An Education Platform to Link Real-life Value to Metaverse Experiences

Events
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Title

An Education Platform to Link Real-life Value to Metaverse Experiences

Proposal Presentation and Budget Breakdown: https://www.canva.com/design/DAFSCAqaFPo/zITdbIG7Uv7qVvHzj17a0w/view?utm_content=DAFSCAqaFPo&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

Grant size

$240,000

Abstract

By now, the word “metaverse” has become a household name. This concept is one of a new, alternative reality complete with almost all the amenities of real life.

To be able to truly compete with real life experiences, the metaverse has to step up its offerings and start including features that transcend the virtual / real barrier and provide its users with value they can benefit from in their day-to-day life. This is the premise of our platform.

MetaTrekkers, using its reputation and connections, is set to bring the most ambitious and comprehensive educational proposal, which will actively work towards increasing the number of highly-engaged users in Decentraland, interested in learning and development.

Description 3k

The belief that positive development and evolution of the metaverse can only be achieved through educating the users, has been at the core of our value proposition from the very beginning.

In preparation for development of this education platform, MetaTrekkers has already begun securing collaborations with various keynote speakers and personalities who are considered leading professionals in their fields.

Our aim is to onboard their massive follower audience and those interested in the topics promoted by these guests, and introduce them to the perks of education through the metaverse:

  • Global accessibility

  • First-hand, personal experiences

  • Unlimited networking opportunities

  • Like-minded community

As part of this platform, MetaTrekkers will develop a dedicated center in Decentraland, with a total surface of 9 parcels, which will provide multiple settings and environments designed to cater to the specific educational requirements of any topic presented by our guest speakers.

We strongly believe that the long-term success of the metaverse depends on proving it’s a stable environment that provides its users with valuable tools and means to expand their knowledge, and a long list of opportunities for self and professional development.

What makes our proposal unique in the web3 educational space is an innovative concept which we like to call the Institute for Decentralized Education Opportunities (IDEO) – a fully decentralized organization where the users can take on an active role in the educational process by voting on topics, speakers and activities, and engaging in interactive learning experiences.

Being a long-term project, the education platform will also include a program that rewards attendance, activity and involvement with education-related NFT giveaways, job opportunities and exclusive experiences. This rewards program will employ the support and collaboration of many other venues, projects and organizations, from both Decentraland and outside the metaverse. In addition, MetaTrekkers is currently in the process of securing partnerships with organizations like the Texas Blockchain Council, which would translate into access to real-world summits, seminars and sessions where platform users would benefit from exclusive networking opportunities and access.

Establishing Decentraland as an environment that not only supports its community’s development but provides the actual educational resources to achieve such growth, is a technique that can reach a large audience and help onboard and transform them into highly active Decentraland users.

Given the nature of this initiative, MetaTrekkers is currently seeking to obtain TEDx certification as an official partner for the metaverse, thus adding considerable value and credibility to this space, and paving the road for the launch of the educational platform.

With the funds from the grant, MetaTrekkers will develop and market the platform, and will compensate the speakers.

Specification 3.5k

In order to put the plan in motion, MetaTrekkers has already started taking action towards the development of the education platform.

First of all, while we’re waiting for an official response on our TEDx application, MetaTrekkers has begun the process of applying to other academic talks platforms in the effort to guarantee an exclusive educational experience to Decentraland users.

In addition to the value we’re bringing to the existing Decentraland community, we’ll also be taking care of injecting new visitors and users into the Decentraland world. This will happen by constantly engaging with new audiences through our favorite tool – The MetaTrekkers Onboarding Program, composed of four steps:

  • Onboarding speakers
  • Onboarding speakers’ fanbase
  • Exclusive Decentraland tours for speakers and fan base
  • Speakers will lead an extra talk/session on the confirmed onboarding date

The first step towards developing this education platform is hosting the “Dia de los Muertos” event at the MetaTrekkers Club venue, where Decentraland users and visitors will be able to discover and learn about the customs and traditions of one of Mexico’s most important holidays of the year. The event, led by none other than VJ Deliria, is set to educate guests through NFT art, music and direct engagement, about the rich culture surrounding this day of celebration.

