Community Call Revamp for Season 3

Governance
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Here’s a conversation that happened in the discussion section of Brain Dump #6:

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Here, I’m proposing a way to do this CC reengineering.

The primary mission of this proposed CC change is to build BanklessDAO culture. We have the entire DAO—the equivalent of a small town—listening to one meeting at ONCE. We absolutely must use this time as effectively as possible.

I’m worried that, as we continue to grow, we’ll lose sight of who we are as a community and where we’re going. The firehose-style updates in our current CC format are overwhelming and don’t use our precious one hour together in the best way possible. Giving everyone updates in a newsletter and a #CC-updates channel will allow DAO members to digest the information on their own time and skip over parts that they’re not interested in or don’t pertain to them. We’re all strapped for time here, so we should try to use the time we have in the most effective way we can.

I also want a way to make voting fun again. Right now, governance feels like a chore, which means we need to change the way we present it. Reading through forum posts feels like work, but by making the “hottest” posts a topic of discussion in the CC, we’re placing voting and governance at the forefront: where it belongs.

Lastly, I think developing strong public speakers is a critical component to onboarding 1 billion people to crypto. How do politicians get things done? They speak well. How do lobbyists actually lobby? They present their ideas in a speech. The reality is that our world is run by people who can distill complex ideas into a sound-bite that plays on national news and rings throughout social media. We must develop our skills in this area if we’re going to onboard 1 billion people.

Proposed CC Revamp Time stamps:

1-5min: Moderator opens.
5-15 min: Moderator invites up to 4 key project leaders with clear action items and needs of immediate help.
15-30 min: Keynote speaker OR roundtable.
30-55min: Q&A with keynote speaker.
55-60min: Closing thoughts from the moderator.

1-5: The Intro

The moderator for the week opens with a quick intro of who they are and a few overarching thoughts. This is when they give a reminder about the forum proposals that are up or a snapshot vote on the way. Governance = check.

We will cycle through moderators to give the CCs different flavors and distribute the voice of the DAO as much as possible. Each L2 will have a chance of being moderator—a new one every week. That would be a great way to get to know who the L2s are and learn their personalities. Because it is only a 5 minute intro, I believe people will be able to pull this off even with little public speaking experience in the past. Also, many L2s have been onstage at Community Calls or season kick offs before.

5-15 min: The limited project updates

This space is for project or guild updates that contain immediate action items. Projects that feel they have immediate updates should submit their updates to the moderator for the week. If the number of updates exceeds four projects, the moderator will either 1. Announce the remaining updates themselves, 2. Push less immediate updates off for top-of-the-list next week, or 3. Send them to the guild update newsletter and a new #cc-updates channel (everyone will put their updates here). I will elaborate on these new items below.

Examples of immediate updates:

  • Fight Club is hosting DAO-wide webinars on VC funding, which start next week. RSVP to reserve your spot.
  • DAOlationships needs marketing and legal experts to assist with a few key clients next week. Introduce yourself in our general channel to get started.
  • CryptoBushi has some hot new NFT project that will help fund the DAO….and we need you to mobilize on Twitter ASAP.

15-30 min: The Keynote Speaker OR Roundtable (reduced to 15 min from 20 in original draft)

The keynote speaker/roundtable is the flagship of the CC. This is when you bring out the popcorn. Keynote speakers and roundtables can be……anyone! But here are a couple ideas.

I expect that the roundtable listed at the top will be the most common—and possibly the most fun—CC format.

  • A roundtable of individuals representing a forum proposal—we have a “for” person and an “against” person, and they try to convince a small group of undecideds.
  • One person explaining a very critical yet complicated vote that’s up, like the Olympus proposal.
  • A genesis leader sharing some bDAO history and reflecting on the growth and change of the DAO. Are we on the right course? Drop bDAO wisdom.
  • A project or guild leader who learned an awesome way to decentralize a workflow, which other project squads and guilds can learn from.
  • Someone from outside the DAO who our L2s invite in to speak. Why don’t we get a DAO celebrity in here speaking? Do you think Coopahtroopa would say NO? How freaking cool would that be?
  • A roundtable of guest pass holders who just got their first payout. One L2 can lead the roundtable, facilitating the conversation. How did they discover bDAO, who helped them get started, what projects have they hoped on, and how are they liking it so far? A connection to the current wave of guest passers is essential to keep a pulse on the “young” side of the DAO and continue to improve our onboarding system.
  • Literally anyone with something cool to say. I don’t see us ever running out of speakers. In fact, the opposite issue happening—we’ll have to get choosy. I see external speakers—DAO innovators, Ethereum thought leaders, anyone cool in the crypto space—knocking on our door asking to speak.
  • Someone more on the outside of crypto, but still related. Andrew Yang, for example.

