I think the first #RoamGames challenge was a bit too large, and poorly scoped.
We need something more concrete, and an urgent deadline so you aren't tempted to procrastinate
So, new challenge, with awards of $10,000 in cash, or Roam Stock (if legal) granted over next 5 days.
Context:
Roam is far from done - so when hit profitability last year, our focus shifted back towards to R&D the open questions we have around Collective Intelligence.
New folks keep signing up though - we keep adding new features - and we keep NOT providing onboarding
We've felt pretty good leaving things this way
Without a doubt, the best tutorials, guides, case studies, and explanations of what Roam is have all come from the #RoamCult.
But when we saw @roamhacker's Roam42 was obvious we needed to follow their lead
Roam42 does two things
First @roamhacker curated their favorite videos into a floating component you can access with a keyboard shortcut -- so you don't have to leave Roam to learn how to use Roam.
Second - they built a searchable list of all the commands - with some descriptions about how to use them -- also available via dropdown or keyboard shortcut.
Challenge has 2 parts - you can enter with a full answer, or with just a portion.
1. Design/UX of a in-app tutorial and onboarding component
-- could be Figma files, A roam graph with css hackery, whatever
2. Editorial -- Videos, Examples, Text, Images that should go in there.
The thing that is great about Roam42.com is that it is obviously a collage of work built by the community
One of the things we're trying to figure out is how to align incentives in a remix economy, where we build on each other
So - if you are entering into this challenge - then - along with your submission - we encourage you to cite (via quote tweet, or link out) the people whose work inspired you or you built on.
If you win, everyone you cited, and everyone who cited you, will share in your reward.
No idea what will happen with this - does feel strange to offer folks money for something so similar to what they have been doing for free... but my gut tells me there is something here.
In one of my favorite talks, Yochai Benkler claims that if your friends invite you to dinner at their house - and you leave a $100 bill on the table at the end of the meal, it does not increase the odds you'll get invited back.
The audience agreed, but he was speaking at TED...
Anyway - whole point of this is - money can be weird - especially when you're wanting to pay someone for something that they're pretty much doing on their own anyway.
Something here feels profane - like the money after dinner - but also worth trying
The thing I want to figure out, how do you actually set up a system where people are really intentionally thinking about who they got inspiration from -- thinking not just about producing finished work, but blocks for others to ref
Alright friends - hate to be the bearer of bad news, but turns out that one of the larger sources of problems with our new synchronization system seems to be how it interacts with @roamhacker's Roam42 extension.
If you're having any sync or performance issues - try removing that
We're going to try to get to the heart of the bug, and hope to have an update soon that will fix -- so you can use both Roam42 and the updated sync system (which otherwise is much faster)
First we're working on a url that will let you fall back to old sync if u need Roam42 more
The good news is - as far as I can tell, this is only a problem on multiplayer graphs where you have collaborators editing at the same time as you.
And we have not yet rolled the new sync system to the book club -- so very few folks seem to be affected by this bug