Users and community don’t always overlap - especially when what you are building is redefining the very fabric of society. The mission of Nation3 is quite literally to change the world as we know it today, and I don’t mean WeWork’s ‘elevate the world’s consciousness’ - I mean actually rebuilding the centuries-old nation state structures into those that make their citizens wealthier and revert global catastrophes by smart progress.
When your plans are that ambitious, chances are that the early community would not be the same as the end ‘users’ or citizens, or at least be only a part of them.
I am drafting another post arguing who and why we should target our ‘end users’. Here I would like to attempt to define our early community as it is today, and propose steps to cultivating, nurturing, and directing it towards our common goals.
First things first, our community is clearly a group of individuals that resonate with Nation3’s mission, care about the problems it is trying to solve, and who and have the desire, skills and mindset to make it happen.
To me, our early community are individuals with a high degree of personal sovereignty, low connection with their nation states of birth, and a unique understanding of the urgency for change. Due to a strong overlap in values, many of these community members are crypto-natives, meaning that they were among the first to realise the value of censorship-free internet money, the power of decentralised autonomous organisations, and the importance of privacy.
Many likely consider themselves digital nomads, or at the very least have lived in places other than their state of birth; are more likely to ‘shop’ for favourable jurisdictions (wether in terms of taxes, regulation, stability, regard for personal freedoms or other criteria).
Many of our community members are skilled in a myriad of areas including smart contract development, front end, design, growth, community, and even broader things like philosophy, political economy, and game theory.
Our goal should be to nurture a community of those that resonate the strongest with the vision of Nation3, and have the skillset and determination to help bring it to life.
In broader terms, nurturing a community involves:
- Having clarity on what you do
- Having clarity on what they can do to advance that
- Having clarity on what they would get out of it (financially; using products that address their needs; and by having a sense of accomplishment of personal values and goals)
- Cultivating a sense of belonging & stronger connections between members.
Community cultivation - ideas for concrete actions
Below are some ideas for community activation that come to mind, following the framework above:
- Expand on the mission, the specific route Nation3 is taking to get there, and how to get involved on the website. (Done)
- Expand on initiatives currently underway and articulate ongoing projects well - I’d propose in blog post form, linked from the website
- Encourage (incentivise) regular blogging on all things cloud nations, DAO governance, and philosophical and practical issues of re-building nation states. There can be a ‘writers guild’ or such, that is open to anyone but subject to peer reviews before posting and basic reputation score to ensure high quality content
- Appoint a social media manager to do proactive Twitter management (perhaps in conjunction with other community duties)
- Establish monthly community updates from each guild, submitted on the forum + Discord
- Encourage (incentivise) research and curation of tools, services, and best practices (such as digital security or privacy) Nation3 community members would benefit from
- Establish a newsletter that is community-curated, but edited / led by a specific individual or small group. Feature urgency (trad states news that motivate us to move faster), updates on progress & key developments in the cloud nation space overall, recommended readings, and the curated tools (as per above)
- Structure Social Circles to be a weekly thematic discussion group, focused on unpacking a specific problem space / idea each week. Invite high calibre guest speakers to seed the discussions and open up the conversation.
- Start ‘Nation3 on tour’ - physical community hangouts, dinners and talks, initially centred around large crypto events globally as ‘side-events’.
At this stage, I think it’s more important to have a smaller community of highly aligned, committed, and talented individuals than going for aggressive community growth. But very open for arguments, and would love other ideas for initiatives and actions that can help us foster this community better 