Poll Results on Strategies: Engagement

🛡Rongjian

🏃Leo

Hackathons: best case we fund the next Vitaliks of the world. Scholars: same, we are funding talents people who can build hugely scalable projects. Own events: takes too much team bandwidth and we should maybe do ONE a year. Sponsorships: more like we should give some seed funding for others to engage and curate events for us - potentially we create a system where we only fund 50% and make sure the organizers are capable to raising the other 50% and not be entirely dependent on us.

🎽Li

Own events like 1-3 day conference with substance including technical talks, pannels, demos, announcements, etc, with sufficient marketing can help us make Harmony brand stronger. We should keep the social engagement ongoing, many are under-estimating this, but if we drop the ball (especially in the crypto space), it won't take longer to lose traction. Sponsorship and hackathon efforts are on track. We need to be more selective in terms of our scholors program.

🏏Ganesha

🛹Peter

Build first (hackathons) but with a focus on recruiting those teams. Sponsor events so our team can provide thought-leadership and keep the larger network appraised of our skill and smarts. Allow for Harmony to come together from time to time to just be Harmony and share our learnings and best practices. If we continue to do scholars - make sure there is a commitment and make sure that there is follow-through (no double dipping, focus on tech / web3 centric goals)

🌲Sam

I have yet to see substantial engagement from own events. Sponsorships allow us to have presence at many more events without the overheard of organizing them.

☁️Giv

I would like to see hackaton that turns into a business idea/project that can subsequently self sustain. Couple with enough media advertising and the correct content we can reach out to more people and beyond. Our own event needs to be well prepared, not something we do in two months and needs to be coupled with partners engagement so it has relevance in the crypto industry. If not done well, we would have a bigger reach of engagement by participating and be present in other chain conference

⚔Soph

Let’s engage the community under or own terms, and organize, sponsor and participate in Hackathons. Also, we need to rethink scholars entirely.

🚗Boris

The scholar program is noble, and I’ve seen people being impressed by this and be able to experience this like none other. Life changing. But then, the results are hard to measure. I’d love to hear more about who’s life we have truly converted to web3, or are they still keeping their day jobs.

🐉Jack

The power of social media: I make a viral Nike commercial... Nike invites us to their office... Nike scraps their entire marketing strategy for the year and pivots to ours... 9 months later we create an Emmy winning commercial that moves the stock roughly $6 billion dollars. While nobody can promise a viral video, more emphasis on telling stories that move culture is key to unlocking the 10x everyone desires. One look at Elon Musk’s Tweets should tell you enough about the power of social media... it is the one connecting force that can influence popular opinion. Social media is so important Elon decided to spend $44 billion on it... Also, by doubling down on our own events, we are owning the outcome of our events... Denver is a perfect example. Our own events brought us more value than sponsoring of the main event... but sponsoring events still has value, hence why we should put SOME resources towards that. We should scale back scholarships to curate higher quality candidates.

🎥Adrian

Social media (advertising?) can lead to raising awareness with millions of new people, if done well. Hackathons can be great and lead to engaging and possibly onboarding some great project teams. Scholars are great but hard to measure and I don’t see this leading to high engagement.

🔭Daniel

As a content creator, I believe social media is huge for connecting with the masses, however we need to improve on a more cohesive and focused brand messaging for this to properly work. I believe that doing hackathons in conjunction with our own events would be great for our ecosystem because we get to meet and work with builders, and also for our brand culture, by connecting with community through events. Additionally, we should continue to sponsor scholars for conferences because they aid with community engagement, brand presence, and potential projects to add to our ecosystem.

🎬Danny

Hackathons are a lot of work, but it pays off more than anything else.

⛵Hakwan

Everything has value, but we need to do a better job of defining that before investing. Hackathons - my top choice, as we want builders/projects. But sponsoring for the sake of brand recognition means little, and if we don’t ensure they actually build on Harmony, then we are essentially giving money for builders to build their projects on other chains. Also, we need to make sure they are building projects that directly serve our ecosystem and are in line with our areas of focus.

🎤Matt

Though I do see value in the potential for our events, it is through hackathons and the right sponsorships that will give us engagement to communities we have yet to reach.

💃🏻Essa

Don’t know what “social media” entails - influencers? Content? Products, Purpose, and PR are the three pillars which would drive engagement, along with some web2 marketing.

🦒Brian

Hackathons are still the best way to find good teams. web3 is about builders, not talkers.

🐯Tom

⚽Abhishek

Developers feed users and users feed developers. Hackathons are still key to obtaining and retaining good talent. Sponsorship is preferred over own events because, at this stage, clubbing with other products get us strong coverage - which isn’t as easy to obtain otherwise. Social media continues to be a requirement to participate in the overall crypto ecosystem.

🛰️Max

I know a lot of guys who have never heard about harmony, maybe we should increase smm in different countries.

⛓️Konstantin

🪙Gheis

💊Sahil

⏳Zi

💻Aaron

Sponsoring other events helps increase awareness from other existing communities. Hackathons are great ways to test out new tools and build communities around new tools. More social media posts about Harmony culture and TGI events would be nice and attract more builders.

⚛Jackie

I echo Adrian, though also see a great deal of value in hosting our own events (in tandem with social media campaigns) and promoting scholars to come and build at our events.

