OurVerse: A cyber-physical activism tutorial

Proposal title Urbánika and the SolarPunk awakening (before known as OurVerse)

TL;DR

What is Urbánika?

A propaganda machine for the crypto-commons, operating through an immersive video course guide on using and applying decentralized coordination tools and techniques at local urban DAOs. The goal is to guide activists into regenerating and re-imagining cities through a solarpunk and crypto-commons-based perspective.

First teaser:

Proposal description

What are we trying to solve?

Turning training into an engaging and gamified activity that is sought instead of avoided by students. Counter-balancing the excess of dystopian futures by putting into light that building better futures is possible today through the tech stack and collected knowledge that researchers, original peoples, urban activists, regenerative movements, and crypto-commoners have put at reach.

Our approach
Creating an immersive training that brings the masses and local change makers to quickly adopt web3 tools and techniques within local use cases requires a highly engaging approach. Urbánika’s approach holds four features:

  • Video lessons: Teachings are expressed in the form of videos. Lessons go from understanding and claiming an urban commons to managing them as a local urban DAO.

  • Gamified immersion: After the lesson is presented through the main episode, the student will be able to choose which path to watch: Capitalist or Post-Capitalist. Each path is shown through a video scenario where the consequences of implementing the technologies/methodologies of the chosen path within the local urban DAO are presented.

  • IRL practice: After watching those scenarios the student will get an in-real-life challenge to solve within a time limit of three weeks.

  • Recognition: When the challenge is solved the student gets a skill badge of completion and life points for the contribution of taking humanity closer into becoming a regenerative species, like in a game. In contrast, if the student does not solve the challenge, the life points are given to Moloch. When life points are out, the game is over.

How do we measure if Urbánika’s pilot season is a success?

We will call Urbánika’s pilot season a success if it manages to create 10 local urban DAOs, formed by at least 3 people each, across all of Latin America, for a total of 30 people.

Who is going to do it?

A team of professionals in Instructional Design, Storytelling, Film-making, Visual graphics and VR Design were gathered within a global ecosystem of regenerative projects, post-capitalist experts, and web 3.0 technology providers to enable the creation of the first propaganda machine for inspiring and guiding masses into realizing brighter futures.

Urbánika’s team is formed by professionals with local and international expertise, awards, and most importantly, the passion and goal to realize this series as a digital public good.
If you want to know more about the team check our Giveth campaign where links are given to each of them.

Business model

The team has agreed on an economic remuneration to dedicate full time and heart into producing the series. After that, all surplus from the service offering will go to:

  1. Re-investing to reach out more people worldwide as well as improve the production quality and team (45%).
  2. Financially support the emergence and consolidation of urban regenerative initiatives from the graduates of the course-series (45%).
  3. Financially support universal basic income and universal basic services development at the communities of the graduates (10%).

With this fund-management approach we aim to experiment a post-capitalistic way of making business. We aim to experiment a way to make commons economically sustainable at the same time that supportive to other commons and most needed initiatives.

Urbánika’s service offerings are three:

  1. Product-placing within the story of Urbánika. A vocal expression or an artifact such as a shirt worn by a character or an item appearing within the mainframe. Either of these with the intention of mentioning a value-aligned organization within Urbánika’s storyline. Such mentions or items are limited within the story.

  2. In-story stories. A complete VR scenario and story script paid by a value-aligned organization to appear as complementary video with the aim to exemplify a success story of how a brighter future is possible through their methodology/tech stack/approach.

  3. Merch and referral fees. Merch from the series’ characters as well as income from linking people to directly purchase a product/service that follows our values and was shown in the videos as a regenerative good/service.

Additional information to add

Kin will release call-to-action video-messages from the Galactic Federation, follow @0xUrbanika in Twitter to receive them.
Support us in Giveth, Gitcoin, and in TEC pls!

Urbánika’s KPIs

Main success indicator: 10 urban commons created across Latin America.

Marketing indicators from video advertising:

  • from 54k to 120k impressions/week (an impression is counted each time the ad is shown).
  • an average of 33k to 78k visualizations/week (a view is counted when a user shows interest and interacts with or watches 30 seconds of the video ad (or the entire video, if it’s less than 30 seconds)).

Financial sustainability by chapter 3 of 10.

How does this proposal benefit the community and/or the field of Token Engineering?

Taking the local space is the next step towards adoption and furthermost, to seeing the full potential of decentralized coordination.

Building new economies and cultures that make capitalism obsolete and disgusting requires engaging with cyber-physical organizations that produce better outcomes than the statu quo. TEC members should engage with as many local communities as possible by sharing their knowledge and expertise.

