Our Experience and Perspective
As experienced Web3 builders who are newcomers to Optimism, we have a deep understanding of the experience for builders joining Optimism. You could say that we are a part of the target market of builders that we aim to attract to Optimism. Since starting our deep dive into Optimism about six weeks ago, we’ve spent hundreds of hours scouring the internet for helpful information and opportunities for networking within the community. We’ve open countless tabs in the forums, listened to hundreds of podcasts with Optimism leaders, and added every Optimism event that we could find to our calendars.
While we are thoroughly impressed with Optimism as a whole and stoked to be joining the community (and learning much more everyday!), we see areas of the onboarding experience for builders that are lacking and ripe for improvement. As Grants Council Communication Lead Katy Garcia said in the recent Delegates Corner Podcast, one of the main challenges for Optimism is that there aren’t enough ways to get to know the people and build human connections in the Optimism Community. Optimism can greatly help with this and make it far easier for builders to join the Optimism community, meet amazing people, learn about the various opportunities, and start developing in the ecosystem.
One huge benefit of Optimism Fractal is how it brings people together and provides opportunities for anyone in the community to network and learn from each other, regardless of prior experience. Imagine how a builder who just learned about Optimism could join community by joining weekly events and then immediately start talking with respected builders in the community. Imagine how much more quickly they can learn, answer their questions, and feel like they’re part of the community. Imagine how all apps on optimism can have all the tools needed to easily start these weekly social games to achieve their community’s mission and how this could result in a steady stream of weekly events that builders interested in Optimism apps could join.
In Optimism Fractal, each builder will get a chance to see each other and speak about their work for several minutes during the Respect Game in fun, well organized events. When builders want to share bigger ideas or participate in deeper discussions, they can participate in the Cagendas game immediately afterwards and propose their own topics or engage with topics of other community members. There’s also some spare time throughout calls where builders can have free flowing conversation and our experience has shown that this event often results in builders meeting up for conversations after the event.
We love the Optimism community calls and discord events that we’ve joined so far and are excited to join many more. So far we’ve joined the OP Community Call, Citizens House Call, Demo Day, Ambassador Chat, and several related twitter spaces. We’ve listened to most episodes of OP Radio, RetroPGF Podcast, Delegates Corner, and many more related shows such as the Green Pill Podcast, Bankless shows about Optimism, and ETHGlobal events with Optimism leaders. We’ve enjoyed engaging with the community and sharing our thoughts in a few of these events, but we have not found anywhere that builders like us could join to meet people with such high engagement and personal connection like in Optimism Fractal.
There is a huge amount to learn about the Optimism ecosystem and the ability to speak with respected builders in the community by attending a networking event with other builders would dramatically reduce the learning curve. Of course, the fractal would also reward people for creating helpful content about Optimism which would further reduce the learning curve and attract builders. At our fractal meetings we’ve met hundreds of amazing people, some of whom are amazing builders who were entirely new to web3. The networking opportunities also provide the perfect environment for builders to collaborate and build together. In fact, we met our team members Tadas at a fractal brainstorming session last year and Rosmari at an Eden Fractal meeting eight months ago.
It may be difficult to understand how valuable these meetings will be for new builders who are interested in Optimism until you experience the events for yourself. We invite you to join the Eden Fractal and upcoming Optimism Fractal events to gain firsthand experience of the profound personal benefits. We’ve seen countless partnerships and new businesses emerge emerge since we started embarking on this journey a few years ago and we believe this trend will grow exponentially with Optimism.