First of all, we would like to thank everyone who gave such tremendous feedback and positive response to our first announcement post Introducing the Steem Business Alliance (SBA). As we believe that we are creating something of value not only to the member businesses but to the Steem blockchain as a whole, we hope to have your continued support and engagement.
Since the last update, we have worked hard to complete the next steps mentioned at the end of the post. These include the launch of our website, completing a founder's agreement document, writing the first version of a governance document, and proposing details of a token-based ownership model. This has all been in preparation to allow new businesses to join the SBA as active members contributing to achieving the scope of activities while gaining their fair share of influence in the organisation.
Explore our new website www.steemba.com to learn more of what we do and how to get involved
Joining or working with the SBA
As of today, the Steem Business Alliance is open to accept new members and form partnerships with others interested in the growth of business on the Steem blockchain. We are happy to invite Steem-based businesses to apply to join as new members of the Steem Business Alliance following this link. For any business or projects who are not yet on Steem, but would like to get started through working with the SBA, please visit this form.
The application form is now open for individuals looking to contribute, as well as businesses wanting to join as either a working or a supporting member
We are also happy to invite individuals interested in making other contributions towards accomplishing the goals of the SBA to express their interest. We will be providing a structured forum where proposals can be made from community developers for contributions they believe they could make that would add value. The SBA will also be providing an updated list of tenders issued by the SBA members with tasks that anyone can contribute towards completing.
We look forward to hearing from you and will try to respond as quickly as possible to new requests. If there are any questions regarding joining the SBA, please feel free to leave a comment below.
2019 roadmap
Before going into any details regarding the governance structure and token system, we would like to share with you our current roadmap for 2019! Each quarter serves a strategic purpose in that it creates the necessary foundation for more advanced activities, whilst also adding the capability to provide one or more of the activities within our scope presented in the previous update. Please keep in mind that the new steering committee established in the second quarter will have the opportunity to revise the priorities for the following quarters. Thus, any points beyond the second quarter may be subject to change. These are, however, the current intentions of the existing members and represents a plan for how we hope to accomplish this year.
The SBA 2019 roadmap proposed by the members Q1 2019
First quarter
The first goal in Q1 was to bring the many ideas expressed by the founding members since the first meetings in November 2018 down to a few concrete sets of activities and a strategy for how to collectively accomplish these goals. The next priority was to prepare the required governance model, organisational structure and other baseline resources such as a website and a way to track and measure contributions and progress. This was all needed in order to prepare the SBA for growing its membership while remaining productive and to enter a more operational stage.
Second quarter
With a governance document and organisational structure in place, the goal of the second quarter will be to grow the SBA through inviting new member businesses from within the Steem ecosystem. Starting off as 5 initial businesses, we hope to at least double the number of active members and also bring in more collaborating projects. The process will then start to allow new members to have their say on the proposed governance document and agreeing on what activities they would want to contribute to getting started. The early contributors who join at this phase are Steem projects and businesses who have shown an early interest in the SBA and shall be instrumental to shaping the SBA, how it self governs and how it operates. These early phase members shall be knowns as Growth Members and shall earn additional SBA Rewards.
Third quarter
Once the new steering committee is established and has approved the agenda for the third quarter, the SBA is expected to move into a more operational status. This includes beginning the work to compile a database for shared resources, best practices and initiating the first working group focusing on a defined area of interest. The main objective at this stage is for the resources to benefit existing Steem-based businesses while producing the foundation on which further consulting services can be built utilizing the combined knowledge and experience.
Fourth quarter
The main objective leaving the fourth quarter is to have an autonomous organisation capable of consulting external clients on how to integrate with Steem and benefit from various aspects of the blockchain. A legal entity should have been formed before the end of the year, currently planned as a joint venture between the founding members. Once accomplished, all working members who contributed will receive their fair share of SBA tokens for the first effective year.
SBA governance
As mentioned in the roadmap, the governance paper will be subject to revision by new members during the second quarter with the goal of being approved before the end of the third quarter. At that point (and ideally before), we intend to make the governance document public for better transparency and to enable community feedback.
Steering committee
The SBA steering committee is responsible for defining activities for the next quarter according to the scope of activities, and then to request the contributions necessary to accomplish the target goals. The steering committee consists of contributing members with the largest share in the SBA, together with high tier supporting members who earn a place through their financial support of the SBA. The committee is organised by a chairperson together with a secretary. The committee members will serve as a chair and secretary on a rotating basis, where each member of the committee is obliged to serve for a 2 month period once every 2 years. The role of the chair is to organise and moderate the weekly meetings of the steering committee and seeing to that the updates made to the roadmap, meeting notes, and communication for the SBA is according to consensus. The secretary is responsible for taking notes in the meetings, updating the agenda in collaboration with the chair, report the meeting notes to the members and do communication to other stakeholders and parties of interest. Additionally, the SBA shall be appointing a Publicity Officer and a Treasurer. It is yet to be decided how these roles shall be elected.
SBA tokens
One goal of the organisation is to have a transparent and fair mechanism for distributing ownership of the SBA to new and existing members according to their contributions. Furthermore, members who earn their fair share of the SBA should have a say in the further development of the SBA, and thus be able to cast votes on important decisions with an influence according to the size of their contributions. To accomplish this, a dedicated token for the SBA will be used. The token will serve as a voting system for members on questions that may include making changes to the organisation, approving new sets of activities and priorities, dispute resolution, as well as the allocation of potential profits.
A fixed number of new SBA tokens will be issued every quarter to contributing members based on their share of the confirmed contributions. Contributions are made in the form of completing tasks that are either defined and issued by the steering committee as requests for contributions or proposed by any SBA member. The expected number of days required to complete the task shall be stated in the task. Any contributing member may then take on the task and will by default agree to the number of days expected for its completion. Once confirmed by the committee as complete, the member who completed the task will receive a percentage of the newly issued shares in the SBA according to the percentage of the contributions they made measured in days it took to complete the task.
The goal is to have a system that is inclusive to new members who are capable of adding value and motivated to contribute to the growth of the SBA, and that incentivizes active participation and a willingness to add value back to the SBA and its members.
Steemba.com
We have launched the first version of our website containing basic information about the SBA, its members and an entry point for businesses or individuals interested in joining or working with the alliance. We hope it can serve as an ideal point of reference to anyone when encountering businesses, organisations and curious individuals looking to become more familiar with what business opportunities exist on Steem and how to get involved.
The steemba.com website is up! Have a look and tell us what you think!
Please bear in mind that the website is still under development and that the most important piece to have ready for this update was the applications form to be able to start inviting new members and contributors.
Hear the SBA talk at the Global Block Builders conference in Austin
The Steem Business Alliance is currently be represented at the Global Block Builders conference in Austin this week by @fredrikaa. If you're there, feel free to ask any questions to learn more about the SBA. A recording will be released shortly after the event for those who can't make the travel. With the topic being how blockchain businesses and projects can come together to collaborate and seize new opportunities together, there should be no better place to announce the SBA open for new projects to join!
We hope this update has been informative as to what the SBA has been working on since the last update, as well as our intended future direction. On behalf of all current members, we look forward to an exciting new quarter and hope to see many new voices joining our quest to building more and better Steem-powered businesses.