Another successful step we’ve taken is to secure a strategic partnership with DCENTRAL CON, through which we’ve gained exclusive rights to stream the November 28-30 Miami event at the MetaTrekkers Club in Decentraland. This will already translate into an influx of new visitors and users, composed of an audience unable to attend the event in person. If we take a look at last year’s numbers, the NFT convention reached an in-person attendance of more than 5,000 individuals, with many more seeking a means to participate virtually. Just to get an idea of the importance of this conference, here are a few speakers who will be engaging the audience: Baron Davis (NBA), Michael Blank (Polygon), Anastasia Drinevskaya (Cointelegraph).

One of MetaTrekkers community’s advantages is that its founder, Chris Oniya, is also Texas Blockchain Council’s (TBC) ambassador for Houston. For the Decentraland community, this means that Lee Bratcher, Founder and President of TBC, will be one of the first speakers to engage with the IDEO users.

Another key speaker that will headline one of the main events of the educational platform will be Lennox Matsinde, co-founder of Satoshi’s Index and Product Manager at Starbucks Corporate – one of the latest additions on the list of big brands actively exploring the opportunities of metaverse representation.

Yu-Kai Chou, a crowd favorite, is the creator of the Octalysis framework, a keynote speaker on our education platform, and regarded as #1 Gamification Gurus. His work in the field of gamification is linked to substantial improvements in the experience of over 1 billion users.

Besides partnering with some of the most influential personalities from different industries, the IDEO platform comes with a few solutions towards self-sustainability:

  • Revenue generated by user interaction with metaverse advertising (already implemented and used)

  • Memberships and subscriptions to the Decentraland IDEO platform

  • Individual training and mentorship sessions for interested users

Personnel

Directory: MetaTrekkers Directory - Google Docs

The team of professionals responsible for the development, launching and marketing of the educational platform:

Chris Oniya, MetaTrekkers Founder

Jim Flint, Local Search Group Digital Marketing, Founder and President

Julia, Web3 Educational Advisor

Chris West, Digital Marketing Specialist

Swivel Meta, Metaverse Development

Melanie Girald, Strategic Planning Consultant

Julio Balbueno, Strategic Planning Consultant

Synthia Nominae, Metaverse Onboard Lead

Jay Vee - Project Manager

Julie Anne - Administrative Assistant

Psyche - Social Media Coordinator

Neo - Video Editor Assistant

Roadmap

The initial stage of the project implies the development, marketing and launching of the platform, including hosting a minimum 15 educational events featuring at least 15 keynote speakers.

Starting at the beginning of the year 2023 we’ll deploy the development tasks to our team of professionals, while the month of February will kick off the first series of seminars, sessions and talks.

2022

  • Exclusive streaming of the TBC Summit
  • Women of Web3 Summit
  • DCentral Con Miami
  • Maxing Out Your Meta-Con Experience Conference

January 2023

  • Development of the educational platform begins
  • Pre-launch, marketing campaign

February

  • Development of the platform ends
  • First educational sessions hosted in Decentraland, complete with 4-step onboarding program
  • Bloomberg/Forbes news article about the launch of the platform. Decentraland and keynote speakers are promoted throughout the article.

