Polkadot Music Events Initiative // {bash} Events — Tranche for [3 Live Events and 1 Livestream Event 2024]

PMEI / {bash} produces music events with intuitive web3 experiences, making the Polkadot ecosystem far more accessible. At our events, all attendees engage with Polkadot tech, making it a fun and measurable brand deposit.

We are currently working alongside Distractive to strategically align with the greater Polkadot marketing efforts. At ETH Denver this was paramount in creating 360 degree visibility for Polkadot —

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We are asking for treasury support for 3 full-scale events, and a virtual (Boiler Room style) event.

Our latest event, {bash} the Official ETH Denver Closing party was a massive success which is why we are looking for treasury support, to continue driving users into the ecosystem in a fun and approachable way.

Recap Video here.

Key metrics:

Previously, the largest onboarding event was run by another team that was granted ~$150K and drove 98 onboarded wallets. For ETH Denver, {bash} drove home nearly 2000 substrate wallets and over 5500 attendees. We achieved this with only ~$80K from the events bounty.

With proper treasury support for a small group of events, we can focus on doing our absolute best job with integrations, and come back where the community can see the ongoing success and evaluate as we go.

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Proponent: Polkadot Music Events Initiative

Beneficiary: Polkadot Music Events Initiative

Date of Proposal: March, 2024

Requested: 64,329 DOT

Full Budget here.

This proposal is for (3) live events held during major crypto conferences and (1) livestream production

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Live Events

• Consensus (Austin, TX) May 2024
• Polkadot Decoded (Brussels, BE) July 2024
• Mainnet September (New York City, NY) 2024

Live Stream Events

• TBA, (Ibiza, Spain) August 2024

Context 

Where the live events are becoming a highly-proven model, we believe that there's tremendous opportunity in produced livestreams. Our vision is to partner with large dance music streaming channels, book artists with incredible social reach, and engage with Polkadot teams to create in-stream drops. Based on other successful live streams that our team has been apart of, we anticipate high levels of engagement and will continue to produce more of these in the future. 

Why Music and Web3?

On many levels, music is an incredible vertical where blockchain can solve real world issues and create a higher quality and more equitable outcome for the fans and the artists. Polkadot should, and can be a phenomenal arena for music in web3 to grow and incubate necessary advances in technology and culture, alike. Many Polkadot projects already have products that can actively help advance this, directly and immediately, through the experience around live music events. 

We think of these events as a clever way to accomplish a few things that are ultimately required for the growth of the ecosystem- more specifically onboarding new users, new entrepreneurs and new developers. 

How are we accomplishing this?

Glad you asked! Each event will focus on three key elements to funnel into our larger goal for adoption and usage. 

Accessibility - Prioritizing an intuitive experience for ALL attendees

Hard and Fast Implementation - UX/ UI builds and backend abstraction, specific to the event series, but open source for the community. This gives developers a chance to work together on the specific needs of the events while having a vehicle for easy user onboarding.

Ownership and Perpetuity - A focus on creating brand loyalty through community, collectibles, cross-ecosystem collaboration and compounded benefits for ongoing/ repeat attendance. 

These three principles help us define the conditions for success and measure qualitative and quantitative outcomes. 

For our events, the goal is to take measurable and attainable steps in implementing new attendee experiences and advancing the music tech stack.   

Who is on the team?

The PMEI has four core members dedicated to the curation, planning and execution of all twelve events. In addition to these core members, partner teams will provide direct support and resources to create successful outcomes. 

The Core Team

Spencer Zabiela:  Co-founder of MuFi, a music and royalty payments tech stack built on Polkadot. 10 + years of experience in the music industry. Spencer also has a background in media and capital markets and has been a long time participant of the nightlife community and event organizing (most recently the September 19th Mainnet side event with Exiled Racers and Zeitgeist and the official 2024 ETH Denver closing party. 

Walker Music (Jojo Walker):  WM consists of four full-time coordinators, led by Jojo Walker. Jojo is a music industry entrepreneur with 15+ years of experience as a talent buyer and coordinator for the largest global nightlife brands, venues and labels, including Defected Records, Halcyon SF and Avant Gardner/ Brooklyn Mirage. 

Contracted Dev/ TSM: This will be a hybrid role with candidates in mind, but is yet to be hired. The responsibilities for this job will include full-stack development and technical success; working with parachain teams and dapps on strong collaborative outcomes. This candidate will also be managing the communications across entities, and technical expectations between team integrations and Walker Music Services. 

Er-Ti Chen: Previously, Ecosystem Marketing Manager and Global Event Program Manager at Parity Technologies. She has been instrumental in pioneering Polkadot's ecosystem marketing efforts and shaping the global event strategies for Polkadot Ecosystem. She has both spearheaded and provided invaluable support to the Polkadot community in orchestrating successful events throughout Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa.

Direct Support Team

Distractive: Distractive is an agency devoted to fostering the growth of the Polkadot ecosystem and supporting all individuals within it. Distractive can assist in elevating projects to the next level by offering the necessary killer marketing strategies to educate and inspire users. Distractive is dedicated to building a community and nurturing trust, recognizing that these elements are crucial for creating a truly epic ecosystem.

Exiled Studios: Gaming and prediction layer. Exiled Studios will provide technical support, marketing resources and BD support. 

Additional Support

In addition to the core team and support team, we are always engaging with incredible builders in the space.

Some of these teams/ individuals are:

Amplified Strategy 

Drop

RMRK

Nova Wallet

Aleph Zero

Protocol Strategies

Moonbeans

Moonbeam Network

What Happens at a {bash} Event?

A great outcome for us is when an attendee says “that was awesome, but 3% weird”. Sure, there’s always networking and great conversations. Yes, we have great music- our events are designed to feature artists appropriately booked for the venue and conference demographic. However, a key value-add is how uniquely positioned we are as a team and an ecosystem to amplify the attendee experience for high-quality music events.

Ok, so where does Polkadot tech play in? 

An example of an event looks like this:

(Think of these parts as modular)

Pre-event

Gamified ticketing access

Digital ticket airdrops

Event

Wallet downloads / ticketing

Live auctions

Art Exhibitions

Live Gaming

Post Event

Random prize draws

Airdrops (digital twins + DeFi tokens for staking)

Educational followup emails 

Community followup with recap mini-doc

Full Budget can be viewed here.