Hey friends!
As I slowly get back into my routine after Devcon, I wanted to reflect on the value of investing time and money in real-world events over the last few weeks. Colin and I also chat about it from a financial strategy standpoint.
We are also planning an online “fireside chat“ with our experts from Deep Work at the end of the week. More on that below.
Recent internal updates
Sarah is currently facilitating alignment workshops for the Scroll community with our friend Eugene. The goal is to understand how community members envision collective governance and coordination.
I have completed a set of organizational design workshops for a non-crypto client from Spain, which Lucia has helped translate.
The KAON project has been completed and paid.
Total Treasury Balance: $10,904.00 (0.11 BTC)
What was the cost/value of Deep Work at Devcon?
From a financial standpoint, we spent $1,865 USD on accommodation for Justina and me, the Deep Experiences venue, and food for the event. Due to our investment in Bitcoin, the cost made no impact on our dollar-denominated running costs and our runway.
The intentions of going to Devcon can be split into qualitative and quantitative expectations. Of course, we are interested in attracting paid work by increasing the chances of meeting value-aligned clients.
But we also want to strengthen our community, increase awareness of Deep Work in the broader ecosystem, and iterate on public-facing projects. All of which benefit us as individuals and the community as a whole. Here are some of my notes:
Justina and I got to live together, exercise, and learn a lot from each other. We had a great time and appreciated being each others’ flatmates for the week.
We reconnected with friends from the web3 community and developed new relationships. Laura, who worked with us in the past, also decided to come to Bangkok.
Hosting the Adoption Hub was an opportunity to evaluate how people understand the “adoption path diagram” in the real world, which is similar to our diagram on the new website.
In addition, we have a list of people who expressed interest in joining our sessions. These are essentially “lukewarm leads“ we can reach out to and see if they are still interested in meeting us. It also seems like a good idea to repeat the adoption hub in other places.
We ran several iterations of the new IRL workshop format. They were not paid, but the feedback has been very positive and the workshops are clearly valuable.
We hosted the Deep Experiences event, which brought our friends together in a mindful space. After a retrospective, Justina created a summary of the process and how we approached it. Next time (EthDenver?) we can rely on the process and be much more precise about the value of the event to our participants.
Beth and I hosted the Design Jam (I mentioned previously), which sparked a lot of enthusiasm among different stakeholders. In the next weeks, we will start fleshing out the next iteration.
One person reached out for a potential paid design sprint (still in conversation), despite us not intentionally trying to seek out work.
In summary, most of the short-term impact lies in strengthening relationships and the validation and improvement of our processes. With regard to our position in the market environment, I think we are on the right path to solidifying our presence in the web3 community while slowly attracting a non-web3 audience through IRL workshops.
If the potential client project takes place (depending on them receiving a grant), the investment will also pay off financially.
Deep Work Expert Fireside Chat on Friday
After reading Michel Bauwen’s overview of savings groups in Thai communities and juxtaposing resource-sharing principles with the social interactions among Deep Work experts, I realized that in addition to a shared treasury, there’s a similarity in how we individually cultivate, constantly evolve, and share our skills and knowledge.
The article mentions regular meetings among community members, as an important part of cohesion. To see how it could work for us, Justina and I decided to host a “Fireside Chat” for our community to share what we’ve learned with each other. If we like it, we can keep repeating it to stay connected despite being a distributed collective.
We will host it on Friday, December 6th, on Twitter Spaces. You can check the Luma page behind the button below if the time suits you:
On a side note, it seems like the link to our Telegram group didn’t work last time, please check if this one works. Or this one. Or send me a DM.
Updated org map and BD process split
I updated the current org map with a few roles and emerging projects (like the adoption hub or design jam) that have the potential to be repeated. Let me know if you have suggestions or are interested in exploring anything. I apologize if some names or details are missing.
Based on the BD process I shared two weeks ago, I created two new roles. It seems to represent more accurately how we currently connect clients to Deep Work and this month I will observe if this process works. The Ambassador role will be compensated with 10% of the project revenue. As the Account Manager, it is my task to analyze the current state of a project and forward it to the right experts.
Upcoming Events
I’m keeping an eye on events that seem to be interesting to facilitate workshops, host side events at, or just meet up. There are no specific plans yet, though.
February 23rd - March 2nd, 2025 - EthDenver in Denver, Colorado
April 2025 - Metacamp (if you’re experienced in administration and production work, the organizers are looking for support, DM me for details!)
What I learned this week…
The Emergence of Collaborations - Wouter A H Spekkink, Frank A A Boons
I was curious if there is research on how collaborations emerge before they become explicit. This paper examines two examples of organizations and how previous events and experts led up to their existence.
After uncovering “building blocks“ (previous events and collaborations), they explain how “bridging actors“ (people with multiple relevant skills) surface a “common ground” (similarity of challenges among previous projects) and choose the right people at the right time to facilitate the new collaborations.
Commons-based Savings Groups in Thailand - Michel Bauwens
As mentioned above, this is an overview of community cohesion and resource sharing within a community of local farmers.
Detailed business report for November
Treasury & Finance
We spent $1,865 USD on our presence in Bangkok. At the same time, our Bitcoin holdings experienced a significant increase in value, which currently balances out the expense.
Treasury Balance: $8,432.73 (0.13 BTC)
Revenue: $7,300 (KAON pitch deck)
Profits: $800 (KAON pitch deck)
Internal payments: $1,865 (Devcon) + $300 (website development)
Operational costs: $624.96
BD & Sales
This month, I also had less time to follow up with or schedule calls with prospects.
Show rates: 4 conversations
Schedule rates: 2
Close rates: 1
Have a nice start to the last month of the year and see you in two weeks!
Andrej
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