[Closed] NEAR Intern 3 Months Social Media & Educational fun

[Naomi]

Hey Marketing DAO,

Intern wants to submit a proposal and request funds because life is expensive, and time is a scarce resource. Intern also has submitted form required.

Am aware I’m totally doxxing who is currently behind intern but figured credentials will help to establish I’m not some toxic random passerby - but a genuine contributooor.

I’m Naomi, in the NEAR ecosystem since July '22 (blockchain industry for 4 years) and I’d like to think people already are aware who I am thanks to threads I’ve written, blog posts, speaking on NEAR events and the twitter spaces series I started. Well, surprise, I’m also behind NEAR intern.

TL;DR

NEAR intern is a twitter account dedicated to educating about all things NEAR and spreading the word. It falls under Social Media but will also include aspects of content creation on medium and a bit of audio. The broad goal is to have a fun, engaging, CT appropriate outlet to share NEAR things while fostering a positive culture around constructive feedback.

Funding scheme: One-time initially for 3 months

Summary:

Once upon a time, NEAR did this funny campaign with the egg. Okay, anyway, some people found it a bit hilarious. And then there was some questionable post on the NEAR twitter main so intern figured now’s a good time to create an intern persona that can take on the responsibility of posting memes, educational threads, recaps of relevant twitter spaces and question any decisions that deserve questioning.

Intern was created to engage with the degens, the founders, the projects, NFT projects and anyone else involved in NEAR. Twitter is a more engaging platform than the gov forum, so intern figured why not use twitter to rally around NEAR, and do the fun content that NF can probably not share on their main.

Other ecosystems have strong interns, NEAR not. There is another intern account but that one hasn’t contributed much. There’s a gap to fill.

Here what Intern is looking to deliver (and yes you’ll have to get used to the speaking of oneself in third person thing):

Medium Posts:

4 articles per month with a word count around 800 - 1300 on ongoing developments in NEAR, introductions of projects or more general industry events and how it impacts/plays out on NEAR. Potential topics are:

• The royalties debate and how NEAR empowers artists
• The rise of Central Limit Order Book DEXs
• Why memecoins matter (somewhat - for the culture)
• Introducing project xyz
• WDYM account abstraction, we had that since forever…

$350/article

Total: $1400

Twitter Threads:

8 threads per month focused on sharing insights on projects and hands-on tutorials for those getting started in the NEAR ecosystem. Potential thread topics include:

• Power of Access Key Management
• How to mint your first NFT on mintbase
• The future of event ticketing
• The NEAR wallets landscape
• How to stake your NEAR
• Getting involved in the gov forum how, what, why
• NEAR Nightshade vs Danksharding

Threads might include gifs, and images generated using a combination of nijijourney, midjourney, Canva and photoshop to illustrate points.

$80/ thread

Total: $640

Recaps from NEAR ecosystem spaces

Threads to recap important spaces happening in the NEAR ecosystem including the ones from the foundation, beyond that regular spaces like Ref Finance, NEARWEEK, and more. Estimated 4 - 6/month

Total $600

Interviews with founders

Interviews with one or two founders per month to outline what they are building in the NEAR ecosystem, why, and to provide some insight into their vertical, plus ask them about their views on whatever the current thing is.

Initially written format, eventually might explore using an avatar to do interviews with founders and record video.

Interview questions will include:

• What is the problem you’re solving?
• Why NEAR?
• What were the best and worst parts of building on NEAR?
• Questions specific to the industry or vertical they are developing in
• Advice for those looking to build on blockchain in general and recommendations on what should guide the process of choosing a platform.
• Expansion and Growth Plans
• Outlook on the future: where will we be in 5, 10 years from now
• What skills and traits should one foster to thrive in web3?
• Your favorite NEAR creators to follow.

Total $200

Stretch Goal:

• Intern NFTs/POAPS: create a walkthrough of how people can use AI to generate cool artwork and then mint it with a variety of tools available on NEAR.
• Personal concierge service for people wanting to set up NEAR wallets, and do their first DeFi/ NFT stuff on NEAR, send them NFT as reward. (This isn’t scalable but still can be useful)
• Figure out using the SDK as a non-dev, then document the process.

Optional:

• Access to Pikespeak would be extremely useful for writing on-chain analytics threads

Objectives/ KPIs

Overall growing the NEAR ecosystem by actively sharing on Twitter, and engaging with non-NEAR accounts, connecting with chains of other ecosystems to foster potential cross-chain collabs.

Brand awareness

By consistently producing and sharing informative and interesting content about NEAR, intern wants to increase awareness of the NEAR ecosystem and the innovative work being done within it. Also wants to contribute to making it more accessible.

Impressions

The more eyes on the tweets the better. Intern aims to maintain 10k impressions/30 days and grow further.

Followers

Double follower count

High quality writing

The more high quality posts on NEAR are out in the wild and listed by Google with a variety of keyphrases, the better. Each post will also be repurposed in the form of short quote posts.

