So we were thinking about doing a general meeting in the next 1-2 weeks before the pitch competition. The tentative weekly meeting time is Thursday 6-7pm.
The first meeting will be next Thursday, 6-7pm and we will skip the week of the 12th because of midterms. The next week is spring break and we will start back up with meetings after spring break. Pitch competition will be after break, either early April or end of March.
To get interest for potential future projects we'll have a tech team which we may take applications for. These people will work on projects inspired by the pitch competition. People outside of the tech team can contribute to the projects as well, you don't need to be on the tech team to participate in tech team meetings.
We'll advertise the tech team for the blockchain club at the first meeting - will put together an application.
We're going to send out an email before the pitch competition giving a vague rubric (which will include a demo!) that will help people prepare. This is so we don't have just a bunch of powerpoints and maybe we'll get some demos. We'll talk to people at the pitch competition to get ideas on what they want to work on.
After people know the club exists, make a physical flyer with slack, mailing list, events, qr codes etc. Make a lot of these and put them all over campus. Deadline for putting flyers out 1 week before pitch competition.
We should try to get at least one company sponsor for the pitch competition! Potential Companies for tech talks or funding:
- Binance
- Nebulous Labs / Sia
- Algorand
- Circle
- BEN
- Enigma
- Calibra / Libra / Facebook
We need a mailing list, asked Ayush about mailing list stuff, here's the response:
We can prolly send out emails for your first couple of events and market the Gavin ones on linkedin and stuff
That's shit - Kalyan
Our first event qualifies for "first couple of events" (and so does the pitch competition) so we're expecting ACM to send out emails about our general interest meeting on 3/5.
Kalyan sent UMass IT an email for getting a club email potentially.
Kalyan: Contacted UMass IT. They said that we have to be officially recognized as an RSO and have to contact RSO advisor or something like that. I will figure something out...maybe I will just keep annoying them until they give us blockchain@umass.edu for the club
This is going to be a technical club (trying to be accessible to non technical people), so we can work with other orgs like isenberg etc. Isenberg may be a potential source of funding as well - we need to get leads and follow up.
We'll try uport for meeting attendance so provide instructions on how to set up before general interest meeting and other events. This is probably what we want: Uport ID and credentials. If people use uport then we don't have to have a sign in sheet.
Mailing lists are objectively superior to discord to market events in 2020.
We're thinking either ILC or South College - Dan will talk to registrar about reserving a weekly meeting. We will email Rui Wang to see if we can use the makerspace for meetings as well. Another option is LGRC but we would need a big room.
We need to send an email to Brian Levine and ask if he is willing to be the faculty mentor. Then we can resubmit the funding form and be a club.
Kalyan: Prof. Brian Levine confirmed, but he's a bit overcommitted rn. Whenever a faculty advisor is needed (eg. funding) we'll put his name down. For everything else, Gavin will act as our offical advisor if we actually need anything (for the most part, we should be self-sustaining). Also Prof. Levine is going on a sabbatical all of next school year so Prof. George Bissias will take over as faculty advisor.
Open protocol for user payment handles, like venmo.
- Introductions (who we are, our advisors)
- Umass ACM but we do our own stuff
- Talk about what the club will be doing at a high level (weekly meetings etc.)
- List of topics
- Tech team (mention one sentence of our own projects)
- Sponsorship role
- Request for questions, project ideas, etc.
We need two plans - a "lots of people come" plan and a "nobody comes" plan.
If people come - mini talks on stuff Ideas:
- Metamask / Dapp game
- Blockchain club token (free / faucet, NOT AN ICO)
- Get people to set up something super simple (SPV node???)
When we do a lightning network talk we can have people download the lightning labs lightning app and then airdrop them some bitcoin or tBTC.
Going to get somebody for talking to companies - advertise this role at the general meeting. Need to make an application.
We've acquired the domain umass.dev for the club (Kalyan bought it for $12 lol)
We can potententially use the domain put actively maintained projects the club is working on (or something along those line)
Kalyan: Tbh I kinda just bought it cause UMass didn't and because it was cheap
List of things we need to do:
- The "we are a club" email (which includes slack and discord etc.)
- The general interest meeting email (tell people to install uport)
- The "we need a website" email
- Email to registrar about reserving ILC for next week
- Fill out CICS event form for a room in the meantime
- Get UPort working before first event
- Make general meeting presentation
- Set up meeting activity (metamask thing or game or whatever)
- Get mailing list set up
We'll ask ACM to market the club starting, including the mailing list, discord, and slack. We will set up our own mailing list as well.
Apurv will ask Prof. Rattigan to advertise the blockchain club meeting, and potentially Prof. Barrington as well.