March

  • Platform update, following community feedback
  • Educational seminars complete with 4-step onboarding program

April

  • Deployment of the first interactive educational activities and beginning of the “loyalty” program
  • Educational seminars complete with 4-step onboarding program

May

  • Educational seminars complete with 4-step onboarding program
  • Bloomberg/Forbes news article about activity of the platform

June

  • Educational seminars complete with 4-step onboarding program

July

  • Educational seminars complete with 4-step onboarding program
  • Preparation for the exclusive streaming of the same summits and conference from 2022

August – December

  • Educational seminars complete with 4-step onboarding program
  • Bloomberg/Forbes news article about activity of the platform.
  • Exclusive streaming of the TBC Summit, Women of Web3 Summit, DCentral Con
  • Maxing Out Your Meta-Con Experience Conference

At the end of the first year, we will mint exclusive certificates for the most active participants/members of the platform

For the complete list of speakers, please check the following list:

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Annex

For the purpose of transparency, here are some more examples of what the MetaTrekkers community is doing in preparation of the development of the educational platform:

We will be adding two extra pieces of communication to help new users after taking part in the 4-step onboarding program, by creating the Introduction Manual to the Top Districts and POIs in Decentraland and the Guide to the Most Influential and Community-supporting People in Decentraland.

The Texas Blockchain Council Summit

Thanks to our close relationship with this organization, the MetaTrekkers community has secured exclusive metaverse streaming rights for the entirety of the summit. The event is one of the most important blockchain gatherings of the year, due to the big names it has gathered on its list of speakers, amongst which, the most notable are Andrew Yang, Sen. Ted Cruz, (Former Sen.) Cory Gardiner, Amanda Cavaleri and many more Speakers — Texas Blockchain Summit

Maxing Out Your Meta-Con Experience

This is an event dedicated to teaching visitors and metaverse users how to properly navigate blockchain, web3, metaverse, NFT and crypto conferences and conventions. The MetaTrekkers community has been closely working with the Texas Blockchain Council to organize this event, and holds the exclusive right for streaming in the metaverse.

The guest speakers we’ve secured for this event are personalities from the web3, blockchain and gamification fields, with a large social media following which, thanks to our onboarding program, can become active Decentraland users. The panelists who will be leading the discussion and interacting with the community are:

Women Web3 Summit

This is an organization dedicated to women in the web3 space, but also community building, networking and all things crypto, NFT, metaverse and blockchain. Not only will the MetaTrekkers founder, Chris Oniya, be a speaker at the summit, but we’ll be official partners of Web3Summit (the organizer of the conference) with exclusive rights to stream the entire duration of the event in Decentraland and Twitter.

Some of the major names who will be speaking at this event are:

  • Swan Sit, Global Head of Digital Marketing at Nike
  • Nikki Haskell, Creator Port of Call
  • Yu-kai Chou, Godfather of Gamification
  • Ben Armstrong, Founder of BitBoy Crypto

DCentral Con Miami

The DCentral Convention held in Miami every year, is one of the most important gatherings of DAO, blockchain, crypto, NFT and web3 professionals and enthusiasts. Many of the top platforms and initiatives have used this event to engage with their communities, while innovative blockchain projects have taken advantage of the large number of attendees to present their ideas and establish their presence in the decentralized environment.

To get an idea of the magnitude of DCentral Con, here are a few of this year’s keynote speakers:

  • Timbaland, Multi-platinum Grammy-winning Producer
  • Alex Mays, Conbase NFT Design Lead
  • Graziosi Casimiro, DecentralLand Senior Producer
  • Mark Yusko, Morgan Creek Capital CEO

MetaTrekkers x Decentral Games Exclusive “Educational Emote”

In order to provide a valuable memento for the speakers and an extra incentive for their follower base, MetaTrekkers is partnering with Decentral Games to design and deploy an exclusive education-themed emote. Following the onboarding process, each of the speakers and their fans will be airdropped the emote, as a token of our appreciation and also as proof of completing the Decentraland Onboarding Program.

Yahoo! Article

The latest communication asset to promote our thriving community and Decentraland has already been featured in Yahoo’s financial content category. It is a comprehensive read that details the close relationship between Decentraland and user engagement & interaction.

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epic this is a Yes from me!

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Learning Center
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The Learning Center

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As an educator, I find immense value in an educational platform and the experience this can bring, specially in on-boarding new users to web 3 and Decentraland.
The Texas Blockchain Council Summit streaming in the MT parcel was a great example and experience, that I would have missed out on if it wasn’t for this team. I would love to attend more of these educational events in the future. This is a tremendous idea, and i support the execution of it.

