Boardwalk Release Overview Trello Board

We have formed a Swarm City Communication Hive to help spread the vision of Swarm City. In particular we will focus on the release of Boardwalk, and what lies beyond.

Onboarding Matt

In the early days of my involvement with Swarm City I would frequently reach out on Slack to discuss what I thought was a key missing element. The project’s value proposition was clear to see; any lover of decentralized, P2P commerce could instantly understand how the Swarm City platform would offer what no other “app” to date had. However, the brand fork had just occurred, and with it the most outspoken personality in the project had forked off too. It was my opinion that regardless of the internal events that caused the split, in order for Swarm City to grow quickly its value proposition would need clear articulation, and I felt compelled to help with that.

After a short while, kingflurkel began regularly chatting with me and we realized we were very much on the same page philosophically, and I started to help him express Swarm City vision in print. It’s similar to how the Dev team expresses vision in code. Code is a communication delivery tool, in the same way Medium is a communication delivery tool. They each have a different audience, but both outlets can allow an author to inspire and educate in their own way. Within a few weeks @kingflurkel began including me in a newly formed outreach group, and he introduced me to his old friend, and agency veteran Kris D.

Kris gets involved

Kris (@krrisis) has a ton of experience in communications and marketing, working for a variety of firms, from large agencies to tech startups in Belgium. It was in that world where he met @kingflurkel for the first time, while both of them were at the same agency.

When we met I remember asking Kris how he viewed his general skill set. There’s a book called “The E-Myth” that resonates with me. In it, the author mentions that for a group to be successful it must have these three types of people; entrepreneurs, organizers, and technicians. And while each of us has the ability to be any of those to a certain extent, usually one is most dominant. It was in this context that I asked Kris about his skill set, and he knew right away that he is an organizer.

That is something our Communication Hive desperately needed, and because he skews organizer in the context of communications, it made his addition so powerful and necessary. In our hive, Kris is focusing on bringing structure to our efforts using the Trello boards, while refining our communication strategy. He will help onboard people interested in participating, and direct our efforts towards the appropriate audience.

After we met, over the course of several weeks, Kris and I aligned and created the foundation for what became our Swarm City Communication Hive.

What We do

Building a communication hive in Swarm City is different than building a traditional marketing agency. Swarm City is a decentralized community and has little to do with old world style corporate models. With that in mind Kris and I have attempted what the Dev Hive has attempted; to create a productive system that can survive after we are gone, and long after the ETH raised during the token sale is gone. A model, if you will. We want it to function independent of any particular person at the helm, and at the will of the community it serves. To do that, we needed to come up with a system that would give community members the ability to choose and fund communication services based on what they value. Here’s how we’re doing it.

How we work

We are organizing communication projects on Trello boards. If you’re not familiar with it, Trello is a Kanban style project management tool. Of all the tools we looked at Trello is the most robust yet user friendly option to organize around, and it solves the unique requirements of a decentralized group. You may take a look at our boards here:

https://trello.com/b/UjQmbpH1/sprint-2-roadmap-to-boardwalk-live

Each of our Trello boards represents a major project, and we’re using an overview-board/sub-board structure. For the Boardwalk release, our overview board is called “Sprint 2 — Roadmap To Boardwalk”. Each list on that board is a separate sub-board, and each card is a list from the corresponding sub-board. On each sub-board, all cards are tasks. Our boards are public, so anyone may look at them.

Our goal is to assign value to each sub-board, and thus each task on those boards. That way funders can easily determine what tasks and boards they are interested in funding, and people who are interested in helping with the project can offer to complete tasks for a suggested amount. In the near future a wallet will be attached to a task, and completion of the task will trigger a payment from the task wallet to the wallet owned by the person who completes it.

And then things get really cool! Once we integrate Trelleth into our Comm Hive boards, entire projects can be tokenized and funded by anyone interested in seeing those tasks get completed. Organizations that integrate into Swarm City could ask for Comm help by creating their own Trelleth project board, funding communication tasks that are important to them. And of course, copywriters, video producers, marketers, etc. all could complete those tasks for crypto compensation. This is how we progress towards decentralization, and it’s all made possible by Swarm City. At its core, even Trelleth is simply Swarm City expressed a slightly different way. It gives buyers and sellers, service seekers and providers the ability to communicate and transact, aligned together by a project all parties value.

Get Involved

For now, Kris and I could sure use your help. In the very near future Boardwalk will be released and we are determined to tell the world about it. If you’re interested in helping with digital outreach, physical outreach, PR, and more, please check out our boards and our team organization, and come find us in Slack channel #comm-extended. To get an invite into the Swarm City Slack, please go here: http://slackinvite.swarm.city

Cheers!