30-55 min: The Q&A

I recommend we select two L2s to moderate the flow—one experienced or “seasoned” L2 who has done the Q&A before, and another “unseasoned” one who is doing it for the first time.

It would work like this:

  • People submit questions in a new Q&A channel.
  • If you’re in the audience and you like the question, react with emojis or reply! This will help the L2 Q&A moderators determine which questions to present to the speaker.
  • L2 Q&A moderators can determine which questions to ask in a backchannel of their own, or just engage actively with the questions in CC Chatter. (Like replying and saying, “Great question, let’s ask it! @otherL2moderator what do you think?)
  • The chosen weekly moderator asks the question on behalf of the member who proposed it—this is purely so we can keep it moving quickly.
  • This continues until we reach minute 55.

55-60min: Moderator closes

Each moderator will close in a different way. I can imagine Frank America telling a joke that will end up in The Rug next week, Frogmonkee waxing philosophical about governance, and Nonsense hyping everyone up about how important our work is day in and day out. The flavor of the DAO will be different every week, and DAO members will get to know all the L2s! Woohoo win win!

Details on the new stuff:

The Q&A Channel

We need a low-noise Q&A channel labeled #cc-Q&A. This is where people submit questions and the L2 Q&A moderators “read the room” to see what people want to ask.

The Guild/Project Update Newsletter

Guild leaders and project leaders submit weekly updates to a weekly updates channel. Some overarching, deeply involved L2s gather these into a newsletter. (This would not require any additional writing from the L2s, just some editing and copy-pasting into a substack newsletter.) This will replace the slideshow we have now.

Things to consider:

  • Who is going to take on the publishing of this, and how will they be remunerated? Will our newsletter team take it on? Maybe some active L2s with the help of the newsletter team?

The Weekly Updates Channel

This is where weekly updates are posted for the L2s to gather the Guild/Project Update Newsletter. DAO members can also read this channel rather than reading the newsletter.

Thank you for reading! Here’s a bit about the writers of this proposal:

Squad Background

Samanthaj: I’m the talent scout for the Writers Guild and enjoy writing and thinking about governance. Getting to speak on the Season 2 kickoff was a pivotal moment for me in the DAO—I felt like my voice really mattered. I want others to get this feeling in our weekly CCs, too.

Hiro: I’m a writer and editor with the Writers Guild. Core Team at DAOpunks. Lover of people & Builder of communities. Come for the tech → stay for the revolution.

  • Yes, I like this format and new channel/newsletter as is
  • Nope, let’s keep engineering. Commenting below:

0 voters

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Shoutout @links for the markdown headings alpha

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I voted yes, because it’s true I find the “update-style” CCs to drag. TBH I am often doing a bunch of other things while the call is going on.

A roundtable or speaker could help me feel that FOMO and engagement I am missing in my life!

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This is a great vision for what the CC can become!

Re: newsletters- WG and Dev guild already have guild specific newsletters, we could encourage this for all guilds.

We have thought about a Projects Newsletter in the past, but deferred because we were covering them in the call. This could be something that project champions submit each week via a Google form and the newsletter team combines and publishes. There is a question of too many information channels leading to overwhelm and people just not paying attention to them, that would be my main concern.

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Love this!

I think this format will help minimize the firehose issue and enable more in-depth updates with clearer CTAs .The other benefit is also minimizing the overhead for L2s week over week (they don’t have to worry about filling out slide updates every week).

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They’d still have to fill in a newsletter, right? I think this regular written accountability is important.