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Metatrekkers is a community that has supported projects like mine at different times. As an audiovisual artist they have provided a platform to showcase my work during their BeatTrekkers Dj battle sessions which has allowed me to connect and engage with the DCL community. I have also shared my work in their Fan Art Fridays and Wearable Wednesday nights. They always give artists time to share their creative process and have meaningful comments about it. The spaces they create for artists to share their work are truly an asset for the DCL community.
I have also received professional services by MetaTrekkers that has helped me in my role as a founder of the NFTianguis art collective. Earlier this month we produced an event called “Camino al Mictlan” which was hosted in their Decentraland parcel. Not only did they host our event but they provided streaming, graphic design, poap distribution, and wearable display services.
I can assure that Metatrekkers is here to support artists and leaders in the space in a professional and visionary way.

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Proposals have a 6 month vesting period. I think this would be better structured as 2 120k proposals 6 months apart so there is time to assess the progress mid-way.

Additionally, there will be some juggling of funds because the typical way 12 month grants are managed is by pausing them after 3 months, with 3 months of no vesting, and another 6 month vesting contract created in the 6 month. I am not sure if this has any specific effect on your budgeting but it can get tricky with so many payments going out to have a pause in funds.

The largest item in the budget, almost 70k, is going to speakers and I’m not sure how I feel about that. If these speakers are that valuable are we not able to monetize their talks through their following? Why should their talks in dcl be free when there are charges to attend these other conferences they speak at.

Second to speakers is Advertising, News articles and Streamers at 63k which would be directly promoting your platform and would be the highest amount of advertising funds any project has received so far. This is typically rejected by the community so it will be interesting to see the wider response.

Using 10k of dao funds for web3 development would also be going directly to your platform only.

This does not seem like a viable platform if you are not able to tap into any of the sponsorships for any amount of funding and where will we be at the end of 240k? Are there plans for monetization or will there be another grant to fund more speakers?

Here is the budget breakdown for anyone that does not want to scroll to the last page of the canva

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Absolutely! Let’s light this candle! ^.^

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Like @mattimus noted, 70k for speakers… what the heck?

Ofc NO!

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Happy Thanksgiving Mattimus, sorry for the late reply, juggling between holidays and Miami Art Basel.

First and forth most thanks for your feedback and taking the time to share your thoughts!

Currently right now in the state of the market to get funding and sponsorship it will be kind of difficult. However hopefully with the success of the education project and proof of concept for 1 year, it should be able to help us build trust and sustainability like BeatTrekkers.

Thanks for your opinion on the budget, I will take it into consideration. However we are a long term focused team and want to plan long term. However your feedback is well heard.

Yes, the reason why majority of our events are packed is because we focus on marketing and onboarding. Based on your calculations, they may seem high, however this is why we are able to consistently rank top 2 in Decentraland when hosting events each time. We would love to utilize the same resources to this education project.

As far as Web 3 comments, we already reach an agreement with the DCL Dao where we will co-brand all our events with them so all party’s get the brand exposure needed. We hope many more people can do the same way as well.

Thanks again for your time and feedback.