FUN

Okay, not really a KPI, but intern wants to encourage people to just experiment and have fun with things. NFTs are fun things to simply mint for your frens and share. Intern also big into AI image generation and won’t stop sharing fun outcomes of prompts used on NEAR NFTs.

Can’t say funding without fun.

Funding

Total amount: $8520 for 3 months

Total amount in NEAR: 3900

Funding wallet: near_intern.near

Intern is looking forward to your thoughts, questions, suggestions and feedback.

Peace out,

Near Intern | Nao(mi)

Approved $2750

[agt]

For several months, Nao has been tirelessly promoting NEAR. A multidimensional talent with a portfolio to back it up. A rarity in the age of Chatgp, whereby exceptional writers will become a prized commodity, with her peerless mastery of exemplary writing and oration. A consummate professional with boundless energy directed toward unique content creation. NEAR needs Nao. NEAR is Nao

[Klint]

Hi @Naomi,

Thanks for your proposal. Usually, we don’t fund first-time proposals for 3 months. Before giving approval, it’s common for us to review a portfolio of previous work. Many of my questions are directly related to seeing what you have done previously.

Medium Articles:
Can you please link to some of the medium articles you’ve written?

Recap of Near Ecosystem Spaces
Please provide examples

Twitter Threads:
The $80 price point per thread is extremely high. This isn’t reasonable.

Interview with the founders
Interviews are great but I’m struggling to see the value of the written interview if the majority of the writing is on the founder. Is the plan to send the founders a survey to fill out and then publish the answers? Is there something more there?

[Naomi]

Hey, thanks for the feedback.

I mean, sure can just start with a one month commitment

Re checking if I am actually a valuable member for the NEAR ecosystem… Maybe this is a dumb question but why did I fill in the form outlining all of my references and examples of previous successes and works when it’s not really accesible to others?

That might be more for the Marketing DAO members to answer but still seems a bit flawed as a process. ^^

Medium articles: naomioba.medium.com there you have roughly 250 for reference. Happy to provide further writing samples. I’ve ghostwritten quite a lot but not willing to share these examples in public for obvious reasons - so would have to be somewhere more private.

For recaps of spaces sure, here is an example

For my other threads on NEAR, here a megathread of my 20ish threads I did about NEAR projects.

In terms of pricing, I am not sure if you’ve ever written threads based on research. If you did you might have noticed that a lot more goes into it than it seems at first. My most recent thread on Axelar took me 4 hrs in terms of research so I’d consider $80 even cheap.

I’ve checked other proposals and the pricing for threads isn’t actually that off. In fact, Bee Experience x RLO calculated $100/thread in theirs and that one was approved.

For recaps of spaces, well, there you still need to listen to the entire thing and do some additional rephrasing.

Tbh I am happy to cut out interviews with founders since it doesn’t seem to be considered a value-add. Naively I assumed people care more about the people behind a project. In terms of survey that could be an interesting thing to pursue, but might be something that the MarketingDAO should initiate themselves to figure out how founders actually feel about the NEAR ecosystem (so be done anonymously).

Hope that adds some further context. Happy to answer any further questions.

[Aurobot99]

Hi Klint,

I would like to add that $80 is extremely little for professional copywriting. I could give you a list of tech startups within the NEAR ecosystem that pay a lot more for well-written and researched Twitter threads.

I think it’s disingenuous of you to call a more-than-reasonable and industry rate of a freelance copywriter ‘extremely high’ without merit.

It’s a shame, because professional and engaging content is exactly what NEAR needs at the moment to solidify its status as a reliable Open Web blockchain. Just have a look at the success of Polygon’s approach to marketing.

On that note, if any established writer reads this and is being offered under $100 USDC for long-form content—please do comment or reach out to me in the dms. That is not acceptable for any industry employer.

Have a lovely day,

99

[so608]

Hey @Naomi thanks for the proposal, replying to the comments and filling out the form.

In general, I want to start out by saying I have been following the NEAR Intern Twitter account for a while, and I like your content, point of view and the fact that you inject humor into the content. I think what you’re doing with your content is what many of us on the MarketingDAO have been asking proposers to do: bring a unique voice and point of view that is in and of itself becoming a “brand” vs. just pumping out generic content.

I have a few questions for you about your proposal, but I want to respond to a few things in the comments first:

• There is a bit of a contentious vibe going on with the comments on this thread. It’s all well and good to debate and stand up for your perspective, especially if you think someone is being unfair, but I also think it’s a good idea to start interacting with the MarketingDAO under the assumption that we’re trying our best here to evaluate and review proposal, ask questions and ask proposers to go through a process (that is not perfect by any means) so that we can be good custodians of the community’s funds. There can be a lot lost in terms of tone and intention on the forum, but we’re all here trying to do the same thing, which is grow the NEAR ecosystem and take part in what is a really great community with a lot of potential.
• In terms of the form process, it’s not perfect, but the intention behind it is to have all proposals standardized so we can evaluate them more fairly. Before our relaunch last year, there was no form, and it was akin to comparing apples to oranges in many cases. This is an incremental step towards improving our process.
• As part of our ongoing goal to make the application process better for everyone involved, we are working with Flipside now to create a dashboard that will make all of this publicly visible in real time. We hope to have that set up in the next month.
• If a council member has an opinion, it’s ultimately just that: one person’s point of view. It does not mean you necessarily need to cut out a part of your proposal that you find interesting and valuable (ie interviews).

