For a long time now, I have been on a pursuit to identify what I need to be doing with my life. My approach to figuring that out has manifested itself in different ways, from identifying my interest in creating content, using that to explore different careers through my video podcast, finding the fascinating world of DAOs and committing to contribute to the space, and sort of learning on the go exploring what's possible with web3.
However, my mission remains to help propagate ways for others to get exposed to various careers and potentially identify work they'd enjoy doing. Following is a thesis for a proposed solution for said mission, and I am working on bringing it to life. I have submitted it to Nouns Prop House Garden Round, and you can read it below.
Premise
Too often, we witness seasoned professionals navigating through careers that leave them unfulfilled and yearning for more. Their jobs and career paths are often dictated by early educational and professional choices, leading to a continuous cycle of unfulfilling careers, stifling their true passions and potential.
In this proposal, I would like to present my blueprint for a transformative approach to career exploration, through a strategically designed IRL + onchain journey focused on a singular mission of career enlightenment.
The dream
A global network of creatively engaged communities within schools, united by a shared interest in career exploration. A community built 1-school at a time and scaled through a cc0 blueprint that includes an event franchise, high quality media, NFTs, and Prop House. A onchain savvy community that treats and uses blockchain as they do the internet through the culture inculcated by whoneedajob.⌐◨-◨
Commemorative NFT - mint on base // art by pipe.⌐◨-◨
The Blueprint
Key components & Phase 1 goals
1. Career Days Event Franchise
Career days are events held at schools where students get to learn about different careers from professionals. It is a practice in some parts of the world, but where I am from in India, it isn't. The plan is to conceptualize an event format, organized in schools, by whoneedsajob.⌐◨-◨, and build excellence around it.
In phase 1, the goal is to:
start the exercise - identify schools, propose the plan, figure out the execution. Introduce this event as a pilot experiment in 4-5 schools, and build resources and expertise in organizing it effectively.
understand the logistics and operational cost for coordinating a team of 3 (including myself, a videographer, and event coordinator), to travel to schools in different cities.
document learnings as individuals entering a new territory and pretty much starting from ground zero.
2) Content: whoneedsajob.⌐◨-◨ documentaries
The career days event presents opportunity to capture beautiful stories about - a) schools, and b) professions within school networks, such as parents of the students. But more importantly, they act as a means for proliferating the movement by providing an event template and potential source of inspiration for replicating the concept as work in the public domain.
As a humble indie documentary creator myself, I am optimistic about the prospect of creating extremely interesting content from these events.
In phase 1, the goal is to:
get creative, and identify storytelling format for this IP.
assess the feasibility and workflow of producing documentaries for each school/event held and the frequency of organizing events based on that.
Ps. The content will be hosted on a new channel called Who Needs A Job, and not on Salman Needs A Job (obviously).
3) Proof of Attendance - the onchain gateway
(note: event participants are not expected to have any knowledge of web3, nor hold any crypto)
For every Career Days event, we create a POAP issued to event attendees, which they will be able to mint using their email ID. All participants are most likely going to be absolute crypto newbies, and POAP provides a great gateway to a pre-wallet experience. As a next step, they will be required to set up their wallet if they wish to participate in a School Level Prop House Round that follows the career day event.
In phase 1, the goal is to:
come up with artwork for each school event POAP.
devise a process for administering the POAP to students (it may be straight forward, but POAP administration often is not straight forward, and also involves a cost nowadays)
clearly communicate to students what POAPs represents and how it will be used for the upcoming contest/prop house round.
provide guidance for setting up a wallet and rudimentary web3 knowledge like safety practices (TBD)
4) Prop House, NFTs, and Minimum Viable DAO
Prop House is central to this entire project and will be used for post-event onchain engagement and community building.
Starts with the POAP - once the POAPs have been disbursed, the snapshot of the event attendees/students who participated becomes available for us to use. The plan is to organize a prop house round of a fun whoneedsajob.⌐◨-◨ content RFP, only for holders of the POAP. Likewise, winners will be selected/governed by holders of the POAP, essentially establishing a minimum viable DAO, and proving utility for minting the POAP.
In phase 1, the goal is to:
create whoneedsajob.⌐◨-◨ house on prop house.
come up with the contest/request for proposal in a manner that is easy and accessible to anyone who wants to participate.
train the students to propose, and to vote.
create meaningful NFT rewards for participation (all submissions, and potentially voters), and IRL redeemable gifts for winners, making participation highly desirable.
(perhaps in phase 2) - pilot experiment using 1, 2, 3, and 4, to select stewards and engage more schools to participate in this movement.
5) Digital Community
Well, discord, and everything else that happens there.
In phase 1, the goal is to:
setup discord and make it useful
6) Nouns alignment
whoneedsajob.⌐◨-◨ at its core will be built on the nouns infrastructure and values. How:
This project intends to do good for the younger generation to become more informed about their future careers, without expectation of return.
One of the expected outcomes of whoneedsajob.⌐◨-◨ is a rich onchain footprint primarily through NFTs claimed via Prop Houses. This is a new generation getting involved with NFTs, not for financial reasons, but for reputation. These NFTs will be nounish af (brand-wise), and spread the nouns “meme” ⌐◨-◨
This movement will create and proliferate cc0 content about the world of work, through documentaries from schools, community-generated content through prop houses, and a program intentionally crafted for the public domain—accessible for anyone to engage with or replicate.
whoneedsajob.⌐◨-◨ will follow the nouns visual brand and proliferate the noggles in completely new ways.
This project will leverage existing nouns cc0 assets and open-source infrastructure. I would like for my personal work to be a testament to this, where I have plenty of examples showing how I've leveraged - cc0 music, 3d nouns, nouns sounds (1, 2), Lil Nouns playground, created a cc0 powered movie around The Noun Square and Let's Play Lil Nouns, and messed around with a whole lotta noggles.
whoneedsajob.⌐◨-◨ in itself is a meme that embraces absurdity, and hopes to create positive externalities in the lives and careers of those part of it.
7) A new type of DAO
NFTs will play a central role in this project, serving as tools for accreditation, incentive mechanism, and play.
As part of the prop house rounds, students will be encouraged to mint their work, which is made possible through Zora's recent creator-friendly update transferring the initial gas cost to the first minter. This will enable students to potentially onramp their first crypto through protocol rewards.
One of the primary goals of whoneedsajob.⌐◨-◨ is to encourage participants to get onchain through minting / earning NFTs and participating in DAOs. It is meant to be accessible universally without the expectation of understanding the technicalities of blockchain or crypto.
Team
@salmanneedsajob (brand and web3 ops), @esthadolphin (video ops), and Shakti (event ops).
About the author - salmanneedsajob.eth
Salman Needs A Job started on YouTube as my personal journey to find career enlightenment. Over the years, I've profiled various careers through podcasts, from scriptwriter to magician to coconut plucker to startup founder, etc. I've also developed an interest in creating documentaries and have a few that I'm proud of, most relevant here, is one about an innovative talent onboarding initiative by the local city police that I filmed at a school.
This journey led me to discover DAOs, and I've been extremely interested in web3 ever since. I sometimes write on fulltimedao.com and spend much of my time contributing to the space through various communities I'm a part of.