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I think education plays a positive role in Decentraland, But genuinely don’t think this amount of funds is needed to get the point across. Since the beginning, I felt this unease on the Metatrekkers project from being involved as a Artist. I liked them in the beginning yes, but slowly my views and trust has changed. I call it intuition. I think more output on content and consistency is needed then a beat battle. There were a lot of brands and well known names tossed around from the 1st grant, I haven’t seen those. The transparency for me from the beginning has been one of the main reasons I continue to disagree with this project. But The Vote YES, without really assessing all layers is what we need more of in this community. We Need more “NO”! and more voices to speak up. I think this can easily turn people/ creators off to the platform if this is how things are run. My voice matters, and this is why I am being vocal here. As persuasive as they can be, and I Understand from a business stand point this seems like a solid project, but I couldnt disagree more. Lets put more time and delicacy before jumping into believing in projects without having built something sustainable… We see this so much in the crypto world, how vulnerable people and this technology really is. Lets take our time, lets build the trust first. As far as the article with finance yahoo its doesn’t cost much to get material out from fiverr to get blogs written, this is just from working in SEO analytics and working with people in silicon valley. Been around enough tech people/entertainment people to know this project, is a little iffy. As far as marketing 38k ?, hard work and consistency, will get real publications instead of paid ones. Why are we paying for this ? Lets give these start -up brands more time in development before asking for huge grants (second one). Please. For the sake of the community and creators.

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Hey Chris - I’m all for education and onboarding to the platform, however, $240k is a huge stretch, given the current financial status of the DAO and crypto market.In addition, you just received $120k, and that may rub off people in the community the wrong way, especially when many are onboarding and doing similar events on their own tab or for a fraction of cost.

Are there any costs that you can cut back on? Maybe do a smaller budget and show the results and impact of these speakers to Decentraland. Curious, what were the results of the Texas Blockchain Summit?

Also, how much are each of these speakers charging to get it to 68k? What are the venues charging as well? I think there can be so much room for collaboration, and I know right now many Web3 companies would rather collaborate to alleviate costs to build up the metaverse/web3 ecosystem. I’m sure some of these speakers would be in that boat.

What platforms are you planning to advertise this event to?

I like the efforts you have been doing Chris with Fan Art Friday, Tours, and Wearable Wednesdays/Beattrekkers.

I hope you understand my perspective.

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Very well said. and great questions.
I think before writing or even thinking of another project or another proposal the first one should be A1. Not even clear what the first project has generated ? Lack of transparency. Already to ask for event bigger grants when the other project is only one month in and not fully delivered, this is a red flag.
Top Businesses right now are saving on costs, and cutting corners, laying off employees, some genuine projects are even running out of business…. 70K on speakers. hard NO.

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Could disagree VJ. You seem smart and love what you do, I bet you could have done it yourself but better with your creativity. projects like this leverage on artist like you. We need to look deeper and minimize middle men for artists to platforms. Even though I was part of this event because of you, I do not agree with the metatrekkers is for the artists. Won’t be long till they move on to something else

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Hi Serenaelis,thank you for expressing how you feel. Hope your views can change one day. Thank you for performing as a special guest for BeatTrekkers.Hope you have a great week and much blessings to you.

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Hi Maryana, Thanks for your feedback. It’s highly appreciated, Our previous grant there are a total 196 DCL community members that will benefit from it, we have already made payouts to over 96 plus people. We love doing projects as a community, so the last grant was a community project, we were just the organisers. If we can do something where the community benefits as a whole and value is created at the same time, we are extremely happy.

Majority of projects we do as you mentioned is self funded “ Fan Art Friday, Tours, and Wearable Wednesdays/Beattrekkers” we try our best to do things in house. When we see projects that have huge potential, enormous upside and can benefit more than just 30-40 individuals like BeatTrekkers. We will seek support as a community. We love building and creating value with the community.

If you know projects that are doing similar like you mentioned of BeatTrekkers or our similar to Ted talk like education events, please feel free to share the links. I haven’t heard or seen anything like this and I am very curious to see.

As far as expenses, especially with BeatTrekkers we tried to have things done at minimum to no cost even to the extent for free but it rubbed people the wrong way. I prefer to not go into details, but let’s just say, if people spend their time energy and resources I feel they should be compensated or else some people may feel taken advantage of, this concept is something we have experienced with BeatTrekkers.

As far as cost I will re-review it to see if we can make some additional reductions. We hired a marketing company that specializes in this aspect. Also we will be running ads across all social media platforms as we do with Beattrekkers which currently trends #2 in DCL every time we host an event.

Thank you so much for your feedback Maryana.

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