📖Devin

I have to agree with Adrian, that Social media influence is imperative for us to incite more user engagement. (My only concern is that this category is somewhat vague) Like Brian asked: “what does the category “social media” entail? Is this influencers? Content?” I will agree with Brian that Products, Purpose, and PR (strong marketing) are the three pillars which would drive engagement. Proper marketing is essential, with a strong team & tech to back it up. However, I don’t think that social media alone will get us to the level of engagement we are looking for: This requires building, hackathons, and our own events in conjunction with sponsoring larger events & conferences. These in-person events, hackathons & conferences are where the magic happens, where people fall in love with our community and want to get engaged! My opinion: we need a healthy balance of these categories, but some will bring us to greater engagement than others.

🐇Rachel

Hackathons, Own Events, and Sponsorships are all other good ways to drive social media impact.

🐐Mikey

Builders will build things that attract users. The networking at events is critical - we need to see their eyes light up when hearing about the possibilities with Harmony. I met a few scholars (or people that were sponsored to come?) at ETH Denver and they were great advocates and highly engaged at all the Harmony events. It might have been because they felt they “owed” it to Harmony? They were great advocates though and curious to learn.

🚜Demetre

The first question to ask is who we’re trying to reach, and then we should determine the roadmap to reach them. I question why other forms of engagement/visibility aren’t considered? Partnerships, PR, other marketing platforms, budgets to produce content, targeting visibility at well-respected conferences, podcasts, and events. Social media is important, but it doesn’t necessarily need a large percentage of the marketing budget - that would be determined after the audience is defined.

💿Kelly

Hackathons are a great way to attract existing builders and building meaningful products, while the scholarship program is effective to bring in new talent, demonstrate support and ambassadorship to Harmony. There is something about having scholars championing Harmony, wearing Harmony gear, understanding Harmony’s technology, hacking on Harmony’s chain and love the TGI culture. Multiple that by 10 or 20 times. When others see and hear about “Blu3 or Harmony” repeatedly - this is an impact that is hard to measure, but at the same time, hard to ignore. What makes Harmony special is its culture. When people meet you and the core team, they LOVE you. And Blu3 was born and cut from this cloth as well. There are many competing chains out there, with more well known name and better pay. So, what will make these builders choose Harmony over others? It is in these in-person events, intimate settings and getting to know the team that breeds loyalty. Because Harmony team is not big, suggest for Harmony to have strong partnerships with others (Ambassador DAO, Blu3 DAO, etc.) who can drive this forward. Due to the size of the core team, it is difficult to host own events. Sponsorships are good - but sponsorship alone is not enough. Need to couple with effective social media presence and/ or scholarship program to create the intended effect and results.

🌟Novell

🦋Amy

I’d love to see metrics on how hackathons and scholars have resulted in impact; lacking these, I’d put them at lower priority. Use social and events to promote progress and partners, and sponsorships to tell the story and vision

🤖Eric

first of all, all the categories listed in the chart don’t cover all (different) types of users possible for a blockchain project; while we’re building our ecosystem hackathons and scholarships are the best to obtain talents - strong yes; events - too many efforts on own events comparing with sponsorships or even just simple attending for the majority of events by cores, fellows, contributors (depending on the event size it could be 1-10 representatives) - more likely to say strong yes to sponsorships vs many own events; social media - users will come if they know how the harmony ecosystem (products) is capable to close their personal needs - we need more exposure not only explaining what we’re doing, like oneweekly, but we must have a great flow of information showcasing simple human needs closed by using harmony products (i ask how i can earn - social media tell me how to earn a basic income through voices of the trusted ppl); let’s say we can have a $1m campaign for earning a decentralised basic income w/ harmony, publicly invest/stake/lock in pools and show real results; this can be done by someone from the team, to avoid leaking of this $1m

♒Nick

Education, exposure and engagement go hand-in-hand. Social + Hackathon is key to getting exposure Events need to be self-sustaining; consider sponsorships. Events are a great way to educate Finally scholarships that directly benefit blockchain space is key to growth and sustainability. We shouldn’t consider just research for harmony, but should be developing instead for the greater good and to move blockchain space forward. Scholarships and scholars help the Education and Exposure for harmony

🧑‍🍳 Victa

🐙Sergey

📱Tejassvi

Most of the people spend a big chunk of their free time in social media, a great place to let people about us. Organising own events is the perfect place to showcase what we’ve been working on, our plans, get feedback, and engage with our community, it’s the macro version of going out for a beer with your teammates.

🏔Diego

Aggre with Diego, social media can let more people konw about us.

🏓Xiaopeng

🍩Bruce

🥤Jeremy

🚛Mohamed

🛫Tahir

🎯Hochung

It all depends on what the meaning of “the next million users” is here IMO - but generally speaking, my feeling is Harmony should keep on fueling its Developer brand and ecosystem (so big yes to hackathons / scholars, though with a very selective approach, and also very worthy of one annual OWNED event) while setting the foundations/awareness for the consumer audience (so yes to consciously building for social media - though with a fraction of the budget earmarked here tbh and with a much more step-by-step test/iterate approach). As for Sponsorships, I have seen maybe 2-3 examples in over 15 yrs of marketing work where the sponsorship was worth the effort that went into it (and they mostly came down to perfect brand/audience alignment and true/meaningful product integration). 99% of the others end up being a huge waste of money and a real time-suck for the team that works on bringing them to life, so I’d either scale down significantly or park altogether for the time being.

💣Paola

I am a huge fan of both finding the next vitalik and firing up the community with better social media marketing campaigns. I think the hackathons themselves will be great use cases for social media. And then round it out by making sure we remain relevant in the industry by sponsoring other events or doing more DayONEs.

🍄Darren