Please describe your proposed solution.
The Leadership Academy Book Club will hold monthly book club meetings to discuss the books recommended by IOG for dReps:
"As we move into delegation, you will play a pivotal role in championing and safeguarding the future of Catalyst and Cardano. So, in the meantime, we would encourage you (if you haven’t done so already) to read a recent blockchain governance paper written by two senior IOHK researchers and additionally the initial treasury paper A Treasury System for Cryptocurrencies: Enabling Better Collaborative Intelligence.
More broadly, studies on collaboration and communication are always net-positive endeavors. Some recommendations; The Power of Experiments, Reinventing Organizations, and Reinventing Discovery."
One of these papers or books will be read each month. After the community has had a month to acquire and read the materials, the Leadership Academy will hold an in-person book club meeting that is open to dReps and the entire community. The book club will be facilitated by a host who has read and is knowledgeable about the material and will set up and use a shared Miro board to guide the conversation and record notes about the book. These sessions will also be recorded and uploaded to a YouTube channel where people can view and listen to the session if they are unable to attend in person.
These book clubs have proven to be effective ways of engaging the community to read about and discuss important topics such as systems and design thinking, and we will continue the same format with the dRep governance topics.
This proposal will fund the book club for four months, facilitating and managing four separate book club sessions, along with corresponding video and Miro notes.
Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.
This Challenge states:
For the dRep to function better, the following four elements are necessary
(1) dReps must be diverse.
(2) There should be many dReps.
(3) High delegation participation rate.
(4) Appropriate selection of dReps for delegation.
Failure to achieve (1) and (2) is centralization, and failure to achieve (3) and (4) is Catalyst dysfunction.
The challenge speaks to finding ways of increasing the diversity and number of dReps, as well as having a high delegation participation rate, and the appropriate selection of dReps. The dRep Education Book Club seeks to address these needs through education. By educating the dReps and the broader community on the books recommended by IOG through reading and study, we can bring more participation from both individuals deciding to become dReps from an increased sense of civic duty after learning more about governance, as well as the general community who will see the need to delegate in order to ensure a strong and decentralized voting mechanism to make good choices in the governance of Project Catalyst.
Fundamental to civic duty is education. Without proper knowledge of why governance is important, it is hard to know why one should participate. Through our selection of books and the holding of book club sessions, we will raise the collective knowledge of the community, seed advocates for governance, and inspire people to get more involved as dReps to make Catalyst governance succeed.
What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?
Risk: Conflicts of timing with major holidays or Catalyst events that prevent good book club turnout
Mitigation: Be aware of calendar events (in the fall, avoid USA Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays), and pick dates that are good for most people. Is there is a significant Catalyst event that would prevent people from attending, we can always reschedule to a later date for the meetings as they are not time sensitive.
Risk: COVID or other situations prevent the facilitator from holding the book club meetings.
Mitigation: These meetings are not time sensitive, so the delay of meetings is not catastrophic. If absolutely required, a backup facilitator will be found to substitute.
Risk: Governance is not a sexy topic and no one will want to read books about it and then discuss
Mitigation: The book club will be announced on several social media channels, including the Swarm Discord, Project Catalyst Discord server in the "book club" channel, the Catalyst School Discord, "entrepreneurs book club" channel, and the Leadership Academy Book Club telegram channel. The importance of the topic will be brought up in community discussions and we will make governance a fun topic to discuss!