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Yes, @0x_Lucas, the idea would be that the google slides become a separate project updates newsletter, or simply a project updates channel that used on Fridays. So they would still have to give out information each week, but I think encouraging them to limit the info to clear action items could help distill the updates into a less fire-hose form.

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I think the newsletter team distilling and publishing the project updates makes a lot of sense, if your team is up for it! I also think we could simply do a #project-updates channel that we ask everyone to go through on fridays.

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Beautiful. I love the idea of a keynote. This whole format has the potential to eliminate rushed updates when speakers take more than their allotted 3 minutes. And the whole concept of conveying culture is phenomenal. Well done, Sam. +1

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Thank you for this refreshing post @samanthaj.

I’d like the proposed changes to the weekly CC taken one step further and make them part of a Friday CC production.

I believe the updates should be somewhat if not all pre-recorded. Be vetted for clarity and length and then played during the Friday CC.

Yes, this entails a bit of planning. The guilds/projects who would have news worth announcing at the weekly CC should let the CC moderator know by [pick a time] on Thursday that they need XX minutes for an announcement about XX. This gives the moderator time to think about any initial pertinent thoughts/questions that can be quickly followed up on during the live CC.

This gives a more polished feel to the listener, as well it gives the ability for a clearer message deilvery and show duration. Other benefits of a recording: if someone can’t make the CC show on Friday, less background noise, poor data connections etc…

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Regardless of wether there is or is not a revamp for season 3, where the bDAO is so awesomely growing and with how much further growth we are hoping for, there will come a time that decisions of which updates do get air-time on the weekly CC are most likely going to be coming sooner rather than later.

Similar to the channel quagmire of the bDAO Discord.

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Dev Guild is moving towards this as well. Our calls were 90% project updates and we’ll be moving updates to written submissions (often notes are difficult to capture on technical projects). This will free up room for keynote, major project updates, and discussion!

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Writers Guild is doing the same thing! Our weekly meetings have gotten much more collaborative now that we take updates and action items async. Our goal is to make it easy for members to get key action items even if they’re in a time zone that doesn’t allow them to attend the meetings. We also just want to use our time together in the best possible way: ideating and brainstorming. That switch definitely influenced the way I wrote this proposal.

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Despite my name at the bottom (which shouldn’t be on this doc at all), this proposal was all samanthaj. I and at least one other provided a few comments, some of which were included in this proposal. The feedback related to building and spreading DAO culture. For me, that can be thought of as social productivity - culture building, so along with our time being measured by hours spent in meetings and building and creating new things, we should place equal or greater emphasis on making connections and building and nurturing relationships, whether during the community call and other gatherings,
text channels, through DMs, and even, maybe especially, by voice DM. You can glean part of the distribution of this social capital through DAO Dash’s thoughtful analyses and insightful graphics. Check out this week’s Rollup for a snapshot of the tipping data and treasury outflows to get a sense of what I mean. This proposal helps to further build and cohere our culture through more interactive programming that focuses on people rather than projects.

A key part of this proposal is spinning up a newsletter for DAO-wide guild and project updates. It’s likely we’ll be submitting a separate proposal for the project newsletter funding.

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I love the idea to revamp the call. Your suggested topics do a much better job at creating a community feel. I especially like the opportunity you give for people to learn a skill like public speaking or organizing a newsletter. I’m down with all of that as written.

Question on the “new stuff” - How is the update newsletter different from the weekly rollup?

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Community Call is in dire need of an upgrade! Thank you for writing this :pray:

I do have a few notes:

  • Currently, the CC opening + governance updates take about 10-15 minutes, including basic CTAs (POAPs, Newsletter), announcements (Olympus, Coordinape, Seasonal planning) and governance forum posts. Cutting this down to 5 minutes will end up rushing a lot of this, and governance will likely be cut.

