded and published on our YouTube channel to be consumed offline.

What would our Conversion Funnel look like from our arrival, to the real impact of the ecosystem?

Discovery: This is the initial stage of the funnel, where we aim to appear on the radar of our target audience through each growth and outreach strategy. If we manage to engage this newly reached audience, or the one we are already present in, to take a step towards participating and interacting with the community, we would progress to the next stage.

Consideration: At this stage, university students or individuals from educational institutes, or those we reach through online and organic digital content, have joined the Discord community, but have not yet actively participated or attended a physical event.

Engagement: This pre-final stage is considered when we get a member to attend a physical event. We believe that by doing so, the member has already allocated time and resources to attend the event and shows interest.

Loyalty: This final stage is considered if the community member actively participates in the community, whether in open-source projects, public discussions, or technical development.

Some Expected results:

a. Establish a digital and physical Hispanic community in Southern Europe.

b. Reach at least 350 verified members on our Discord server in the first 6 months.

c. To have generated at least 5 physical workshops in different cities in Spain.

d. Develop at least 6 online seminars with a total duration of 4 hours.

How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

The objective of this proposal is to form a physical and digital community in Southern Europe that allows all SPOs and developers of the ecosystem a common space where they can get support, guidance, and networking.

Our proposal is in line with the challenge because it seeks to:

1. Establish a physical Spanish-speaking community of SPOs in Europe that supports developers and operators of the Cardano ecosystem.
2. Develop events, workshops, and webinars to contribute to the training and dissemination of the ecosystem.
3. Establish a digital space on Discord to help developers and operators with networking and personalized support.
4. Attract more developers and potential operators through contact with universities and educational institutions.
5. Create educational and informative audiovisual content organically and publicly on YouTube.

How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

To measure the impact and success of the community, we have thought of these 5 families of metrics, it should be clarified that it can be modified once we start the execution of the strategies so that the analysis is more concrete

Reach:

1. Number of institutions contacted. (Universities and Institutions)
2. Number of registrations for workshops and webinars.
3. Number of followers on social networks.
4. Number of webinar views.

Activation:

1. Number of people joining the community after attending a physical event.
2. Number of people joining the community after attending a digital event.
3. Number of people attending a physical event.
4. Number of people attending a digital event.

Engagement:

1. Number of posts, comments, and reactions in the Discord community.
2. Average time members spend in digital events.
3. Number of members participating in community polls or votes.

Growth:

1. Total number of members in the community.
2. Number of new members joining the community each month.
3. Member retention rate (percentage of members who remain in the community after a certain period of time).
4. Number of members who become collaborators or volunteers for the HUB.
5. Number of strategic alliances formed with other communities or institutions.

Loyalty:

1. Community members participating in the Active Fund.
2. Community members who are developing an application or tool as a developer. (actives)
3. Community members who are pool operators.

Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

In the course of the development of the proposal, as we have stated, the main community center for organization and interaction between administrators, moderators, and members of the community is Discord, so that all management, votes, decisions, workshops, webinars, and planned events are discussed with the community to obtain their approval.

Webinars and workshops will be recorded and uploaded to a YouTube channel in a public way, so that the educational and informative content will serve for the growth and organic awareness of the communit, and of course, we will also have a Twitter account where we will share all the most relevant news and announcements for the community.

The KPIs we use to measure the success of the proposal, as well as the events organized, will be shared publicly through a Discord dedicated channel so that all members are aware of the evolution of the community. There will also be a channel to publish payments to teachers, coordinators, organization expenses, and others.

What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

Ayax Labombarda, has extensive experience participating in Catalyst, since Fund 3, obtaining funding for 6 proposals, most of which are now complete. He has experience in product, team, and project management, as well as in the definition of marketing and sales strategies at the vision and business objectives level.

This focus on business activity, metrics, data analytics, and leadership is certified by his studies in Project Management, Product Delivery & Product Manager at the University of Maryland, and a Product HUB Bootcamp.

Also, it is worth clarifying that Ayax is a Discord user since 2016, he has managed several communities over the past 3 years, something that is highly important for the success of this proposal.

