Greetings, dear Ethereans. I am Mihai Alisie, one of the co-founders of Ethereum, and for the last year, I’ve taken on the role of vice president of the Ethereum Foundation as well as director at Ethereum Switzerland.
Over the past several months, I’ve been investigating and experimenting with various collaborative tools, continuously evaluating the effectiveness and relevance of each tool in the context of our community.
Why?
This is because I believe there is significant unexploited potential within our community, and a part of the reason this potential remains untapped is due to the absence of an efficient collaboration system.
This article acts as a follow-up to the proposed experiment announcement, elaborating on several key concepts while delving into the ethereum.builders collaboration system being utilized as a project. Towards the conclusion of this article, you will also discover some project updates and a couple of recommendations on how we can invigorate our efforts and enhance collaboration as a community.
I hope some of you might find this beneficial or even take it a step further, as I believe that enhancing collaboration at the community level is a valuable objective deserving of time and dedication.
As always, your feedback, assistance, and comments are more than welcome.
The Initial Experiment: A Collaboration Catalyst
“Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” —Helen Keller
We all aspire to achieve remarkable things, and we must strive to make collaboration as effortless as possible so individuals can concentrate on their ideas instead of fretting about being invited to a Skype room just to connect with others who are working on similar concepts.
Below is a reddit post that succinctly expresses this sentiment:
From its design phase, Ethereum Builders was conceived as a tool aimed at lowering entry barriers, enhancing community member interaction, and making the joy of collaborative work accessible to everyone.
Moreover, with an actively involved community, the continuous feedback provided by the group can assist the development team in testing and refining features while onboarding new individuals in diverse facets of Ethereum as a project.
At present, with Ethereum Builders, participants are engaging in discussions about their work, exchanging knowledge, and offering peer support, which also enables new developers to join in and become productive quickly and effectively.
Concerning future Ethereum sessions, I’d like to remind everyone that anyone can arrange a session. This means anyone at all with a project or an intriguing topic can suggest a time, and if people find the project and/or topic appealing, the rest will naturally follow.
Since its soft launch on March 20th, Ethereum Builders has amassed over 100 members who share knowledge and collaborate openly.
Fantastic!
The inaugural session was a crucial Ethereum client installation festival, complemented by an introduction to the Ethereum 101 project, a lounge session with Decentral Vancouver, culminating with the impressive Project Groundhog presentation and brainstorming session.
We also have several exciting sessions lined up, like the “ultimate stablecoin built on Ethereum” (eDollar) scheduled for April 12th and sessions on blockchain-based prediction markets on Ethereum (Augur, date yet to be determined). These sessions are open to anyone, so if you find any of these topics intriguing, join us or propose one yourself if you wish to suggest a topic!
Now, to manage this project, we utilize a blend of collaboration tools, and since it has been well-received by many individuals already, I’d like to share it with you as well. If you find this beneficial and need assistance in getting it operational or simply wish to express gratitude, reach out to us.
Elevating Collaboration: GitHub Powered Collaboration Framework
“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” —Michael Jordan
After examining an extensive array of options, I was persuaded that leveraging the existing infrastructure (i.e., GitHub) and re-purposing it (i.e., ZenHub) is the optimal solution for our requirements, taking notably less time to implement as a preliminary experiment.
In its current form, this is how the structure is envisioned:
Step one: Supercharge GitHub workflows
Here’s our approach to transform your typical GitHub…account into a robust project management solution:
- Visit https://www.zenhub.io/ or directly acquire the Chrome extension from the webstore
- Link your GitHub account with ZenHub.
You can verify if everything was successful by checking your GitHub application settings. ZenHub should appear as one of the permitted applications.
If ZenHub has been installed correctly, a new tab labeled “board(s)” should now be visible on your GitHub repository pages. This board(s) will be filled with the created issues, with each new issue transforming into a card on the new ZenHub board tab.
This is an example of how a filled board should appear:
Step two: Augment GitHub interactivity with Gitter
In addition to GitHub, we utilize an application known as Gitter. The setup process is quite simple; it’s an exceptionally suitable tool for distributed communities and projects like this one. With this application, you can convert your preferred repositories into your beloved chatrooms ^_^
Begin by:
- Logging in with your GitHub account
- Participate in the available chatrooms or establish new ones.
You can find a few Ethereum chatrooms listed below if you wish to join the excitement 🙂
Step three: Propel open source with Bountysource
One of the major challenges related to open-source, community-driven projects is a lack of resources. In our situation, we’ll utilize Bountysource to address the resource-deprivation issue and enable the community to steer itself towards becoming self-sustainable.
Here is how Bountysource fits in:
- Log in using your GitHub account
- Create, contribute to, or resolve the ongoing issues available in the Ethereum repositories (and beyond).
The exciting aspect is that once integrated, it automatically refreshes the GitHub issues (Title, Body, Label), which is excellent since we’re utilizing ZenHub and the Gitter activity panel. Below you can observe an automatically updated issue that had a bounty created through Bountysource.
