Grant Proposal: Graph Advocates Stickers

[admin]

Grant ID: 8669cgtdf

Summary:

Graph Advocates is a growing web3 community but we lack program-specific swag to represent ourselves as a distinct group or easily share within our community. This project aims to create 500 Graph Advocates stickers and a re-usable design for future prints. My current plan is to distribute the stickers to Graph Advocates in attendance at Graph Day 2023. The remainder will be given to key regional community members to share with those who couldn’t attend. I invite feedback from the Grant Committee and the community with respect to how to distribute the stickers throughout our community.

I have read and agree to the privacy policy:
true

Are you applying as a team or individual?:
Team

What type of grant are you pursuing?:
Project (one-off)

Please select the category your project best fits into:
Other

Please select who you think will benefit from your project?:
Curators, Delegators, Indexers, Subgraph Developers, Other

How much funding are you looking for? (USD):
500

Provide a breakdown of your requested funding:

• $275 for 500 custom vinyl stickers (3 inches x 3 inches) + shipping & tax
• $200 for custom design by Shawn Nutting, a graphic designer and tattoo artist from Los Angeles, CA
  • He’s experienced with designing and ordering custom stickers from marketing his tattoo business
  • We can reuse this design for re-ordering stickers or creating t-shirts in the future
• $25 for ordering and project management by Alex Pakalniskis

Have you applied for (or already received) funding from somewhere else?:
No

What’s your vision for how your project will impact The Graph and/or web3?:
I’d like to think this contribution will bring a smile to the face of any person who receives a custom Graph Advocates sticker. While not a revolutionary engineering marvel, I think stickers (and swag more generally) serve an important purpose to recognize community members for their contributions and to help promote our community through free advertising. Many people adorn their laptops with stickers so I envision well-placed Graph Advocates stickers might warrant a question or two from curious sticker admirers. The key to broader web3 adoption involves human-to-human conversation and stickers can be a vehicle to start a great chat.

What can you share about any past work that is relevant to this grant?:
Shawn Nutting is a graphic designer and tattoo artist based out of Los Angeles, CA. He regularly designs custom stickers to help promote his business. He recently redesigned Alex’s Discord event banner for “Code Along with Alex” events.

Alex Pakalniskis is a Graph Advocate and DAO member since April 2022.

Can you share any information about current/past web3 experience?:
Alex has been a Graph Advocates program member since April 2022. He’s primarily been contributing as a Technical Teacher but has been dabbling with technical Content Creation and virtual Event Evangelism. He’s currently an indexer taking part in MIPs (IndexerDAO) and a Community Grant recipient for his “Code Along with Alex” education project. His “Rust Office Hours Resources” Community Grant proposal is currently under review by the DAO (he’s the host of Rust Office Hours).

Shawn recently redesigned Alex’s Discord event banner for “Code Along with Alex” sessions.

Why are you interested in contributing to The Graph and/or web3?:
Alex is passionate about decentralized technology that can help augment society’s potential and disrupt the status quo. He enjoys contribuing educational content to the community but is eager to experiment with non-educational formats (i.e. swag).

Shawn is curious about web3 and getting more involved from the perspective of an artist.

Primary Community Poll

Do you fundamentally support this grant application, knowing that the final scope and grant amount may differ from the requested proposal?

• Yes
• No

Grant Committee Vote (Closes on Feb 14th)

Do you recommend this grant to the DAO?

• Yes
• No

[juliannaMLN]

I love this idea and I would love to have this sticker too!!!

I’m just wondering though, have you reached out to any of the Advocates with the Content Creator role to see if the guys there maybe have some ideas for a new logo, or how to make this sticker interesting? Maybe you can turn it into a contest sort of thing where everybody in the space can vote for the best design and as a result more people will feel connected to the winning design? Or has Shawn already an idea for it in mind?

I would personally take this as an opportunity to make other advocates feel more entitled as the first go-to people when it comes to stuff like this before looking “outside”.

Just my thoughts

[doxe01.eth]

Hello! Thank you for taking the time to submit your application.

