Building a Cordial World
A Team Update #3
Written by Joshua Scott
At Cordial World we have a diverse team working toward building our knowledge based decentralized ecosystem. Cordial’s team is truly international and we have some of the best advisors and professionals supporting us, take a look for yourself here .
Our effort only means something if we provide value to our potential supporters and future community members. This weekly series of “Building a Cordial world” is an attempt to capture the inner workings of our team to give you a behind the scenes look of the big stage, that is the Cordial World Foundation.
This week’s updates are provided by our CEO Chris MacGregor, Co Founder Jochem Herber, CDO Erin Liman, and Kelroy James joining us as part of the Percy Hobart Innovation Fellowship.
Chris MacGregor :
“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step”.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
There are times as a founder when everything seems to fall into place, there are also times when the best laid plans seem to lose traction. Last week was, like most, were a mixture of the two. Despite a few set-backs we are still on track and growing having made some impressive contacts.
The three main engagements to explore new ideas and potential partnerships this week were with Robbie Heeger from www.endaoment.org, Lydia Tanner from www.theresearchpeople.org and Adrienne Percival from www.flourish.zone.
All three are talented entrepreneurs who work in pro-social organizations, and from what I’ve seen, have a similar philosophy to what we’re building at Cordial — providing novel services and operating with global reach for positive impact. It was great conversing with them and I hope we’ll be working together in the future.
One of the outcomes of our conversations this week was to further refine our value proposition and determine exactly which community we would build for first. We have been trying to sell our macro beliefs, which most accept as valid but nearly all want to learn more about where we establish our toe-hold. The first step was confirming a simple statement of our main intent: Cordial is building a trusted social marketplace for Human Insight, Knowledge and Lived-Experience.
The wonderful thing about building a start-up is that we’re building a team of inspiring, ambitious and capable people from around the world. This week we’ve been on-boarding Todd Hughes, Sachin Shah and Kevin Smith to help with our technical and strategy development.
Jochem Herber :
“The Cordial Exchange will be open to anyone, anywhere and will create its own fully circular economy in a way that it can sustain itself! That is the Challenge” — Jochem Herber
This week has again shown me how important networking is within the crypto space. Here, people just want to help each other as long as we all work towards the same goals.
At the Cordial World foundation we are building a virtual ecosystem and the Cordial Exchange, the first ever service of its kind ‘a trusted social marketplace for Human Insight, Knowledge and Experience’ as Chris Macgregor our CEO puts it. This makes it a social network that connects those who need certain insight and/or experience to those who have it, or experts that can create insight together in exchange for fair reward.
While you can Google information, it isn’t exactly insight. What we search for currently is static information and not dynamic in nature. You can Google where the best restaurant is, but to start one properly, you’ll need the collective expert knowledge provided by restaurateurs from across the globe. This combined with a community of restaurateurs all sharing what they know for each other is what you will find at the Cordial Exchange. This is what we’re in the process of building.
Our utility token DIAl must be used on the Cordial Exchange, it should change hands continuously in exchange for insight/knowledge provided. Cordial/the DAO should get a small percentage to make the platform sustainable and fully circular. In the updated Whitepaper found on our website you will be able to see how we intend to build using a circular approach. We aim to finish building the Cordial Exchange/ platform in roughly 4 years to launch the DAO and to create our virtual ecosystem.
Erin Liman : In the past, it was important that Web 2.0 applications were “mobile first.” This week, I’ve had a chance to see firsthand how people who have historically possessed less power, particularly women and marginalized communities, are now converging to help each other learn and participate in the crypto economy. Interviews with potential Cordial Exchange members and DAO community organizers have shown me that we must be “community first.” It has also shown me the incredible power of connecting people with shared values and purpose to pull the desired futures we want to see.
The power of the Cordial Exchange is to tap knowledge, lived experience and expertise from those closest to the problem. Where one might use Google, YouTube or Quora to answer a specific question, the Cordial Exchange draws out narratives from lived experience. What’s more, new technologies including Web 3.0 enable contributors to control the use of their data so they benefit directly from the content they create.
To begin unraveling today’s complex challenges, we need to support viewing challenges from a variety of different perspectives, particularly from those who have traditionally been marginalized or missing from conversations. Inhabiting different points of view evokes empathy and enables us to explore tensions between views. As a result, we are collectively able to surface new insights and solutions that will work in a particular context. Doing this in a cordial way is a radical departure from the social media echo chambers that exist today. I believe it will enable us to restore human dignity, distribute value in new ways and enable breakthrough solutions.
This week, we put the final touches on our citizens assembly survey to understand resident interest in actively engaging in community decisions for five boroughs in South London. We’re also excited to learn how familiar residents are with evolving digital technologies and what kinds of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations residents have for participating in Community Wealth Building activities. We also began exploring potential matching algorithms to match knowledge seekers with knowledge providers.
Kelroy James : The focus this week has been to complete the draft research survey to begin distribution. A roundtable discussion with all stakeholders produced the final set of approved questions which will provide first stage insight towards creating a prototype of our minimum viable product(MVP). It will also provide information towards the key partners report into participant’s interest for Community Wealth Building in South London.
I also worked on curating the list of channels through which the survey will be distributed remotely to reach as wide an audience as possible. This includes targeted communities within the sample area through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Meetup groups. There is also scope for in person ‘on the ground’ collection of data with the assistance of Crystalisr and LSBU students.
With the development team now coming onboard, I caught up with Sachin Shah for a 30 minute introduction to discuss thoughts and ideas of working together. He is keen to get started and has already begun to build our new Notion shared page for organized cross collaboration.
Join our discussion and get your opinions heard and questions answered here, by joining our telegram group and social media. We look forwarding to hearing from you ! Keep an eye out for more weekly updates on medium.
