Discussion: Ceramic Ecosystem Alliance (CEA)

[michaelsena]

cip: 3
title: Ceramic Ecosystem Alliance (CEA)
author: Michael Sena (@michaelsena)
discussions-to:
status: Final
category: Meta
type:
created: 2020-06-14
requires:
replaces: 

Simple Summary

The Ceramic Ecosystem Alliance (CEA) allows members to self-organize into working groups to discuss important topics related to Ceramic and produce outputs (normally in the form of CIPs).

Abstract

The CEA IS a grassroots network of Ceramic collaborators. It was created as a way for community members to self-organize into working groups to collaboratively discuss important topics related to Ceramic (such as governance, standards, use cases).

The CEA IS NOT a replacement for Ceramic Core Calls, including Core Community Calls where the broader community convenes to learn more about Ceramic, and Core Devs Calls where Ceramic developers discuss network upgrades. The CEA also is not a replacement for CIPs the process by which the community formally proposes standards or improvements to Ceramic. Rather, the CEA serves as a focused vehicle for interested parties to zoom in on important issues, organize into topic-based working groups, and share outcomes amongst the group. A working group will often produce one or more CIPs.

Motivation

Grassroots, Topic-Based Collaboration: CIPs are the method for proposing improvements to Ceramic, but often times community members want to collaborate more closely on those issues. The CEA provides a structure for closer topic-based collaboration to happen.

Specification

Location

The structure for the CEA should exist within the Ceramic Network github organization, in its own repo. http://github.com/ceramicnetwork/CEA

Participant Structure

The CEA has three levels of participant structure:

Role	Description
Members	All participants. Expected to participate in working groups.
Working Groups	Collections of members tackling specific areas of interest, such as Ceramic governance or identity.
Stewards	Members that run run CEA meetings (not working group meetings) and ensure overall integrity of process.

Meetings

All meetings for the CEA and Working Groups will be added to a CEA Calendar. All members of the CEA have access to this calendar and can join any meeting.

CEA Meetings

The entire CEA gathers every two weeks for a meeting (attendance is optional). In this meeting, members:

• Share progress from existing working groups
• Propose the creation of new working groups

Since CEA meetings are primarily built around sharing progress from working groups, at least 1 member from each active working group is expected to attend.

Working Group Meetings

CEA members self-organize into topic-based initiatives, called working groups. Individual working groups create their own charter, decide their own meeting schedule, and get their own designated channel in the Ceramic discord server. Typically, working groups meet every two weeks so they have something to share out at the next bi-weekly CEA meeting. Notes from working group meetings are helpful to keep the rest of the CEA aligned. Use the CEA meetings notes template to take good meeting notes.

How to join the CEA

1. Submit a Pull Request to the CEA repository adding yourself to the members table in the README.

2. Fill out this form.

Once a steward has confirmed you have completed the previous two steps, they will merge your PR and send you a welcome email containing your invitations to the CEA Call Calendar and Discord.

How to form a new working group

1. Join the CEA.
2. Create a charter for your working group.
3. Submit a Pull Request to the CEA repository adding your working group and charter.
4. Propose your working group at the next CEA meeting. If approved, your PR will be merged, you will get a designated channel in the Ceramic discord, and your working group meeting schedule (specified in the charter) will be added to the CEA calendar.
5. Recruit participants for your working group.

Stewards

• Michael Sena (@michaelsena)
• Joel Torstensson (@oed)
• Danny Zuckerman (@dazuck)

Implementation

• CEA Repository: http://github.com/ceramicnetwork/CEA
• Join the CEA: https://github.com/ceramicnetwork/CEA/blob/master/README.md#join-the-cea

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

[michaelsena]

@oed @dazuck Here is a CIP for the creation of the CEA. Need to update some links, but this is the general structure. Thoughts?