I support Juliana’s thoughts on this. Foremost, we should support the advocates who are currently in the program. After all, this is a pretty good idea, because 10 heads think better than one. Besides, this is a pretty good experience.

Have you thought about delivering it to other countries? And the second question is if we can look at the artworks of Shawn Nutting?

Thank you!

[pakaliscious]

Hey @juliannaMLN and @doxe01.eth,

Thanks for the feedback.

Also I’d like to clarify I’m not necessarily proposing a new Official logo for all platforms so much as a cool limited edition design for swag. I think an Official logo change would definitely warrant much more Advocate involvement. This project is more a limited variant (kinda like how some product release a limited edition colorway/logo/etc.).

I’m game to collaborate with Advocates but have some hesitations mainly with respect to initiative/follow-through/timing.

My concern is that there isn’t much internal engagement in our program and that we don’t really have the internal experience for creating these sorts of swag. I personally don’t have the bandwidth to coordinate an Advocates logo design contest/poll (lack of time) so this strategy is more cost-effective for me (and I think the program tbh).

I intentionally went with an external contributor (at least for this first attempt) because I know I can get a quick turn around (before upcoming ETHGlobal and other Graph ecosystem events) and it won’t fail. For future sticker rounds I’d love to have Advocate design contributions, but at this point am prioritizing generating nice stickers ASAP to share with our community.

I’d love (and hope for) feedback on the design options from the Advocates. This could be a compromise where Advocates can vote to select from a few sticker designs (as opposed to sourcing designs from Advocates directly). This would also expand potential engagement from only the Content Creator group to the entire Advocates program (we all have an opinion on what we like, even if we aren’t designers/creators).

Ideally we’d be also be adding a new member to our community with a valuable skill-set (Shawn).

In terms of delivery to other countries I was planning on using Graph Day as an opportunity to share with many advocates and to give remainder to community “leads” to share with their regions. I don’t believe individually shipping stickers to advocates will be cost-effective.

Here’s some of Shawn’s work:
Stickers (https://chonta2.com/)
Paintings (https://chontattoo.bigcartel.com/)
Tattoos (https://www.instagram.com/chon_ta2/)
Code Along with Alex event banner:

Example sticker:

Thanks again,
Paka

[juliannaMLN]

OK, I get it. In that case, I agree with you! I keep my fingers crossed for Shawn the future Advocate

Personally, I like the eagle sticker more than the banner, because the banner is a little too dark and moody for me but I think it’s perfect for coding events (Matrix reference, brains) and the eagle is more playful. Actually, what is the meaning of the eagle build of bacon, fries, burger and the olive? It is something I noticed after a while

[pakaliscious]

@juliannaMLN same. I’ll do my best to get him to apply and contribute otherwise too.

Yeah I think more bright and playful is good for this sticker project too. The eagle with burger components is really just a silly design he made (it’s playing off traditional tattoo imagery with the eagle but adding a fun spin).

[doxe01.eth]

I just hope he creates stickers that are not obscene, lol

[pakaliscious]

@doxe01.eth yeah I’ll make sure it’s safe for work lol

[Colson]

Hello @pakaliscious,

I would like to better understand the logistics of distributing these stickers to Graph Advocates. How many advocates do you think these stickers will reach, and in what timeframe?

[pakaliscious]

Hey @Colson,

My current plan is to distribute the stickers at Graph Day 2023.

If I attend in person (which is what I am planning), I’ll bring the stickers with me. If I can’t attend Graph Day 2023 in person then I’ll ship the stickers to someone who is attending in person.

• Advocates and community members in attendance will get priority access to one sticker (maybe we can include it in a small swag bag).
• Another chunk (maybe 100 or so) will be available for non-Advocate event attendees.
• The remaining stickers will be reserved for Advocates who could not attend in person.

I’d like to distribute to reserved stickers to AdvocatesDAO members who are active with event evangelism in their respective geographic regions. I don’t believe that individually shipping stickers to Advocates is cost-effective.

