I’ve completed my service as ED of the EOS Alliance

This post is my first after completing my agreed six months of service as interim Executive Director (ED) of the EOS Alliance. The Board has just announced an exciting new direction for the next six months and beyond — a direction I support enthusiastically.

The Alliance became my baby at its inception on 23-Jul-2018. My job was to bring it into existence and help it find a role in the EOS ecosystem.

On 23-Jan-2019 I told the Board I had completed my six months and would be stepping down effective 20-Feb, leaving behind an organization that now has:

1. A legal existence as an educational nonprofit domiciled in Antigua
2. A robust set of internal processes capable of scaling
3. A cadre of committed staff, contractors and volunteers across the globe
4. A track record of facilitating inclusive EOS mainnet governance discussion and constructive debate, leading to specific on-chain proposals for voters

Publicly we can claim, not a leading role (for the Alliance has initially chosen to assist, rather than lead), but an effective coordinating and facilitating role, helping the EOS Mainnet ecosystem to achieve major milestones:

1. Referendum code (our support role here was humble, and we’re proud we could help the innovators at EOS Canada, EOS Nation, EOS New York, Greymass, Meet.one, EOS Titan, EOS Rio, EOS42, EOSAsia, EOS Cafe Block, EOS Authority, EOS Tribe, and many others)
2. Ballot Craft guide for writing referenda
3. The crafting and posting of a Community Constitution — and several variants— thanks to the work of Jetse Sprey, the Korean EOS community, and Justin Buck among a great many others (literally hundreds participated in over 50 video calls across 4 major languages)
4. The creation of the EOS Commons Fund proposal, thanks to the diligence of many including Branden Espinoza, David Margulies, Josh Kauffman, Todor Karaivanov and Cris Pollard.
5. A pattern of cross cultural and cross-language collaboration for EOS community members that I believe will continue to bring us together as a community for years to come

Today, any EOS community member can take advantage of our innovative Work Groups (WG) process to collaborate on just about anything. Once chartered, a Work Group can take advantage of any or all of these support services from the Alliance:

• Translation between English, Chinese and Korean
• Video conference hosting
• Trained meeting facilitation
• Meeting minutes collected and posted
• Publicity via our community calls, in Chinese, Korean and English
• A dedicated web page on the EOS Alliance website

Past WGs include WPS and Synchronize. Future groups will hopefully include the dGoods Standards group, coding standards, DApp security, and others. The Alliance’s WG system is just beginning to show its potential.

I’m especially grateful for the support I received from my deputy Myra Wang, from the rest of the staff and volunteers, and from my Board, particularly from the indefatigable Galia Benartzi.

I will continue to make my professional home in the EOS community via my work at StrongBlock, my volunteering at the International Society for the Study of Decentralized Governance, my administration of the EOS Gov Telegram channel, and my membership in the IEEE Blockchain Standards group.

I hope you’ll reach out to me there. I look forward to continuing to be a part of our ecosystem’s unfolding.

With sincere thanks for time well spent,

Thomas