Teaching a series of step-by-step workshops on decentralized human coordination tools and methodologies directly applied to making local impact will enable more people to understand that solving our most pressing problems is only possible through multidisciplinary approaches. As the one Token Engineering has by combining cryptography, software engineering, AI, data science, operational theory, economics and social sciences such as behavioural economics, philosophy, law, ethics and policy making. Here is why an introductory training is needed and where Urbánika enters to bring as many perspectives, experiences, talents, and hopes as needed to build better futures for all.

Also, it is important to mention that by putting the audience closer to tools, techniques, and people supporting a post-capitalistic city-making will produce network effects on adopting the tools, techniques, and approaches used to solve the IRL challenges Urbánika will give to its students. These network effects will touch those interacting with the public spaces, which will lead to schools, businesses, civic organizations, neighbors and the local governments to recognize the value of token engineering in decision-making.

Finally, we envision that the students will emerge with their own cyber-physical projects using the tools and techniques offered, and there are many communities within the token engineering and crypto-commons’ ecosystems ready to support them. Thus, an explosion of new use cases might be on the sight…

Amount requested (Only for Conviction Voting)

10,050 wxDAI to cover the production of one episode.

How will these funds be used? (Only for conviction voting)

Salaries: $8,650 (7 people).
YouTube ads $1,400 (1 month)

How will you share progress?

The team has been and will keep posting updates and “behind the scenes” in Instagram, and Twitter. We will have soon a landing page where the episodes will be linked to. We have this one temporarily.

Also, we have Mattermost instance to enable the students, subject-matter experts, and other interested stakeholders to join at and engage as a community.

Team Information

  • Carlos Chablé: Photographer and film-director of OurVerse. He is aiming to turn documentary productions into engaging artifacts for social change, his last work is Garífuna.

  • Anna Kaic: Trusted Seed of The Commons Stack, Shiller Champion in both MetaGame and in the Crypto-Commons Association. She is responsible for the Marketing and Social Media Management of OurVerse.

  • Rodolfo Ramos: Instructional Designer at two top 10 universities in Mexico. He holds a broad experience in working with telecommunications companies and crafting immersive audio-visual productions (including virtual reality) in both Mexico and Japan. From May onward he will be full-timing in OurVerse.

  • Bernardo Fernandez aka BEF: Bef, is a Mexican writer, cartoonist and graphic designer that has been awarded several prizes, including the Mexican Novel Prize “Otra vuelta de tuerca”, the Grijalbo Prize, the Silverio Cañada Memorial Prize of “the Semana Negra de Gijón”, the Ignotus Prize of the Spanish Association of Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror. His works have been translated into English, French, German, Dutch, and Mandarin.

  • HBesso31.eth: Crypto Commons Association’s SolarPunk Jedi leading the post-capitalistic training program of OurVerse. He has been experimenting (without knowing) post-capitalistic approaches since 2014 through founding and orchestrating P2P-based services. He plays the roles of Trusted Seed of The Commons Stack, Hatcher of the Token Engineering Commons, Recruiter Champ in MetaGame, Summoner of the UBI Blockchain Collective and YouTuber when needed.

  • Rubén Martínez: Kybernus citizen, Youth Award winner of Quintana Roo, Advisor of the city of Chetumal, Head of the collective Callejón del Arte, and FabLab administrator. He is responsible of managing the Public Relations with the neighborhoods and other city stakeholders. Also, he is taking the role of designing the local OurVerse campaigns.

  • B0gie: 3D designer and producer in charge of creating all the scenarios and avatars to display within OurVerse. His purpose is helping others realize the 3rd web using tech and spirituality to elevate the global consciousness. He has more than 4 years playing and researching 3D design.

Complementary information

As a final note, we are requesting funds from other orgs, all of them partners or allies within the goal of building a post-capitalistic society. If in the case of getting more funds that needed, they will be used to improve the quality and outreach of the episodes. If this happens the community of stakeholders will be summoned to understand the best way to do so.

In the case we get less than needed to cover the ten episodes, we will continue fundraising once the first episode is out, as a way to directly showcase the potential of funding open-knowledge.

8 Likes

hey @HBesso31

How does this proposal benefit Giveth?

Do you have a project on Giveth?

Hey, Mitch!
We envision Giveth as a proposal engine, so urban commons that emerge from the immersive series will create their proposals there. Furthermore, Giveth, the Commons Stack, TEC, and TEA will benefit from the exposure we will give throughout the series.

Yes, Urbánika is in Giveth: Urbanika and the SolarPunk awakening | Giveth