However I’m very open to suggestions on how to best distribute the stickers to our community. Feedback or ideas are appreciated.

Thanks

[pdiomede]

The idea is really cool, and I think even if Graph Day '23 is not yet confirmed, there will be so many events where Advocates can stay at The Graph booth, talk about the Advocates Program, distribute the stickers, and promote the program. I’m not a graphic designer, but I think it will be important also to have some stickers with a QR code with a link to the page where you can apply to become part of the Advocates Program. Or in the case this is not feasible, I mean to put a QR code in a sticker, it would be a great addition to the project to create a banner/image that can be used to be printed and showcased at the booth.

[pakaliscious]

@pdiomede thanks for your feedback. That’s a great idea.

I definitely agree about the QR code to direct people towards applying to the program. We had something similar at a recent career fair booth for my web2 day job (signs with QR code displayed on booth table to direct attendees to our careers page). It was tremendously helpful.

I’ll definitely start looking into feasibility of both options (on sticker or booth sign).

[Lorena]

Hi.
Thanks for this application.
I love the idea of stickers, but as PDiomede mentioned before, Graph Day 23 is not yet confirmed. Is it possible to reformulate the proposal so that the stickers can be distributed in the next events in which The Graph is a sponsor? EthDenver, EthTokio, EthRio, EthCC etc

[pakaliscious]

Yes I can definitely reformat to be less dependent on Graph Day 2023. Thanks for the feedback.

Updated plan:

I will ship the stickers to a trusted party, such as Simon from Edge and Node or Slim from Graph Advocates to most effectively disseminate the stickers at Graph-sponsored events such as Eth-LocationX. I will most likely not be able to attend those events so another person would be better suited to distribute the stickers to the community. Our team will need about 6 weeks turn around time for design and ordering so events in May 2023 or later are most feasible, i.e. ETH Istanbul, ETH Toronto, etc.

[juliannaMLN]

Also @poptones proposed that she can pick them up from you if needed, just passing on the info

[poptones]

Yup! @pakaliscious I can take the shipping hassle off of you and pick up the stickers to take to events as well

[pakaliscious]

I hereby agree to this grant agreement of the Graph AdvocatesDAO with the GitHub commit-hash 3858eb9315ef3a0a93d0701961ffbc2a57d45205. That document forms the legal agreement of the proposed grant with the following terms:

• Scope
  • 500 custom vinyl Graph Advocates Stickers.
• Deliverables
  • Design cooperation, ordering and distribution of 500 custom vinyl stickers (3 inches x 3 inches) to Graph Advocates at different web3 events throughout the year 2023 with the help from many DAO members who volunteered in the Forum.
• Total Grant Amount
  • USD Value: 500 USD
  • Token: GRT
  • Token Amount: 8,196.72 GRT
• Disbursement Schedule:
  • One-off: 100%
• Receiving ETH Address: <0x4CBcDE1E9DAFe3635C872E6D4909DF952a38B290>

I understand that the agreement will only be executed upon successful completion of a corresponding on-chain vote by the Graph AdvocatesDAO. I also understand that the grant will be disbursed on Gnosis Chain.

[doxe01.eth]

Congratulations! The final funding of your grant has been approved by the DAO. Thank you for contributing to the growth of The Graph and web3 ecosystem.

Now it’s time to focus on promoting your accomplishments! If you haven’t already done so, evaluate different ways to showcase your grant across different platforms, such as Twitter, the Graph Forum, Discord, Telegram or LinkedIn. Also feel free to reach out in the Graph AdvocatesDAO Discord server to seek help from others to promote your grant.

For information in how to getting paid for your grant, have a look at our official documentation here.

Please note, that the total amount of the grant shall be set forth in the Grant and is stated in U.S. Dollars and are payable in GRT. The USD-GRT conversion rate (the “Conversion Rate”) provided to Grant Recipient will be the monthly Conversion Rate determined by the AdvocatesDAO.

For further information, please refer to the Grant Agreement, here.