Index Coop APAC

Growth APAC
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Background

Borrowing some words from @BigSky7 's recent podcast appearance on The Unstoppable Podcast when answering the question: ‘what makes DAOs special?’:

Answer: ‘When I think of a DAO, the first word that comes to mind is an open community. It is an organization that anyone in the world can join, that anyone can be part of and is really tied together by our governance token INDEX which allows you to vote on the major changes that occur in the DAO. And the beauty of this open organization model is we can really attract people from all over the world, all different experience levels and they can find different ways for themselves to contribute.’

Current Situation:

The community & working group calls serve as important coordination & information dissemination tools to keep the community up-to-date, informed and aligned. Right now most contributors & community members are in US & EMEA and the regular calls align with US/EMEA timezones. We do have a handful of contributors & community members in APAC, but it’s difficult to engage the community in the APAC region due to the timing of the various calls. We are therefore missing out on a) a huge opportunity to make Index Coop products visible & available to a population of 4.5bn people in APAC b) potential expertise in the form of new DAO community members in APAC who can contribute to propelling Index Coop to the next level.

4.5bn+ people in Asia (stat courtesy of Statista) • Most populated continent 2018 | Statista

Below are timings of the existing community calls translated into HKT/SGT

Weekly Standup: 00:00 - 01:00am

Org Work Session: 02:00 - 02.30am

Eng Work Session: 04:00 - 05:00am

Business Development: 00:00 - 01:00am

Weekly Planning: 01:00 - 02:00am

*+/- 1 hour for Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam

Proposal:

Set up a regular APAC Community Call at a suitable time to cover Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, India, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Korea. With a view of developing the APAC community & ultimately to have an APAC working group to focus on the region. (see specific goals below)

Considerations:

  • We must ensure the DAO continues to run efficiently & without duplication
  • We want to work as one DAO community, APAC must be part of that & not a separate entity
  • Ensure information freely and efficiently flows between regions/timezones on an ongoing & sustainable basis

Goals:

  • Build an Index Coop APAC community
  • Have at least 20% of contributors located and operating from APAC by year end
  • Get Index Coop products listed on recognized APAC exchanges
  • Engage the region specific social media channels in local language (@Tudou is already doing some great work here on Wechat. We can do more on other platforms & in other languages)
  • Increase the visibility of Index Coop products in APAC
  • Bring in APAC based VCs for future funding/diversification rounds

To provide the world’s best crypto index products we should be global both in terms of community & product reach. This is a step towards expanding and scaling further across APAC. Feedback from the community on how we can make this a success would be greatly appreciated.

(A link to the podcast mentioned at the start of this post is below: https://the-unstoppable-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/50-how-daos-are-changing-business-with-simon-judd-from-index-coop-BjZrXnJT)

Thanks to @MrMadila for input to this post

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Yes. I believe in order to scale up and expand the reach of IC, we need to have a global presence on this.

Will discuss further on this during our call tomorrow and hopefully can update on what’s the next steps for this.

Personally the most important thing is public exposure of IC and its products and awareness.

Let’s go this!!

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Thanks for this @Lanks . I fully support a call at APAC friendly times and I’ll attend when I can.

The topic came up in the weekly-standup and was championed by @BigSky7 . In fact, you can see for yourself - the weekly-standup meeting is also now being recorded directly as a result of wanting to help info transfer. It’s in #language-ops on discord.

Shout out for the work already being done:

@Tudou is doing a great job with Chinese WeChat and Weibo - https://weibo.com/u/7615310937

@Petedx has just spun up a Korean Facebook for the Coop - IndexCoop Korea

@pujimak_in with a Malay blog just starting - https://alqomarblog.wordpress.com/

Looking forward to Coop becoming ever more global! :earth_asia::earth_africa::earth_americas:

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I second this. Thank you @Lanks for bringing visibility to this. This will allow people from APAC to collaborate on a friendlier schedule. I am looking forward to inviting more contributors to hop on.

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Huge win and big step forward. I can’t wait to start seeing more time zone specific community calls. We are literally missing half the world’s population based just on tome zones.

Also huge shoutout to everyone in APAC crushing it for IC right now!

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Great post and great initiative. If anyone is qualified to lead this it is @Lanks

Worth adding that if 4.5bn people wasn’t a big enough incentive, the growth, wealth, and tech orientation of many of those markets are also huge growth potentials today and into the future.

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Majority of DATA team is based in Seoul, South Korea but I’m the only one currently working at Coop. Voting in DATA would instantly add people from APAC to Coop roster FYI.

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And yes Coop meeting times are absolutely attrocious for APAC. I dealt with it for first 2 months of Coop because I was coming back to US anyway but mentally and physically impossible to make that your lifestyle unless you don’t plan on having a fullfiling life or be maximally productive. I will definitely not be attending any of the calls once I move to Korea in a couple weeks.

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@Kiba it’s good to know there will soon be more experienced Owls in the region. Pls ping your email via Discord @Lanks#8192 & will get you added to the timezone friendly call invite

Separately it would be awesome to get DATA up & running soon, either via the INDEX.Labs proposal made by @overanalyser or via the traditional route. Either way, am very much looking forward to DATA.

