Writing, Notes & Quotes from 2021

Writing, Notes & Quotes from 2021

July 2021

Town Hall Presentation - 14th July

GitBook TH slot

I am Stephen Whitenstall, known as stephen.rowan on Discord and I began to get involved in Project Catalyst in March 2021.

At first, I documented and tracked the activities of the NFT-DAO project. I left NFT-DAO in late May and became involved in the wider Catalyst community. Participating in Ro’s Adagov initiative (which was recently funded), co-founding Secret Decks, an autonomous creator organisation with Dan, Tyler and others and supporting Catalyst Swarm.

So today I would like to present how I have begun to document the activities and history of Catalyst Swarm using a documentation tool called GitBook.

Firstly, I would like to cover my approach to capturing information about Catalyst Swarm. In a GitBook called “Catalyst-Swarm-Genesis”.

I have taken a chronological approach, going back as far as possible to the inception of Swarm workgroups. Then moving forward in time recording significant events that have occurred in the brief evolution of Swarm.

On June 9th , the first Catalyst Swarm “open space” was trailed after the Town Hall moderated by Governance Alive. And I began documenting the Catalyst Swarm events moderated by community members from June 16th onwards. This has now evolved into the current After Town Hall Breakout rooms.

As can be seen in the screen share, a variety of content from different platforms can be embedded in a GitBook. Including YouTube videos, Google Slide presentations, spreadsheets, and documents.

These Fund 4 voting results are all screenshot images which have been copied to the GitBook and sorted to their Funding category.

Another approach I take is to screenshot significant Discord server posts – such as the start of hemisphere discussions on the 1st July and then embed a link back to the Discord context underneath. This can then be followed back to the Discord server source.

One of the main reasons I use GitBook is because of its integration with open-source repositories on GitHub. I set-up GitBook in a repository first configuration where all information is stored in a markdown format. This allows for migration to other platforms and data analysis at a later stage.

At present I maintain GitBook content by myself, but I am also collaborating with other Catalyst web content developers such as Lucio Bagilone, Seomon, Victor Corcino, Tevo Saks and George Lovegrove. To handover GitBook and GitHub skills I am working with the Catalyst School to develop open-source training sessions (a link to the Catalyst School Discord can be found in the slide).

The overall aim of the Catalyst-Swarm-Genesis is transparency and accessibility. To provide a community overview of Swarm activities and events, bringing together content from different sources and tracking it on an open-source platform.

Thank you Dor for providing me with a slot to present the GitBook. A list of GitBooks in progress are listed on the slide, as well as links to the Catalyst School.