And this is how it appears integrated with Gitter via the activity panel on the right:
You are now fully prepared to communicate openly with others about Ethereum (in various languages), contribute to all existing issues, and create new bounties. The situation will become even more intriguing once we have the capability to develop a DAPP and/or DAO, but for now, I believe this is a pretty exciting solution as well.
For those interested, you can observe the elements in action for the ΞB platform as follows:
By configuring things this way, the GitHub organization ethereum.builders is evolving into a hub for projects, providing individuals with a means to learn, explore, and participate in ongoing Ethereum initiatives.
Harnessing the collaborative potential
“None of us is as intelligent as all of us.” —Ken Blanchard
As each individual becomes acquainted with others within this community and discovers new projects that resonate with them, we create the conducive environment for a thriving open-source community and technology.
For the time being, you can use the list below as an incomplete map of the open Ethereum Gitter rooms:
Active projects/experiments
*Legend: GH = GitHub, ZH = ZenHub, BS = BountySource, ΞB = Ethereum Builders
At present, the priority is to establish an organized resource of information for individuals in the form of the Handbook and expanding the collaboration and knowledge-sharing network. The community’s feedback and analytics appear promising, indicating that there are people “out there” finding this beneficial. Interestingly, China appears to be our top reader.
This comes with a heartfelt “Thank you” to Aurel Iancu from Ethereum Romania, Shaoping from ethchina.org and Jan Xie representing Yunbi.com for bringing this to fruition. This achievement would not have been attainable without your support.
High Five Everyone!
It’s notable that the guide has been highlighted as the second most recommended read from the broad selection of books published through GitBook in their weekly newsletter. Yay!
Additionally, we are in the midst of transforming ethereum.builders into a multilingual knowledge-sharing platform. We initiated this with Chinese, Spanish, Russian, German and Italian. Depending on the outcomes, we plan to introduce additional languages and evaluate the direction it takes from there.
Our aim is to foster localized education and harness the potential present in meetups currently occurring in more than 33 countries. Given that the sessions are facilitated by individuals from the community for the community, our focus is to empower local Ethereans to create an impact in their regions by exchanging knowledge and assisting others in their native language.
We have initiated by forming language categories on ethereum.builders. When establishing a session, simply choose the language being used, and your session will then appear under that language category.
Below is an illustration of sessions conducted in English:
Locating and navigating through the various Ethereum Builders multilingual Gitter chatrooms is also quite simple. In Gitter, just input “ethereum” + “language”:
The chatrooms can also be accessed directly through the links below:
Moreover, we’ve also launched ethereum.builders/plexus:
The goal was to establish a space where you can access fundamental resources to kick off your journey promptly, while also having avenues to interact with and request assistance from fellow Ethereans if you encounter any hurdles.
Next, we’ll focus on making the GitBook multilingual and refining it as it still appears a bit rough around the edges at this time. On that note, any assistance would be greatly appreciated and if you’re interested in joining, please connect with us. We could certainly use some help 🙂
Looking to the future, depending on how developments unfold, in the upcoming weeks we will shift our focus towards the DAPP, proto-reputation, and proto-DAO elements of the project.
If any of these topics intrigue you, don’t hesitate to stop by to say hello or offer any ideas/feedback/suggestions.
So…what’s on the horizon?
“The largest room in the world is the room for enhancement.” —Anonymous
I look forward to seeing numerous fascinating projects emerging within the evolving Ethereum Builders mesh collaboration network. Even if not flawless in its current iteration, this is a tool that can invigorate the community and act as a catalyst – but ultimately, it’s ineffective without individuals utilizing it.
By sharing your thoughts and ideas with others, in addition to gaining visibility for your project, you’re also more apt to inspire someone else to embark on a project. Every individual matters, as anyone might hold the essential piece of the puzzle and/or insight needed to advance everything.
Here are several suggested methods to amplify engagement and interaction within the Ethereum community:
Establish an Ethereum Builders session for
It’s noteworthy that even without financial incentives involved, reputation certainly is. We have begun tracking contributions and participation in a rudimentary fashion on ethereum.builders/co-creators:
We’re all enthusiastic about the forthcoming launch, but amid all this excitement, it’s crucial to remember that regardless of how impressive the technology may be, without an activated community co-creating a multiverse of smart contracts around it, Ethereum’s success cannot be assured in any way.
That being said, the stakes are high (the Internet), and this brings profound consequences across many facets of our society. The decentralized movement sparked by the BitTorrent protocols is extending well beyond just sharing mp3s. We have all witnessed the influence Bitcoin exerted on the Internet in just six years, as a singular blockchain-based decentralized cryptocurrency application.
Now the question arises:
How will the Internet appear with thousands of operational decentralized applications?
I’m not entirely certain either, but facilitating the process for individuals to genuinely construct these decentralized applications is likely a prudent initial step toward discovering the answer.
And we all know, third time’s a charm!
#web3, here we come!
