Hello community,
Some high-level points to share from April:
Marketing Evolution
As 3 of the 4 contributors who were initially working on Orb’s branding project (Naly, Jedi Rasta, Vee) have continued the project via Beets (a separate independent service provider that is unaffiliated with Orb Collective), the Beethoven X marketing updates are the best place to follow the progress of the project.
This has allowed Orb to begin a full transition out of the area of marketing for Balancer during the month of April and we are now no longer involved in the execution of marketing-related work. Within the next 36 hours we will have completed a full hand-off of all direct marketing channels such as posting tweets and blog posts.
This is a great step in the further decentralization of the Balancer ecosystem.
We’ve provided all Balancer marketing contributors with a document listing our best practices for public comms and we continue to be of assistance to the Beets and Aura marketing teams to ensure a smooth transition and to help with questions.
Personnel
As part of this transition we are saying goodbye and thank you to two long-time Balancer contributors who built the foundation of Balancer’s marketing, comms, and branding: Meghan G and Megan M.
In April we onboarded Chun Li, a part-time contributor who focused on the branding project and social media. She is off-boarding during this transition as well, after helping create informative content and coordinate during the transition process.
On the Ops side, we also said goodbye to Elissa who was instrumental in setting up Balancer’s ecosystem contributor resources, policies, and points of virtual and IRL engagement, as well as ensuring that Orb’s operations are well-organized and running smoothly.
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Hey man, I’m curious about these statements. What did the full transition entail? And what are the marketing channels that have been handed off?
Any possible lurking time bombs or time sucks? Transitions often tend to unearth certain tasks that may not have been part of a recorded process amongst a group, but which recur on a regular cadence nonetheless. What steps have been taken to scope out possible lurkers like these?
With marketing being offloaded and additional personnel leaving, how will these changes affect the last anticipated budget through June 2023 that Orb recently shared?
What services do you envision will continue to remain within Orb’s SP domain? And who is responsible for performing them?
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Hey @Matt_Alfalfa_or_Span,
Great questions.
The full transition means Orb is no longer performing any execution work on the marketing side and will no longer request budget to pay marketing contributors or cover any other new marketing expenses.
Marketing channels handed off are Twitter, Medium, and graphic design. All other Marketing channels have been discontinued (PR, events, swag).
Since we’ve had the opportunity to work together with Beets marketing for a few months now, I think they’re quite familiar with our processes but Meghan is available to support them until the end of the week.
Since we’ve reduced headcount, our budget forecasts will decrease accordingly, so you will see that reflected in our next financial update.
Orb continues to provide engineering (integrations), UI/UX design, and GRC advisory services.
Thanks, @immutbl. I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my questions. I have a few points of clarification.
Who is now responsible for the other channels you mentioned - PR, events, swag? Is it Beethoven? If not Beethoven, what SP or person is now responsible?
While Meghan may be available until the end of this week, has any effort been made to scope out lurking time bombs and time sucks? If so, what effort besides Meghan’s availability through this week? And what happens when Meghan is no longer available? And what, if any, possible or known time bombs/time sucks have been identified to date?
When will Orb issue its next budget update? The last update for Q2, posted on 4/25, is less than 2 weeks old. The Q2 budget also appears to have been outdated at the time it was shared – it seems it was known that all 11 employees at that time wouldnt continue for the balance of Q2 and 1 additional employee who was mentioned in BIP-275 was for some reason not mentioned in the Q2 budget. The Q2 budget was also posted if not on the same day as BIP-275 then within a day or 2, tops. Why must a revised Q2 budget that surely already exists in some form wait for some other forthcoming update to be created before it can be shared with the community?
As for the services you mentioned that Orb continues to provide, who will be providing those services?
A final point of clarification: as part of the revised budget, will Orb be sharing personnel specific compensation? Or, at the very least, compensation for each specific department?
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