# Building Cross Ecosystem Communities: A Playbook by Robbie Bent (Devcon4)

- Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon)
- Date: 2019-10-09
- Duration: 10:18
- Topics: blockchain, smart contracts, distributed ledger, Science & Technology
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-xOcRbBctXqg
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOcRbBctXqg

## Description

Visit the https://archive.devcon.org/ to gain access to the entire library of Devcon talks with the ease of filtering, playlists, personalized suggestions, decentralized access on IPFS and more.
https://archive.devcon.org/archive/watch/4/building-cross-ecosystem-communities-a-playbook

Describing the playbook used to identify and then encourage cross project collaboration to solve problems affecting all projects in the ETH ecosystem.  Drawing on lessons learned from ETHPrize, ETHSecurity, Web 3.0 Design, the Open Source Block Explorer Group and the Community of Communities (learning resource for Community Managers) --- a brief history around how these groups were built (each has become a cornerstone in the community for it's topic), the tactics and tools used to manage them, and how to set goals and get results.  The format would be a talk around what these communities are reviewing the above and then an open workshop to come up with creative ideas for future useful communities and how to build them.  The goal is to facilitate new community ideas where grouping stakeholders could be super valuable and come up with creative ways to either grow the existing community base or start new ones.  I would like to split into small groups where people could come up with Community Ideas and then present them live to the group with feedback from a panel of community experts.  There aren't many resources for building communities and even fewer talks and workshops on this topic.  

Speaker(s): Robbie Bent
Skill level: Intermediate
Track: Society and Systems
Keywords: community, goals, web3, ethprize, ethsecurity

Follow us: https://twitter.com/efdevcon, https://twitter.com/ethereum
Learn more about devcon: https://www.devcon.org/
Learn more about ethereum: https://ethereum.org/ 

Devcon is the Ethereum conference for developers, researchers, thinkers, and makers. 
Devcon 4 was held in Prague, Czech Republic on Oct 30 - Nov 2, 2018.
Devcon is organized and presented by the Ethereum Foundation, with the support of our sponsors. To find out more, please visit https://ethereum.foundation/

## Transcript

So, these three efforts were called Eth Prize, Eth Security, and a community of communities. And while we have this big messy governance stuff around Ethereum, there's a lot of these cross ecosystem things that have just sort of sprung up. Not really any governance and all volunteer based to kind of solve problems. And very much echoing what these guys are saying, it's not about, you know, you should do it. It's just people going and doing it. And that's why I find these things inspiring. So, the first one, Eth Prize, what is it? So, I was talking to a bunch of my developer friends from different projects and it seems everybody was duplicating efforts. So, I'm talking with Augur and Zeppelin and a lot of other dapps, you know, everybody's rolling their own testing tools, rolling their own deployment tools, having trouble, uh and not really sharing their efforts. So, a group of volunteers, about 10 people, got together and just started interviewing developers around what type of tools they're using and what problems they were having building on Ethereum. And this is like really cool. So, just random people just start interviewing teams out of the good of their heart, documenting this, and making it available in an open source manner. This ended up This project ended up interviewing 100 developers, putting the uh interviews in GitHub repo, building a website around this, and marketing it so that new developers in the space could figure out what they should be using to build. It gets even crazier. As a result of that, the Ethereum Foundation and a whole bunch of others like Web 3, 0x, L4, Coinbase funded the effort. And so, the effort became called Eth Prize. And this was a new way to fund bounties. And we called them active bounties. And as a result, two bounties were actually funded this year, one for an open source block explorer, and one for Eth Ethereum package manager. Now, what's cool about this is it's not like somebody said, "Hey, I want to build this." It was like the best developers in the space are saying, "We need this." And so, we listened to these people. These actually got funded and they've been delivered. So, POA Block Scout is an open source block explorer that's uh existing and can be used. And EthPM was actually launched this weekend. So, if you talk about like people just getting done, 100 interviews, tools required, funding, tools built. Uh I think this is like a really, really strong model. Uh and Eth Prize has funded a bunch of new work, mostly around infrastructure stuff. So, if you look at like the Universal Logins project from Alex Van de Sande, it got funding from Eth Prize. So, this is cool because these things have no business models. Um and it's what people asking for and actually need. So, this seeing this happen, going from an idea and talking to a bunch of people, uh like that's really awesome. So, how did it happen, right? So, if you're thinking like I'm sitting here, how can I get involved in the community, you know, what can I do? Well, um early curation is everything. So, and listening to the community. So, as you heard, these one-to-one interviews were key. So, going and finding credible people and asking them what their problems are. And having a strong mission and making everything transparent. So, here the mission was like, can we build better tools on Ethereum? Can we actually help the developers? And like really mean that from the core and listen to what people said and then make the notes transparent. So, this stuff was just available on GitHub for anyone to see. Um and so, what this just shows you in this case is with a little bit of coordination, you know, there was no weekly meetings or organization or anything. It's just a group of people saying, "Hey, we're going to do this." Uh there's an opportunity for literally a huge impact. This can be done with almost no technical skill. Anybody in this room can accomplish something like this with a little bit of work. So, two other stories. One is Eth Security. Um this started I was working for a project called TrueBit and I went to get uh our smart contracts audited and it was really frustrating. So, I don't know if anyone's tried this before, but you know, getting quotes for $70,000 to audit a smart contract is insane. Uh not only insane, but like just annoying. And then even on top of that, you know, you might have to wait for 3 months. Uh and you don't even know what you're getting. So, like are these auditors standing behind this? Are they any good? Do you know? It was like uh it's a really, really, really big problem because there's not many companies that can afford or only like the privileged few that can afford this. Um so, I started talking to a whole bunch of security auditors during this process, found a bunch of people who like believed in this mission, put together a Telegram group, and invited all the best security companies to join it uh with the goal of creating like a single source of truth. So, what happened as a result of this, right? So, this Telegram group ended up getting like um bounty hunters, hackers, infosec and opsec experts, dapp builders, all the big security players, ConsenSys, Zeppelin, Solidified. Uh and it became like a single source of truth. So, if you want to find an auditor or have a question, you can go and ask and say, "Hey, what should I be paying for this? Who's somebody I can talk to? Who's reputable? Where can I find information to learn about security audits?" Something really cool, they created the ethsecurity.org website, uh which launched this week. And the idea is a place for resources around security. So, if you have a security question, you can go there for free and try to figure out what you need to do. They hosted an event at EthBerlin. Um you know, this was first posted on the Magicians forum by John Mardlin. These guys picked it up and over 100 attendees showed up, right? And again, this is like all volunteer, people coming together in the community to provide, you know, some uh results around security. The The guys in this group advised the security track at Devcon and have done a bunch of presentations. They also went so far as to formulate working groups to determine like uh guidelines, common resources, and are now giving out grants as well. So, again, you know, couple people talking about how shitty the auditing process was and it turns into this like massive thing with like a whole bunch of momentum. So, anybody in this room could have seen that problem, started talking to people, and made it happen. So, again, like how do we do it, right? So, like early curation is everything. So, somebody actually applied to the ECF for a grant to interview all the best security people. And in these interviews, we again made the transcripts available and then invited everybody to a common Telegram thread to get people to start collaborating. So, if you're trying to like form an early community, think of like who needs to be in this community, where can we get them to start talking, and like what is the mission to get these people interested? So, we used common goals to align all parties. And in this case, it was one, the interviews and sharing of knowledge. And then two, funding of tools. So, getting these people interested with potential funding for the tools they're building. And then three, there was the event at EthBerlin. Um and once everybody was in this group and came to EthBerlin, made it really easy for people to want to collaborate because like Greg said, they're all talking face-to-face. Um and then provide value add for the group members right from the start. So, like in this group, we have a bi-weekly call around security tools where people can present what they're doing. And it's a good way for anyone who wants to learn about security uh to watch what's going on. And then the final one is the community of communities. This was like a pretty cool experiment where uh major problem is that people don't know what events to go to. So, every week you hear about some type of conference, meet up. Is it real? Is it not? Is it valuable? Should we spend our team resources to go? And so, again, Telegram group was made. 250 community experts have joined. It's, you know, pretty much people from every single ecosystem and project. It's a place where you can share any PR updates you want retweeted or clap for on Medium. You can ask questions about, you know, hiring best practices, PR, and there's a group of experts there that can answer for you. And so, again, it's like a single source of truth. You know, so why does this matter? It's just again, like in decentralized space, it's tough to get access to good information and know it's good information. So, it's kind of, you know, where do I go to find experts to figure out a problem? All these communities super lightweight and, you know, really they're just problem solvers. So, Eth Prize is for tools, Eth Security for security. This is for like marketing and building community. This is where you can go to find credible people to ask questions and it's all volunteer based. Which to me is like super inspiring and powerful. Um so, again, you know, I'm just kind of repeating here that the playbook is the same. So, if you're thinking about doing this, you know, you can do this. You want to find an early cur- You want to find a problem you want to solve. Make sure you find the right people early. Find common goals to align them. So, in this case, it was the events and the mission was like getting the best information around marketing and community building. And then providing value right from the start. Um so, finally, just, you know, I've said it a bunch of times, but that's what I'm trying to get across here is like you as an individual can have a huge impact. Um Eth Prize was just a set of interviews. Things start small. They move really fast. So, Eth Security was just a couple people talking about audits. And then in a 3-month period, it had 100 groups of all the best security people in the space, hosting events, running a Devcon security track. Like this is awesome. This happens with completely uh altruistically with no funding. Uh and then the final one, which is most important, I think, is just listening is important. So, all these things come from listening to problems people are having and then trying to take people who uh have the same problems and put them in a group. And again, this is kind of what's happened at the Magicians. And it's the first group of people who decided, "Hey, like let's listen to each other." And you see these awesome things happen. And a lot of momentum uh is built. So, you know, Um final thing to say is just, you know, if we do a breakout group here, and some things that people would be looking to talk to is like how we have these all these groups, right? And like how can they improve? So, there's a lot of like Telegram and Slack and Discord and all this everywhere. It's kind of like, you know, I wake up and I have 50 messages. What am I looking at? So, how do you make your group stand out from the noise? Um how should these groups be structured? So, if you have 200 projects, you know, what are the cultural norms? Uh and like who is the leader? Are there leaders? How do things get voted on? This is stuff the Magicians are working through right now. I'm pretty interested in it. And then how do you make sure the group continues to create value? There's no financial resources. So, like we wanted to do a community of communities event at Devcon. Who's going to pay for that? Because none of it's not a monetary thing. So, interested in answers to any of these questions, you know, how do we continue to get value from these groups? Um Yeah, that's it. Thanks. Woo. Mhm.