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Earlier today, we had a successful first APAC Call which was attended by @Lanks , @Tudou , @Cavalier_Eth , @Elmit and myself.

Representing from 5 different countries in the APAC region namely Singapore, Mainland China, Australia, Taiwan and Malaysia respectively.

Here’s a summary of what we discussed and what we will be focusing on in the coming weeks;

The importance of doing ground work in our region so we can have a bigger picture of what to focus on; we’ve identified 3 major pillar that we should be focusing on for our research.

  1. Business Development & Compliance
  2. Growth & Community
  3. Product

Here’s the link to the sheet for reference; amid still work in progress.

Also you can check out the meeting minutes of our discussion here.

Any conversational updates you guys can hop in to our dedicated APAC channel on discord. :smiley:

Finally we’re planning for a follow up (tentatively) call next week same time; any updates will be on discord channel.

Cheers.

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Thanks @Lanks and @pujimak_in it was awesome to meet some APAC humans.

As a newbie, something as simple as a conveniently timed Newcomer Call was MASSIVE help to engaging with the coop. Looking forward to supporting others from :australia:

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Great to hear this! Really glad this meeting is up and running and working already. Way to go!

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We just finish our 2nd APAC call today;

Attended by @Cavalier_Eth , @pilko from Australia; @Elmit from Taiwan; @emil_eth from Philippines; Myself from Malaysia and our Lead, @Lanks from Singapore

Here’s the meeting minutes of our discussion here.

Also we’re still using the groundwork sheet as per last week meeting to consolidate all our contacts in the regions; here.

But basically in brief; here is our action items as its a slow burn.

First contact & Building trust with local CEX/OTC in our respective countries.

Further updates on APAC can be found on our dedicated discord channel #:night_with_stars: APAC

Finally we’ve confirm that our weekly call will be on every Tuesday @ 9:00pm PST // 4:00am UTC // 12:00 AST.

Looking forward to seeing more APAC Coop Members joining the call in the coming weeks.

Have a blessed week ahead.
Cheers~

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This is great! Slowly we are building community in APAC!

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Hi all,

I live in HKT. I will continue to read up on these types of posts, figure out where I can contribute to the wider community project in a relatively timezone friendly format.

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Do join in for the next week call. Since you’re based in HK. It’s good to connect fellow APAC Owls. Don’t worry on figuring out how to contribute; in time you’ll find your niche.

Looking forward to seeing you next week, @NVC !!:blush:

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I am extremely happy to see this group getting off the ground. We talk a lot about how to raise our profile with different groups and geographies. In my mind, this is the absolute best way to do it. The nuances of each geography are complex and require individuals in that geographic area to navigate them.

I am extremely excited to see more geographic and group-specific sub-communities start to develop and thrive within Index Coop.

  • Our Women in Index Coop Community call and Discord chat have absolutely blown up over the past few weeks. We have incredibly strong female contributors and it is important that we continue to develop female-centric spaces that offer continued support.

  • We have many strong contributors from Africa. I would love to see an Index Coop Africa group form and spearhead our efforts to raise awareness on that continent.

  • We also have many strong South American and Indian contributors. Similar efforts would go a long way here.

It seems clear that much of the explosive growth that occurs within the global financial revolution will be driven by non-western perspectives and nations. If Index Coop is to become a truly global financial powerhouse we need to embrace region speci :rocket:fic sub-groups to drive growth in each region

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Finished 3rd APAC call today;

In attendance;
@Tudou (CN)
@Elmit (TW)
@qomarcrypto (MY)

Absents with apologies;
@Lanks (SG)
@Cavalier_Eth (AUS)
@emil_eth (PH)

Here’s the access to the slides and minute meetings.

Also as part of an ongoing effort, here’s a groundwork sheet for the APAC region.

Key takeaways;

  1. Tapping into China’s pool of resources would be one of the focus as per highlighted by @Tudou
  2. Indonesia market are friendly to crypto business and as one of the populous nation in SEA, it serve as potential for Institutional BD to come in.
  3. eSport/eGames is huge in APAC region, would be such a shame if we don’t tap this market especially when one of IndexCoop product is MVI. This could also be one of the niche narrative for APAC as well. But need more deliberation & discussion on this.

Any further updates on APAC can be found at #:night_with_stars: APAC

We do hope as the week goes by, we keep on seeing more and more APAC Coop members joining. Also if there’s any feedback do reach out.

Guess the grinding part is the hardest. But as the saying goes…

“Good things comes to those who persevere.”

Till next time, blessed week ahead!!
Cheers~

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Thanks for the update and maintaining momentum @pujimak_in.
@afromac are APAC newjoiners invited to this call already?

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I believe I can answer that… as the APAC call is on the Coop shared calendar. So they would be able to join if they have access to the shared calendar.

But I think the best is them providing an email address so they can get an invite. (Which either myself (I think) or @Lanks, can add them)

Is there’s any additional thing to add @afromac? I may missed something.