Meeting #3, 31st March 2022

Meeting recording

Minutes of Catalyst Circle v3 Meeting #3

Present (in order of first speaking)

Nori Nishigaya (facilitator); Joey Chessher (representing Toolmakers and Maintainers); Nadia Hopkins (Community Advisors); Mercy A (Funded Proposers); Dimitri Fernando (General ADA Holders); Harris Warren (IOG); Rhys Morgan (stakepool operators); JP (secretary); Bullish Dumpling (Cardano Foundation), via video NOTE: Bullish Dumpling was not present for the first part of the meeting as she was hosting a Twitter Space with Frederik Gregaard, CEO of Cardano Foundation.

Speaker percentages

Nori (22%), Harris (20%), Dimitri (12%), Mercy (12%), Nadia (11%), Joey (9%), Rhys (8%), Dumpling (5%), JP (1%)

Abbreviations used/Glossary

API – Application Programming Interface (a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other)

ATH – After Townhall, breakout rooms after the regular Wednesday TownHall meeting

CA – Community Advisor, a role open to anyone in Catalyst, to assess proposals in each funding round

CC – Catalyst Circle

CF – Cardano Foundation

CTC, Catalyst Technical Council, a proposed body that will be appointed by IOG to be involved in bicameral governance alongside the Catalyst community.

Catalyst School – https://thecatalyst.school

d-Rep – delegation representative, a proposed new role; people to whom a voter will be able to delegate their voting power. See the registration form

DID – Decentralised identifiers

ETH – Eastern Townhall

Gimbalabs - https://gimbalabs.com/gimbalgrid

IO – the overall organisation that comprises IOG and IOHK

IOG – Input/Output Global

NFT – non-fungible token

QA-DAO – Quality Assurance Distributed Autonomous Organisation

SPO – stakepool operator

T&Cs - Terms and Conditions

VCA – Veteran Community Advisor, a role open to those who have been a CA in previous rounds, to assess the CAs’ reviews

Voltaire – the next phase on the Cardano roadmap to decentralisation

1. Opening, agenda (0:00)

Check-in (0:48) Announcements (7:14) – none Agenda and align expectations (7:49) – no items added

2. Circle stand-up (11:14)

Nori (11:14) There is a new view for the Prioritised Problems GitHub board, which will make tracking easier. Circle Stand-up has been slightly reformulated: each Circle member in turn will say:

  • Reporting: what they have worked on since last meeting, freferring to cards on the Probelms board; also report any decisions made e.g. in Slack since the last meeting (this addition requested by QA-DAO for transparency of documentation)

  • Enabling: anything blocking them, anything they need help with

  • Intention: what they will be working on in the next 2 weeks

Mercy (14:33)

ACTION POINT: The cards Treasury to support admin, governance and community projects to become sustainable and exact timing of release of funds moved to “researching”.

Nadia (21:31)

  • Everyone owns Nurturing a listening culture.

  • Code of Conduct for Circle members will be discussed today.

  • Circle as a VCA arbitration body was taken to the CA community, see the card for details; final decision was to put a resolution process in place so someone could contest if they felt unfairly treated. This has been added to the VCA guide; issue now closed.

  • Challenge continuity, there are proposals in place to address challenge categorisation, and fund 9 will normalise longer proposals (see card for details); need time to see how these responses work, but the issue is closed.

  • Reputation and merit system for CAs – closed; similarity analysis tool and new VCA eligibility requirements have been implemented to address this, see details in the card.

  • rewarding system – closed; new lottery system implemented for fund 8.

  • No blockers

  • In next two weeks, will take data from recent problem-sensing, and repopulate the board with new prioritised problems.

Nori (26:07) I suggest fewer columns on the Problems board – just “backlog”, “in progress” and “done” – to be discussed at end of meeting under “admin”

Dimitri (26:51)

  • Systems to track trust and participation has been on the board a long time – but can trust be tracked in a decentralised system, and should it be? I cannot work on this; the community needs to discuss it as a group. Nori (34:38) If a problem is assigned to you it does not mean you necessarily do the work on it, just that you are responsible for driving it forward.

  • On anti-scammers initiative on social media, again it’s been on the board a long time; unclear what progress has been made?

  • Professional consideration of CCv3 roles I closed the ticket because I submitted a fund 8 proposal on this - but then was reminded that closing a ticket should happen in a meeting..

ACTION POINT anti-scammers initiative on social media assigned to Dimitri and moved back to Researching, as we have lost some context on it

  • No blockers.

  • I worked with a Spanish speaking CA and saw the difficulties he faced; in future I want to raise problem of how we enable non-English speakers.

  • Nadia (40:06) The language issue was also raised very thoughtfully by many in the CA community; it will be a positive thing for us to consider. Harris (41:06) As a global platform we do need to accommodate multiple languages.

ACTION POINT: Nadia to add the languages issue to the Board as a problem when she adds her other new problems. TBC who to assign it to.

Harris (42:25)

  • Nurturing a listening culture – we should establish the definition of “done”, and assign it an owner. Mercy (43:58) – could this be “led” by Circle Admin, and approached jointly? We could use Circle presentation at Weds Town Hall each week to raise it, sensitise the community to “listening” as an issue. Rhys(46:39) I can “own” it; I want to participate more in Town hall, so could use ATH to have open discussions with the community.

  • Method of selecting Catalyst Technical Council can stay in Backlog for now.

  • Initiating a code of conduct for Circle – it should be driven by Circle and the community, but I will have my name on it and will provide leadership.

  • I’ll also be supporting Mercy with two of her tickets: Treasury to support admin, governance and community projects to become sustainable can be co-assigned to me

  • (48:52) Some very big things are happening internally at IOG; I will be able to share more soon. The ticket on how to remove IOG from every decision, I, as IOG, can own that. And building partnerships also; there are some high level discussions going on now about this, again there will be more that I will share soon.

  • (52:30) the follow up to the community letter on D-reps is also coming.

Joey (49:40) On the Code of Conduct, we should include the Sub Circle folks in that. Harris (49:54) Yes, the code of conduct should include defining what sub circles are and their roles and conduct. Mercy (50:14) the Funded Proposer community asked me to raise: We understand that much of IOG’s work is confidential. But especially on Treasury to support admin, governance and community projects to become sustainable, is there a time frame of when we will know more? Harris (51:12) In the next month or two. We understand that we need to be more transparent.

Joey (53:04)

  • I worked with Felix, Tevo and Stephen on my tickets. Nurturing a listening culture is a whole community issue, so it should be moved to “Community issues” for long term monitoring. Mentors felt they’d made progress on this via establishing Discord channels, which provided a safe place for listening. (Transcriber note: this refers to the Listeners, a community created group which was not actually established by Circle.) Tevo stated there is an attempt to revitalise the execution of first ideated deliverables after the proposal submitting stage is over, and time will tell if the focus has shifted.

ACTION POINT: Nurturing a listening culture assigned to Joey and moved to “prototyping”.

ACTION POINT: Joey to add the relevant Fund 7 proposals to the card for Circle relationship with Catalyst proposals .

  • Funded cohorts: almost non existing “collaborative layer” to welcome newcomers is in progress. This is specifically about welcoming new funded proposers, and there is still some work to be done, although some progress has been made via Challenge Teams. Moved to “Prototyping”.

  • T&M need for community reward systems is in progress – Gimbalabs is working on a token incentive project, and PACE is working on a community crediting process and creating a community landing page. Dimitri (59:36) is planning a proposal to give incentives for introducing new people to Catalyst. They will all collaborate.

  • Lack of onboarding structures – In progress. ADAGov is working on a Catalyst Ecosystem Mapping tool. Fluid 7 Swarm Labs are working on a Media and Marketing Lab. Stephen [Whitenstall] recommend making the problem more specific and oriented towards a deliverable, i.e. to choose an onboarding system and for CCv3 to support it through to completion. Ticket assigned to Joey, who will get more clarity on these initiatives.

  • Faster funding for Catalyst projects – moved to “sign off” - Completed via the successful Fund 7 proposal to give $7k in rapid funding to Circle v3 projects, and the rapid funding challenge setting and other mechanisms introduced by Circle v2.

Nadia (1:04:18) On Lack of onboarding structures, there is a group of newer people from the CA side who are working on this in a role-specific way, but I think it'd be interesting to bring them together and think about it from a system-wide perspective. So I will help with that. Harris (1:05:22) – there is also a lot of thinking on this from IOG and some new things that are going to be forthcoming, so I want to be involved too.

Dumpling (1:06:13)

Dumpling is not present, as she is hosting a Twitter Space with Frederik Gregaard, the CEO of Cardano Foundation; so she has sent a video update.

  • Have been getting community feedback via Twitter Spaces, and gathering questions, on recent events re: the potential removal of Dimitri. Many people I spoke to are concerned about how it is being handled. Some want a public vote. Also many people incorrectly think CCv3 are trying to remove Dimitri.

  • Blockers – I do not like GitHub. I prefer not to spend time on it, I only want to work on the things I want to work on. Perhaps a video tutorial would help.

  • Next I plan to have an open discussion in the community on the issue of Dimitri’s removal/retention. I will do a Twitter poll. Also I will work on an update about my Twitter space with Frederik Gregaard.

Rhys (1:12:11)

  • Have been promoting Catalyst and encouraging discussion of the funding timeline. Involve SPOs in Catalyst projects - I focused on this for 4 weeks via encouraging SPOs to submit proposals, we did well, and have now moved to next phase.

  • With Andre (Treasury)’s help I figured out how to access the rapid funding for Circle reps and am co-ordinating payments to people who have promoted Catalyst in their Spaces; a formal spreadsheet for this is on the card.

  • Have also had a lot of questions on what’s been going on; confusion from people about Circle’s role; some people believe we are a governing body.

  • In future happy to get involved with Nurturing a listening culture , and Systems to track trust and participation – I’m an Atala PRISM pioneer, and I spoke to someone today about figuring out a DID implementation for this, which should be possible in time for Fund 9.

  • On anti-scammers initiative on social media it’s an ongoing issue but all we can do as Circle is encourage education about it.

  • Lack of onboarding structures I agree with this being an issue; I didn't understand the processes behind Catalyst until I was actually submitting proposals; info is very disparate in many different places so a central hub would be useful.

  • No blockers (except a problem with permissions getting into the GitHub board.

ACTION POINT: CC Admin to ensure Rhys is added to GitHub board.

3. Consent agenda (1:17:44)

Circle code of conduct (Harris) (1:18:11)

  • Recent events have called into question what we do as Circle members; we should all be working for the betterment of the community and setting an example of behaviour.

  • Creating a code of conduct should be shared among this group; it does not need to come from IOG Legal. But we need to find a legal resource to brainstorm.

  • I am happy to set up the meeting and the structure and invite all of you to it.

  • We do have the nomination criteria, which was the original intent of what our roles should be; but we did not start with a charter or any formal laws. So we need guidelines on what’s right and wrong, without adding bureaucracy. I think we need a code of conduct for the Circle, and one for Project Catalyst as a whole.

  • There are also the IdeaScale T&Cs - there have been some very specific violations of these with some of Dimitri’s proposals, so I would like to have a breakout room with him on that, and I want to inform him first; there are specific proposals and user profiles that we believe are in violation and will likely be removed.

  • I propose we start with a brainstorm on what Circle members should and should not do; ditto Sub Circle members; and how should Circle members handle proposals. Any other items, people can add to the card on GitHub.

  • Nadia (1:26:00) For transparency, as a listening body, we should also include a process for raising issues on this from the community.

  • Harris (1:27:20) I think it's part of the the code of conduct; there has to be something clearer that says how this will would get worked out, maybe based on the model that that the CAs group has developed; but yes I do think it's appropriate. We are a listening body; that is our primary function.

  • Dimitri (1:28:09) My kids submitted proposals, then later we realised you have to be over 18. So could I submit those proposals myself in a later fund? And can the kids be co-proposers? (Discussion of the details of this)

  • Harris (1:30:47) Terms and conditions is what's driving us. Who is eligible to propose may be outside the scope of this meeting's discussion, but IOG can raise it as a concern, and find the right body who could have decision making power. And we need to address the concerns of the community. I will establish a follow up meeting for Circle to discuss, then we will make a summary of that public, give the community the opportunity to comment, and then bring it to an After Town Hall. And Dimitri, we will have a more detailed discussion on legalities, and there will be some specific actions we will take.

  • Nori (1:33:40) The discussion of Circle roles should also include clarifying the roles of the Admin team, and getting clarity for the community that we are not a governance body but merely secretaries and administrators.

ACTION POINT: Harris to arrange a follow-up Circle meeting on what Circle's roles are, and then discussions with the community.

Update prioritised problem board (Joey, 1:34:28)

Already covered in Stand-up section of the meeting. Removed from agenda.

“Funded proposers” or “Proposers”? - Mercy (1:34:58)

  • On Weds, an After Townhall between Mercy and Nadia discussed the whole process of fund 8 from perspective of both CAs and funded proposers and whether it can be improved or streamlined.

  • It identified that a lot of the issues are on the proposers’ side; submission of proposals, what is appropriate? Perhaps a code of conduct is needed, which ties in with Harris’s idea of a code of conduct for Catalyst.

  • I am being tagged in a lot on discussions about difficulties with the proposal process; but I know my role is specifically funded proposers. So am I overreaching, to get involved in this? And if I am, do we have a responsibility collectively as Circle?

  • Harris (1:40:10) There is a lot of work to do for *funded* proposers. Potential proposers may need support and representation too; maybe that is a new Circle seat eventually, but now, it’s your call whether you want to take it on.

  • Nadia (1:42:16) True; but it’s a lot of work for both Mercy and I if things go awry. If things go right upstream, it improves things later in the process. There is also a lot of community contribution – Mercy and I will just be facilitating the conversation around system updates, and letting solutions emerge.

  • Mercy (1:43:26) Does Circle hold a collective responsibility here, in the sense that the core we align around is the Cardano treasury and the administration of proposals?

  • Nori (1:44:40) A good topic for the Code of Conduct meeting where we establish the boundaries of what Circle does.

  • Rhys (1:47:11) I’d like to get permission to livestream our discussion about the code of conduct and our roles, for transparency. And on this issue, there’s a need for better education on the process of proposing.

ACTION POINT: Meeting will be livestreamed by Rhys, recorded, and transcribed by QA-DAO. ACTION POINT: Mercy and Nadia will continue to steward the discussions on the overall process, and potential proposers, for now.

Admin issues (Nori, 1:48:23)

  • We are now using a new view for the Prioritised Problem board.

  • I hear Dumpling’s message that GitHub is not super-easy – Stephen [Whitenstall] Is funded to offer training on open-source tools, he has been doing some recorded sessions so Dumpling, we will get you the help you need.

  • Harris (1:49:19) Catalyst Circle.io website is down.

  • Nori (1:49:25) We will fix that; but also there has been no content to put in it. Admin cannot create the content, but we can technically make it happen – we need a discussion as Circle about what should be on it.

ACTION ITEM: Circle Admin team to facilitate arranging GitHub training as a group with Stephen

Asynchronous work (Nori, 1:51:00)

  • It’s good that people are working asynchronously on Slack more and more.

  • Loom : useful tool to record short video messages, while sharing your screen, and it’s playable inline in a chat. Might help avoid the issues that can arise text-only.

  • (1:52:11) explanation of how Circle Slack channels are organised.

  • Mercy (1:53:02) Last meeting we said we would include the sub-circle members in Slack, what’s the next steps for that?

  • Nori (1:53:19) We can do that; but if we move to a professional Slack account to give additional features; the cost is per user, so as we invite more people it will cost more. Discuss in Slack how far we should open it up.

ACTION ITEM: Mercy to start discussion on Slack about inviting SubCircle members

ACTION ITEM: Nori to post costs of Professional Slack account there, for all to review.

Circle admin meetings (Rhys 1:54:31)

Rhys (1:54:31) How can people access the Circle Admin team meetings?

Nori (1:54:56) They are recorded, but currently not shared anywhere because we felt they are not very interesting; but we can do so if there is interest. We are also talking about opening the meetings up, so anyone interested can sit in and listen.

4. Checkout and close (1:55:53)

  • Meeting feedback form (1:55:53)

  • Checkout (1:56:33) – each member in turn briefly says how they are feeling.

  • Dumpling (1:58:00) – Feedback on Twitter Space with Frederik Gregaard of CF – he said CF will be more involved in Catalyst, and will set Challenges, but do not see themselves voting on proposals. More detail in next meeting, meanwhile listen on Twitter

  • Rhys (2:04:14) Can we share the agenda of these Circle meetings as a PDF immediately after the meeting? People are becoming more interested in understanding our working process. (Agreed)

Key words from this meeting

some of the most frquesntly used words in this meeting were:

Appendix

Intelligent-verbatim transcript of this meeting

coming soon

Agenda for this meeting

PreviousMeeting #2, 17th March 2022NextMeeting #4, 14th April 2022

Last updated