At NEO DevCon 2019, manager of ecosystem growth for NEO Global Development (NGD), Tamar Salant, announced the launch of a new initiative entitled NEO Friends. NEO Friends aims to offer various forms of resources to NEO community members who seek to contribute to the development of the ecosystem. Such contributions may include document translation, original content creation, hosting local meetups or regional events, and other ways participants may bring value to the ecosystem.

Near the beginning of her DevCon presentation, Salant asked, “in a virtual world, comprised of cryptocurrency and blockchain, what does it mean to be part of a community and a community member?”

Salant stated NGD believes it entails building the Smart Economy together, in a virtual, open source, decentralized, and global manner.

Salant went on to say the NEO Friends initiative aims to incentivize “a good environment. It’s for creating something better. [NGD] see the community as something almost sacred, and connections and reputation are important. Being part of the NEO community you get benefits, but you also have responsibilities. Part of that is using NEO Friends to create good.”

In a DevCon interview with NEO News Today, Salant said, NGD has “been meeting local communities all across the globe this past year. We see the enthusiasm. We know a lot of people who want to translate content into their local languages. People who want to organize NEO meetups in different regions, who go to university as students or are part of the academic world, and want to be more active in understanding blockchain, DLT technology, and talk about NEO as well. We’re creating this program to help foster, and to strengthen these local communities.”

Current Details on NEO Friends Initiative

The NEO Friends initiative will be open to all – developers and non-developers alike – who wish to participate. Salant said, “one of the things that make [NEO Friends] so unique is so many people are coming from different backgrounds, with different skillsets. Everyone and anyone can contribute in some way.”

The initiative will establish three geographic scales of interaction: global, regional, and local.

At the global level, interactions will include infrequent events such as DevCon and hackathons, or reward individuals who maintain a continuous online presence, contributing to the ecosystem.

Regional level efforts will entail actions that take place on specific continents, or in one particular linguistic region. Such efforts could include hackathons and workshops.

Local level efforts might include hosting meetups, or growing a local developer community to give developers the opportunity to engage with each other face-to-face, ask questions, and coordinate.

In addition to the three geographic groupings, there will also be “tiers,” or levels of activity, within the NEO Friends initiative. However, the program is still in its infancy, and NGD has yet to release guidelines detailing the levels of rewards and participation.

Initially, anyone will be able to participate in the NEO Friends initiative, and will begin engaging in the program through the “base layer.”

Contributions might include “on-ground activities,” whether they involve hosting meetups, talking to universities and academia, translating content, or creating new content in various languages.

As activity continues to develop through the life of the initiative, then the different levels of NEO Friends will begin to differentiate themselves from one another. As NEO Friends is a new initiative, the responsibilities and focuses of participants could evolve over time as new requirements and challenges emerge that NEO Friends can help resolve.

As is the case with development that takes place within the NEO ecosystem, NEO Friends will follow the “contribute first, reward later” model, which is to correspond with levels of activity.

NGD aims to release guidelines for the initiative soon.

Interested individuals are encouraged to apply for NEO Friends initiative by reaching out to NGD via various social media platforms, or to Tamar Salant directly via email at TamarSalant@neo.org.

Salant’s NEO DevCon presentation can be seen here on the livestream replay at the 7:26:53 mark.

Salant’s interview with NEO News Today can be seen on the video below: