The Community Programme is becoming 'open source'

The Nano Community Programme is evolving to become more open, as a necessary next step forward on the Nano Foundation’s “open-source journey.” In this blog post, as Community Lead, I will explain how the changes will affect our current contributors and everybody else who wants to join this action-guided endeavor, as well as why we feel they are needed.

The Community Program was created in 2021 to identify, acknowledge, and streamline the different kinds of participation within the community. This was made possible through the recognition of active community members under the titles of Ambassadors, Community Managers (CMs), and Moderators.

These contributors were organized in private groups under the leadership of the Nano Foundation, which made sense back then, to support our mission as part of the second pillar: “Global Adoption”.

“Global Adoption: Promoting nano's widespread acceptance and bolstering community growth via educational endeavors, a robust online presence, talks, and more.”

The community programme has accomplished some pretty incredible things over the last few years, whether that is in the charitable sector with Samuel's Orphanage outreach, marketing and outreach with Carlo's Community Initiatives podcasts, or indeed talking to businesses large & small such as Martin in Uganda giving talks to Safe Boda!

There are so many more accomplishments by the team. However, we would be here all day listing them out! Thank you to everyone who made a difference; you are all so appreciated! 

Nevertheless, as we move towards a more collaborative and open environment, the community program is also taking a step forward in the same direction. It is also becoming a lot BIGGER!

Everyone can be an ambassador or a community manager, no titles are needed

In this context, everyone is an ambassador if they represent nano somewhere. Interestingly, Oxford Languages defines an ambassador as:

“A person who acts as a representative or promoter of a specified activity.”

In our case, the specific activity is nano itself. Every enthusiast can represent nano in their environment, becoming part of its present and future.

There will be community members who will be nano ambassadors one single time, on a very specific occasion, while others will become a consolidated reference in their own niche.

It is your call! There are no limits to what you can do besides your own creativity and — of course — the responsibility you will assume for your own actions. Remaining honest is a must if you want our support.

From our side, the current ‘Ambassador’ title will be removed. We are not diminishing the current ambassadors’ work, but opening the playground up to everyone to partake and support!

Community members can call themselves ambassadors if they want, but this will not be a limited role with special access in private groups, as we were previously doing.

We are opening everything up to everyone who wants to contribute!

The Nano Foundation will support contributors and propose focused collaborative campaigns and community activities through objectives, tasks, assets, and educational material.

We are highly focused on creating big or small local circular economies worldwide. And we need as many hands as we can to make it global. By opening up the programme, community members can give as much or as little towards nano’s growth, and we look forward to seeing this community become truly collaborative.  

Community managers are community project leaders

As we are opening up the programme, the title of Community Manager will also be removed. However, everyone can fulfill this role through independent initiatives related to the community. A great example of that is the “Community Dev Fund'' independently organized by James Coxon (u/jayycox).

A manager leads projects, groups, task forces, initiatives, funding, campaigns, etc. So, if you have an idea and want to take ownership of it, just do it! The time for backseat driving is over, and we need action-guided people to transform ideas into reality.

The Nano Foundation will help and support independent initiatives that align with our ethos. We can brainstorm ideas, help with promotion, provide the right tools to make it easier for the project leader, or even connect them with the right people.

The Moderators’ role will be kept

In the past, the three roles have always been bundled together. However, Moderators perform a different role within our community: keeping our channels safe and healthy. That is why we are retaining the Moderator role. If you feel that you have the cool-head and ethical chops to help moderate our social channels, please apply by sending an email to jobs@nano.org. 

A moderator has permissions in the back end of our socials, with the ability to remove people from our communities if they have broken the rules; this is a high responsibility, and our moderators have worked so hard over the years to keep our channels an enjoyable place for everyone. A huge shout out to each one of them that did a fantastic job so far!

Ok, I want to help. Now what?

As our next step, we will be closing and archiving the old private chat channels used for the community program - this is to optimize our activities and keep our servers clean, objective, and open to the wider community. Casual discussions, ideas, and accomplishments will take place in the appropriate specific channel, according to its topic.

So, let's say you want to brainstorm ideas for an adoption-focused campaign or share some personal accomplishment related to the adoption of nano as money: You should use the Discord channel #adoption for that.

This will be the same for other topics such as #events or #gaming. If you are not sure which channel to use, #general will helpfully point you in the right direction. Discord helpfully allows the threading of conversations; we encourage the use of these to keep conversations and brainstorming nice and tight!

We will keep and open up some of the special channels that we have been using privately with the program:

#community-forum: This is an open channel for everyone to read and comment on the topics at hand - these could include community tasks to be done collaboratively, global objectives for long-term strategies, ‘nano tips’ for assets and educational content to empower contributors, and more. This is the channel to head to when you are unsure how to write an outreach email or indeed create a pitch deck, the channel will have lots of handy tips & assets ready for you! 

To keep this channel nice and tidy, only the Moderators and NF will have the permissions to open up a new tile topic. If you have a topic you think we are missing, please message someone in the Moderator team or NF. 

#community-stage: This is a webinar channel to host partner-AMAs, workshops, lectures, speeches, etc. Everyone will be able to use the channels, and if you are looking to give a lecture yourself on a topic such as ‘How to integrate nano payments into your webshop’ or ‘create better SEO’ then simply ask a Moderator or an NF team member to do so. This is a great way to share the expertise you may have with the wider community. 

#community-lounge: This is an open voice channel for community members to chat live through voice. Join at your own risk and convenience. If you want to organize a game-night then the community-lounge is where it can happen, bring on a Nano BrowserQuest party or a NanoQuake2 battle! 

But even more important is that if you want to help, take the initiative and do it! Nano only succeeds with the collaborative action of all of us together! 

In this more open and collaborative phase of the community program, contributors should not expect everything to come from a centralized entity (the Nano Foundation). Instead, we will rely on each other’s proactivity to take ownership of their ideas and to use their individual skills to support our ecosystem and increase nano awareness and adoption worldwide.

My e-mail (vini@nano.org) and Discord inbox (@vinibarbosabr) are both open to contributors who want to be actively involved.