Ambassadors: This proposal also has the support of other relevant members of the Spanish ecosystem, who due to lack of time can not commit full or partial time, so they have decided to speak out in this list and offer their knowledge, resources, and connections to enhance the scope, development, and success of the proposal. LINK

What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

To define the main goals of the proposal, we have defined the following OKRs.

Objective 1: Establish a Discord community for developers and pool operators of the Cardano ecosystem.

KR1: Attract 100 members to the Discord community in the first 3 months.

KR2: Maintain a 60% member retention rate after 6 months.

KR3: Achieve an average of 30 messages per week in the Discord community after 3 months.

Objective 2: Develop agreements, events, and workshops with educational institutions that attract potential developers and entrepreneurs to the Cardano ecosystem.

KR1: Establish at least 3 collaboration agreements with educational institutions in the first 4 months.

KR2: Organize at least 10 workshops or events in collaboration with educational institutions in the first 6 months.

KR3: Attract at least 100 participants in the first 3 months.

Member interaction and validation: As mentioned above in the section on how we will share community updates and results, we will also use the Discord server to validate our proposals with members, since there is no point in organizing and paying for events if the community does not come. So daily and close contact with members is essential for us, so for this, we will have a full-time Community Manager.

Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

1r Milestone:

Estimated duration: 1 month (October)

Tasks:

2d Milestone:

Estimated duration: 1 month (November)

3r Milestone:

Estimated duration: 1 month (December)

4th Milestone:

Estimated duration: 1 month (January)

5th Milestone:

Estimated duration: 1 month (February)

Tasks:

6th Milestone:

Estimated duration: 1 month (March)

7th Milestone:

Estimated duration: 1 month (April)

Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

t

Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

For the budget planning, the following issues have been taken into account.

1. This Fund10, being in ADA, makes the budgets impossible to calculate in the future at the value of the dollar, so we had to think about an on-demand distribution system.
2. We have established the total budget requirement, taking into account the current price of ADA at the exchange rate of 0.30 to the dollar.
3. If the price goes up, as payments are distributed throughout the project, all it does is increase your resources and estimated lifetime.
4. To ensure that the funds are used exclusively for the development of the HUB, the salaries established for the project leaders have a LIMIT in USD and all transactions will be made public.

Payrolls: Salaries are determined as 30/hs per week jobs at standard Spanish rates.

• Product Manager $1.200 x 7 = $8.400
• Chief of Operations and Communications $1.500 x 6 = $9.000

Total in payrolls for 7 months of work: $17.400 x 0,30 USD/ADA = A 52.200

Presupuesto para profesores: To determine a correct rate, we have determined that you will be paid between $300 and $600, depending on the complexity and time invested in the course. Keeping in mind that the objective is to develop 2 workshops and webinars per month, varying between physical and digital formats.

$1.200 x 6 months of workshops, 12 planned in total: $7.200 x 0,30 USD/ADA = A 21,600

Logistics budget: The logistics budget corresponds to the transportation of those responsible for the physical event, and also includes the mobilization of physical materials necessary to develop the workshops.

Average European airfare: €80 round trip.

Average accommodation: €100 per day.

The average is made for 5 people, taking into account organizers, collaborators, cameramen or video and teachers.

6 workshops: $1.000 x 6 months of workshops: $6.000 x 0,30 USD/ADA = A 18,000

Marketing and audiovisual productions budget: This budget corresponds to the production of images and audiovisual content derived from the events, workshops and webinars, which we will also advertise on Twitter ADS to achieve a greater reach.

Coste promedio de contratar un fotografo/videografo al dia.

Presupuesto para ADS:

Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Ayax Labombarda - Product Manager. LINKEDIN

He has 3 years of experience in project and product management, plus 2 years of experience participating in Catalyst, where he has funded 6 proposals since Fund 3, also is certified in Product Manager & Project Manager with full agile methodologies. In addition, he has knowledge of metrics and analitycs to measure product impact and strategize.

Positions to hire:

1. Community Manager (Discord & Twitter).
2. Communications and event logistics manager.
3. Teachers to teach Webinars and Workshops.

How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

To determine the costs of the project, we have used the average rates of freelancers in Europe, specifically in Spain, which tend to be a little lower than the European average.

In addition, we have included a budget for logistics for the teachers and all the necessary resources to record the workshop or event and the post-production to upload it to social networks, and one small buidget for marketing.