Okay now onto the proposal:

• Like Klint said, we typically fund proposals on a monthly basis, especially new ones. It looks like you’re fine with that.
• I think $80 could be reasonable for threads, but it does really depend on the quality. When I write threads, it can take me easily a couple of hours, especially if it’s part of a longer blog post, interview, etc. One of the issues we run into regularly on the MarketingDAO is cost per region and how to handle that – so there is a sensitivity among council members around rates. It’s complicated. So hence the question you got. I think you came back with a reasonable response to that.
• I’d encourage you to align your content across channels as well as you can so that you are getting the most mileage for what you’re creating.
• I also encourage you to double down on building the Twitter vs. spreading yourself too thin across other channels (doesn’t look like you’re trying to do that yet, but just a thought as I see far too many projects launching 7 channels at a time and getting subpar growth on all of them)

In conclusion, I’m happy to support this for a month. We would then need a report so we can review and adjust things as needed. If you have additional questions, feel free to reach out directly.

[Naomi]

Hey

Thank you so much for your response and yes I completely agree we’re all here to grow the pie for everyone - and the NEAR ecosystem. I’m sure that the process for the Marketing DAO will be improved as we go, no one DAO has figured it out perfectly yet so I understand where you’re coming from and am happy to chip in with feedback, and constrictive ideas when I can. Having a dashboard to track proposals sounds like a great start.

For threads, yeah i reckon it’s complicated depending on where people live $80 can be a lot or not - so a nuanced discussion around those is fair ground.

Re channels: I want to limit it to Twitter and Medium (maybe crosspost to blogchain as a NEAR-native platform) to avoid what you mention - the challenge of coming up with things for all the different platforms while further fragmenting your audience. Reason behind posts: if I already do the research for threads, then I might as well write it in a bit longer form out on medium for those wanting a more detailed picture.

Happy to come up with a report and some numbers around the impact created. Also tbh I’d hope the intern can eventually be managed by a team - and not just me to better reflect community thoughts - but I’m here to seed the thing with my input.

[satojandro]

Hi NEAR Intern,

Thanks for your proposal and patience. I also want to thank you for all the work that you have done up until now and for being willing to dox for this proposal.

I support this proposal on a monthly basis ($2840).

A few thoughts and comments -

• Echoing Lorraine’s comments. This proposal is one of the few that are creating original, engaging content while building a personal brand.
• The account has been operations for a while, building a legacy of work and an audience prior to requesting funding.
• Naomi has been an active contributor to the NEAR ecosystem, both under her personal name and the NEAR intern accounts. These contributions have been of high quality and have not received any remuneration from Marketing DAO to date.
• It is also worth mentioning that Naomi is not a NEAR exclusive content creator. I believe there is great value in having people who are operating across several ecosystems and enable them to be critical about what they see on NEAR. While I may personally not like some takes, it is important to burst the bubble and support independent content.

Once again, thank you for all the work you do.

[cryptocredit]

Hi @Naomi thanks for your proposal.

I have reviewed the proposal and the comments from fellow council and am willing to support the revised amount for one month. Now moving to Approved

[Aurobot99]

Very curious to see how the council took 23 days to approve this. If this rate of admin is standard, NEAR will lose many valuable opportunities.

[Naomi]

Thanks a lot for all the kind words in this thread and the consideration.

Intern is happy to see people appreciate the effort put into adding humor while trying to be constructive (ok and shitpost, but that’s CT must-do). If anyone felt offended or attacked, it was not meant as such, and happy to provide any ideas or feedback on this grant process. Intern sees effort goes into it, and life is tough as a DAO member with decision-making power. Thank you for your work.

In the time since the proposal was created, intern got poached by three web3 companies to work with them.

Good news is intern has more steady income, and remains at least partially in the NEAR ecosystem. You can read more from intern in the following weeks on NEARWEEK!

Bad news is, intern cannot fulfill the scope of the proposal anymore and is not one to under-deliver.

Intern hereby turns it down.

Intern account will run as previously to engage with NEAR, and provide occasional space recaps, and commentary. Maybe someday there’ll be a team of people to manage it. “Decentralized intern” if you will.

–

Of course, also as Nao, I will be around. I continue hosting the NEAR is nao spaces to bring people across chains together and write occasionally about NEAR projects when they’re interesting to me.

So see you, space DAOboy. (and gals)