  • Overall, we need more “celebration” in our Community Calls. We need to highlight people, releases, and accomplishments. IMO, people should walk away from the community call thinking “LFG, WGMI.” Typically, we’ve seen this with major project launches like DAOpunks, DEGEN being deployed to 40 servers, and Bankless Academy going live. The problem I foresee is who gets to decide which projects get to have speaking-time? For instance, with your FC example - If FC gets to announce they’re hosting an event, what happens when DAOversity wants to do the same? Or Writers Guild wants to mention they’re hosting an amphitheater event with Adam? In my mind, I see three options:

    • We set a severely limiting heuristic, like “Only major product releases or launches”
    • We have a planning committee that gets to make executive decision.
    • We let the DAO decide in a poll, which will require greater coordination
      (Keep in mind, Ops Guild runs CC - Myself, Lucas, Joe - and so this work will fall on us.)

  • I like the idea of a keynote and Q&A, but I think it needs to be shorter. The format you’re describing is basically Cryptosapiens and… well, we already have Cryptosapiens. I’ve had conversations with people that have read this proposal that have expressed that this format doesn’t appeal to them and they’ll likely leave while others (in this forum post) prefer the speaker format. I think we need to strike a balance between updates vs. speaking.

    • We also have the same issue in my previous bullet, except even more pronounced. How do we decide who gets to speak? CCs are, arguably, when much of the DAO’s attention is collectively focused, making it extremely valuable time.

  • We 100% cannot move to a new format until we have a project newsletter set up. Additionally, the newsletter team should provide support and best practices for guilds to create their own newsletter.

Overall, this is a fantastic step in the right direction. Writers Guild and Dev Guild moving in this direction further signals the effectiveness/demand for async updates and a renewed focus on synchronous community building.

Here’s what I want to counter propose:
1-10min: Moderator opens
10-30 min: Moderator invites up to 4 key project leaders with clear action items and needs of immediate help.
30-55 min: Keynote speaker w/ Q&A or roundtable
55-60min: Closing thoughts from the moderator.

  • Moderators are L2s that hand-raise to do so
  • Projects would submit a form to the Ops Guild and CC coordinators would decide which 4 projects will provide the update
  • Moderators decide what the keynote or roundtable topic is. They cannot highlight a project they are a part of, they must highlight something else going on in the DAO.
  • Hard Yes
  • Soft Yes
  • Neutral
  • Soft No
  • Hard No

0 voters

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LOVE IT! Yes, you’re definitely correct on the moderator needing a solid 10 minutes, and I totally agree on the “more celebration” aspect.

I was recently having a discussion with @ManuelMaccou about the need to make the writers guild and dev guild internal newsletters more public so that other guilds can learn from them and people can see how to get involved from other ends of the DAO. I think internal newsletters are an amazing tool especially for coordinating across time zones.

I agree on needing to solve the “who gets to speak” issue, which is why I was thinking a group of L2s could coordinate that. I could put a squad of L2s together who manage/plan community calls. Maybe a sub-group of Ops Guild.

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I love the idea of improving and changing the CC, although I think we need some additional ideas or workshopping of this one. Frogs proposal above could work.

My concern is around changing the community call for a discussion panel, could lose the community part.

The value for me in the current format is:

  • Dedicated DAO togetherness time
  • Wide and shallow information
  • Hype call

One of the components of the community call that I really like is that it is a hype and share session, a chance to hear small bits of the whole(from lots of people), when I am deeply focused on my section of it.

It satisfies for me a sense of emotional and informational connected-ness to the wider DAO, feeling a degree of cohesion, excitement, and alignment around our mission.
I often leave feeling re-inspired and excited, when I may have been feeling down or challenged prior to the call.

Honestly telling jokes and paling around in CC-Chat while listening is a lot of the fun.

The challenge I have with this proposed format is, it seems oriented towards deep content, when I’m already drowning in content and behind on catching up with newsletters, podcasts, and information that I am very interested in.

I would prioritize reading this newsletter, but it would be at the expense of the DAO togetherness experience and hype.

I imagine this would go into the roll up, or we would have 2 roll ups?

With all that said, I’m always up for experimenting and trying something out!

Things I like about this format:

  • Rotations of leadership of the call and showcasing different leaders.
  • I love the idea of making governance fun. (We try!)
  • Round table discussions and debates sound fun

The larger question for me in this is, what is the community call supposed to be?
What ever we choose WILL have limitations and won’t serve everything.

In service of testing it, we could time bind this so we try it out for say, 4-6 weeks, then reflect on how it worked?

3 Likes