Open3 Collective FAQs
Open3 Collective is a knowledgebase for consumer brand practitioners to learn about web3, stay updated on industry news and developments with respect to web3 for consumer brands, obtain best practices for deploying and using web3, and a resource for testing and experimenting with web3.
Use the free content published on the best practices page.
Provide feedback and submit questions about web3 for consumer brands so that we can improve our content and best practices.
Subscribe from the page footer for email updates with market intelligence on web3 for consumer brands and Open3 content improvements.
Contact us to join the Open3 community with access to our discussion board, market intelligence database and access to all content.
There are 4 main components to the knowledgebase:
- Summary emails roll up all important activities from the platform to a consolidated list that is easy and quick to review. Please whitelist email@open3collective.com to avoid delivery to a spam folder.
- Web3 best practices are contained within the roadmap, which serves two purposes: (1) guides the tasks that this platform will undertake in order to achieve its goal of creating web3 best practices for consumer brands; (2) outlines what a company needs to think about, research and do in order to add web3 to their operations.
- The Discord Discussion Server allows members to discuss, interact, get help from each other and collaborate. Discussions are curated and any relevant content is rolled up into the best practices. Key discussions are also summarized into the summary emails so that readers can jump into specific conversations that are important to them.
- Testing and Experimentation page, which guides members in testing and experimentation for web3 and its supporting technologies, allowing members to gain hands-on experience before deploying to their customers.
Additional relevant knowledgebase components to note:
- Knowledgebase Changelog. This changelog includes additions and changes to all web3 tools, which makes it easier to see any modifications since a member last visited the platform.
- Google calendar. This is the calendar with all events. There is an Event calendar in Discord but that will be just for events hosted in Discord.
- Collective CRM. CRM to allow networking and provide context on members, their companies and responsibilities.
- Industry Market Intelligence Datasets. Directories of consumer brand web3 activities that members can use for market research and identifying potential partnerships and collaborations. Web3 technology is an interoperability layer for brands to more easily partner and collaborate together for mutual gain.
- Outdoor Industry Web3 Market Intelligence Dataset.
- Searchable Content. A drawback to the Google docs used to create the best practices is that they do not appear searchable from the top directory. One would need to search within each document. To get around this, all the Google docs are downloaded each week as MSFT files and zipped up.
- Market Intelligence Database. All market research is included in the database and is searchable. It contains a fairly comprehensive record of all consumer brand web3 activities published in news channels going back to mid 2021.
Processes and Procedures:
- Please refer to the Guide To Using Open3 Collective, which is embedded on most pages with the submission form.
Click here to see the knowledgebase.
Web3 is massive and our shift to this new paradigm will easily bankrupt us of our time, money and sanity, but not if we work together:
- Eliminate duplicative efforts so that each company ends up spending a fraction of the time and cost;
- Develop web3 best practices faster through a community of people, rather than just a few;
- Be exponentially smarter with crowdsourced solutions from many people, rather than just a few;
- Allow members to network and identify web3 partnerships and collaborations;
- Help web3 reach its highest and best use for brands and consumers by providing leadership that shapes the development and growth of this emerging technology paradigm.
The knowledgebase is free.
We believe the free model is best to realize our vision for web3 for the industry.
To monetize Open3 Collective, a model that we prefer is one pioneered by Bravado, a sales professional networking platform. They built the community first, which led to the company developing additional products and services based on what the membership wanted.
We have ideas for web3 SAAS products, but after analyzing Bravado, it seems to make much better sense to build the community first where we can collectively figure out what we need. In this model, the knowledgebase stays free and the members that want to use the SAAS products would pay for them.
Vision
Our vision for web3 is a technology paradigm that realizes its maximum potential in connecting people, places, things, events and experiences:
- where it is inclusive in that anyone that wants to, can and is able to participate using web3;
- where it is safe and secure that enables individuals to control their data, identities and assets without risk of theft or seizure;
- where it is sufficiently decentralized so people are not at risk of disenfranchisement in using web3;
- where the direct use of technology to power web3 is carbon negative;
- and, where the use of web3 helps promote the reduction, reuse and recycling of goods and materials.
