We publish quarterly “ICON Technical Community Reports” to support the growing technical community on ICON. ICON’s technical community receives these reports to understand the ideological focus, milestones, specific goals, and timelines for a given period. We will discuss milestones and goals for October 1 to December 31 in this first update. Let’s get started!
An overview
We are focusing on integrating community resources with the new ICON Builder Program during this time period from October 1 to December 31. Community development efforts are organized into groups, public grants are organized, and non-technical community members are better able to interact with technical community members.
A look back at previous milestones
Completed: Establish “ICON Builder Program”
Not started: Add technical tutorials to icon.community
Ongoing: Organize specifications for Blockchain Transmission Protocol (BTP)
Ongoing, consolidated: Increasing community participation
Ongoing, consolidated: Consolidate the current state of ICON contributions
Ongoing, consolidated: Coordinate public resources for ICON grants
The goals
Icon.community Technical Tutorials
The icon.community website will soon have a technical tutorials section. The situation remains the same as last time. ICON Builder Program work de-prioritized creating technical tutorials pages. As soon as the Special Interest Group is formed, it will be managed by the Contributor Experience Special Interest Group.
Organize BTP specifications
In order to make BTP more useful for developers, content creators, and users, we are creating more well-defined, comprehensive specifications. We are still working on this task. Currently, it is being incorporated into the now-operational Interoperability Special Interest Group.
ICON Project Status Organization
In order to organize the current state of the ICON project, we are consolidating three prior goals into one. As well as the previously stated goals, here is one new sub-goal:
- Increasing the number of regular contributors to the community
- Organize contributions to the ICON project according to the current state
- ICON grants program resources should be organized
- Establish Special Interest Groups for relevant, current community groups
Several complementary approaches are being used to increase community contributions. As part of the Builder Program, contributors are funneled into the different ecosystems and roles that make up ICON. Contributors will be promoted through the newly created Special Interest Groups, which aim to showcase their status and identity as well as strengthen communication channels between ICON’s various public endeavors.
To help potential contributors know where to direct their efforts, we have also provided guidelines and public issue boards per project to let projects that receive grants contribute to public ICON projects. Furthermore, we are establishing partnerships with web3-based job portals, including Trobutor.io, Crypto.jobs, and Developer DAO’s Soil Project.
As we organize the current state of contributions to the ICON project, we will be able to see how much and in what areas we are receiving participation. RHIZOME Tracker build page and Github Graphs are currently used to track contributions. In order to better understand contributor statistics, we are exploring collaboration opportunities with RHIZOME.
As part of the ICON grants program, we are organizing public resources. Through the icon-project/grants-program repository, templates and public reports will be available. At build.icon.foundation/grants, we have also created funnels and Requests for Proposals for the various grant programs in the ICON ecosystem. Once the Contributor Experience Special Interest Group is established, these efforts may be managed by that group.
ICON’s last sub-goal is to establish an open development organization for this ecosystem as part of organizing the current state of the project. In the near future, we plan to establish five more Special Interest Groups. A few of these groups are expected to be formed within the next quarter, but not necessarily all. This is a stylistic change from previous working group management structures, so the onboarding process will be lengthy. Visit the icon-project/community repository on Github to learn more about these efforts. Here are the groups:
- “Contributor Experience” (expected)
- “Documentations” (expected)
- “Communications” (possible)
- “Core blockchain” (possible)
- “Execution environment” (possible)
Conclusion
ICON looks forward to continuing to have a positive and transparent relationship with its technical community. We would appreciate your feedback regarding this update, including task status and priority. In order to plan how to move forward, we must understand what and why the community values. The topics and tasks described in this update will be discussed at a quarterly meeting on the ICON Discord. We’ll let you know the time of the meeting soon!
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