Rebooting (and clarifying) the STEMsocial proposal

As a follow-up to the last discussions on proposals, I have reorganised the STEMsocial proposal a bit, following the template proposed in this post. The idea behind this rebooting is to make it easier for any potential supporter to find any relevant information. We have also extended the manner in which we expect to spend the funds, if granted. I will update the original proposal post later on today.

Our proposal (#91) can be supported here. As always, I will be very happy to answer any question, either on chain or off chain.

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STEMsocial - Improving STEM communication, one blog post at a time

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This proposal is related to open-source software. STEMsocial currently develops its own app, that is suitable for its goals (see below). The app is available from Github.

The proposal is moreover connect to Hive advocacy and marketing: STEMsocial aims at on-boarding those with the greatest STEM knowledge worldwide (i.e. researchers actively involved in groundbreaking science) to use Hive for communicating about their work. This will bring content of such a calibre that anyone may search for it on the web, and that could even bring more users by their impressive nature.

Principals: STEMsocial is managed by @lemouth and @mobbs for almost 4 years. @lemouth is professor at Sorbonne Université (Paris) and is a researcher in theoretical particle and astroparticle physics (CERN, dark matter, etc.). @mobbs is writer, composer and educator by trade, as well as a science autodidact with focus on biology and phylogenetics.

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Costs

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The larger chunk of the costs is expected to be the development of the STEMsocial app in which many functionalities are still missing. To name a few (see here for a more detailed list), we can mention a better post editor, the rewriting of the routing (cf. SEO), efficiency, a better user profile page, etc, as well as a merchandise shop and other means to make the project self-sustainable.

The costs include not only some compensation for the technical work (@lemouth) and related discussions (@mobbs), i.e. not a salary as this would be much higher, as well as a designer fee (@glass.wolf).

Whilst the app gets completed, we will in parallel get prepared to contact press offices of top-notch STEM places worldwide through the production of advertisement material for Hive and STEMsocial. Spreading the material through our targeted audience will happen online and offline (direct contact), although trips worldwide are not on the list anymore due to the unknowns related to the current COVID-19 situation.

In the future, with the project scaling up, we may need to rely on our own servers. This is not included in the proposal as too premature. We may also be self-sustainable by then.

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Costs by milestone

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The costs have been slightly adjusted since our last post. Except for the work already done, we effectively plan to compensate the work done through a **flat rate of $20/hour**. This is by far not a salary, but a compensation (we do not aim to “hire” people). The funds will be managed from a dedicated account, @stemsocial-dev, on a weekly basis.

The planned work can be broken down as:

• October 2018 - May 2020
  • Compensation for all developments and work done so far, relevant for the current version of the app. [$5k]
  • Designer fee for our graphical designer. [$2k]
• June 2020
  • Finalisation of the planned developments for the 2020-Q2 period: the post editor, Steem(STEM) cleaning, maintenance and bug fixing.
  • Design discussions.
  • Preparation of monthly STEMsocial live events (online seminar for the general audience)
• July - December 2020
  • Improvement the SEO, routing, profile pages, a better wallet and curator tools. In other words, getting an MVP version of the app.
  • Creation of STEMsocial (and therefore Hive) promotion material.
  • Getting a list with targeted audience and charities; design of potential business avenues.
  • Starting our monthly live events series, and advertising it to the greater web.
• January 2021 - July 2021
  • Finalisation of the STEMsocial app v1.0, focusing in particular on the development of revenue-generating features.
  • Marketing targeting big institutes, known STEM bloggers.
  • Continuation of the seminar programme.

The currently requested amount is probably larger than needed. This will allow us for some flexibility, extend the proposal time frame if needed and eventually return the unused funds to the DHF if relevant. We will refine the calendar with the time passing.

The progress will be reported once or twice a month, as currently done:

• Apr 14th: The detailed STEMsocial roadmap for 2020 can be found here (updated above).
• Apr 20th: A summary of the March/April developments can be found here.
• May 7th: End of April achievements (new post editor) can be found here.
• May 12th: Clarifications about our proposal can be found here.

 

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Project description / benefits for Hive

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Often, those with the greatest knowledge lack incentive to communicate their work to mainstream audiences by themselves, opening the door to mainstream journalists hungry to get attention through sensationalism and misleading clickbait.

STEMsocial addresses that problem by aiming at the development of a science communication platform on Hive, offering both to experts and passionate STEM hobbyists a community where they can freely express their knowledge in a social media environment actively promoting honest, reliable and high-quality content in which it can be freely accessed, discussed and critiqued.

Our vision includes a direct approach to those with the greatest knowledge of STEM topics in order to bring them to Hive to create content about their work, discuss the work of others or provide high-quality material that cannot be found anywhere else online. With that in mind, we have been working on bringing those at the source of the best scientific content of the planet to Hive.

This requires, as one of the first steps on this path, the development of an application allowing us to filter the blockchain content to facilitate the discovery of the articles of the largest calibre.

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If unfunded…

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We will continue our work if the proposal happens to become unfunded, using the savings we have and publicly sharing everything as we do for almost 4 years.

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The famous last words

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If you like what we do, please consider:

• supporting our funding proposal (#91);
• approving our witness (@stem.witness);
• delegating to the @steemstem account for some ROI, or trailing it.