For the knowledgebase, our vision (the best picture we see for the knowledgebase in the future) follows from the above:
- The definitive crowdsourced online resource for learning how to deploy and operate web3 for consumer brands with operating best practices that serve as the absolute guide to lead web3 towards achieving its maximum potential in connecting people, places, things, events and experiences.
Mission
Our mission (which defines how we will go about achieving the vision) for the knowledgebase:
- Be inclusive as possible, where the knowledgebase participants includes anyone who wants to participate.
- Inclusivity also means developing web3 best practices that are affordable to deploy for any size company. Web3 will reach its highest and best use when everyone who wants to is able to participate.
- Ensure that every member is happy and fulfilled with what they learn from and contribute to the platform through processes that manage and encourage their participation.
Goals
Our goals for the knowledgebase are as follows:
- Stage 1 –
- Development: web3 is in its nascent stage with comparatively little adoption and use, so we should drive to build out the knowledgebase roadmap and all its tools for members to use.
- Testing and Experimentation: either deploy web3 in the knowledgebase platform to serve as a testing ground for web3 and its supporting technologies, or serve as a clearinghouse that orients where members can gain hands-on experience through other web3 consumer brand deployments.
- Communication: actively promote the free availability of the roadmap and its tools, which reflect the highest and best uses that we want for web3, so that everyone in the consumer brands industry can use. This is how we provide leadership and set expectations for web3.
- Stage 2 – Activation: as web3 grows, members can use the roadmap and its tools to start deploying web3 in their companies. Members can provide feedback and support to each other to help promote successful activations and web3 projects, which feeds back into changes to the roadmap based on actual experiences from members in what works and what does not.
- Stage 3 – Operations: web3 activities are public on-chain, data which is affording tremendous potential for public analysis so that all can benefit. Ideally it would be helpful if members can also provide backend performance data about their web3 activities to form benchmarks from which to help determine successes. This is where best practices truly emerge.
- Stage 4 – Collaborations: web3 technology is an interoperability layer for brands to more easily partner and collaborate together for mutual gain, so as more and more brands activate web3, that opens up the ecosystem for potential partnerships and collaborations, which the knowledgebase may be able to support by aggregating web3 activities into a dataset for members to use.
The knowledgebase technology stack includes:
- A WordPress website hosted on WP Engine (a dedicated WordPress hosting company) which includes a member login to protected content with directories of published tools, content and datasets;
- Tools are published in Google Docs;
- List emails run through Mailchimp;
- A backend database, whose front-end runs on Knack and the database through Amazon S3, manages the roadmap, market intelligence, member CRM, industry datasets, and helps track knowledgebase processes and member responsibilities;
- The discussion platform runs on Discord, a popular cloud-based discussion application used by many companies and online communities.
Yes, they can. It will be up to each member to decide if they want to participate using their name or a pseudonym. We prefer our names because that is a great way to network one-on-one with others.
My name is Eddie Soehnel and I am an entrepreneur/CXO in the DTC/B2C/B2B2C/consumer brands marketplace.
My mode of operation for learning and doing is to write what I learn and create tools that I can use. But despite the time I’ve spent on web3, I still have trouble keeping my content and tools current given the fast pace of change happening in this technology paradigm.
And if I am having these problems, odds are other business owners and managers are also having (or will be having) the same problems.
Furthermore, while I have closely watched the tremendous and positive evolution of blockchain and web3 technologies, what we got was almost the worst manifestations of those technologies.
I really care about channeling this new technology paradigm to help us solve and reduce problems, not exacerbate them. But as one voice, I can’t do that, but a group of us, even small, can have an outsized effect.
My own journey and the developments I’ve seen thus far in web3 led to the idea for a crowdsourced knowledgebase as a way to help all of us not just navigate web3 in a much more time and cost-effective manner, but also set its direction so that it becomes bigger and better for brands and consumers.
More about me at https://eddiesoehnel.com/