Marketing Department Season 10 funding request

[sandeepdas9179]

And to round this of…this scrutiny and accusations is actually demotivating me from participating in the MD. The tone of the discussion here is not uplifting but exactly the opposite. Also as Ornella mentioned, all of this scrutiny for what exactly? 3 USD an hour? If we and the other MD contributors would have really cared about 3 USD an hour, the MD as a Department would have ceased to exist a long time back. Let’s be realistic here in terms of what we are scrutinising. I pay our household’s cleaning maid $17 an hour once a week (standard north London rates).

[links]

An update from a GC perspective

I had a chat with @Eren (Department Coordinator) on Wednesday, and this is a summary of what we talked about:

@Eren gave me some background of MD

• in S3, many contributors left the group, and they left a big hole in the team’s capabilities
• As a result, the way MD has grown has been based on figuring out how they could continue to function as a group over the long term.
• Over time they built up a service offering for external to allow them to earn stables which helped them keep contributors around. He believes MD is one of the most active groups in the DAO because of this.
• The group became a “Department” at the behest of the DAO, they never really took guild/dept/project status into account as they worked

I expressed my concerns from a Grants Perspective

• First, it’s very difficult for me as a GC reviewer to understand whether or not the Department is “successful”, even after reading the Forum post, browsing the Notion, and having a voice chat.
  • If it’s difficult for me after having done a deep-dive, I suspect it’d be even harder for regular DAO members, and the GC is trying to make it easy to understand success for all DAO units
• Second, I’m uncomfortable with asset stewardship and rev generation being co-equal goals, as I feel that these can easily come into conflict

RE: Understanding Success

• While it’s easy to point at many good things the Department has done (bDAO inspires, seasonal kickoffs, etc), it’s difficult for me to see the impact this has because there aren’t any “top-level KPIs” that are being shown in the forum post or that I could find on Notion that show improvement over time.
  • ACTION: @eren will create a spreadsheet of top-level KPIs, showing change over time and update the forum post
• Even with KPIs, the broad purpose the group has (“to serve as the central hub for all marketing initiatives within the organization”) makes it difficult to understand what those KPIs should even be.
  • Social media follows aren’t enough to show pursuit of this mission, you’d need to show how “central” this hub is, and potentially get sentiment metrics from DAO groups
  • Departments are supposed to be “Essential operational units”, and so they should be as small as possible. This purpose is big, growing, and might fit better into the purview of a project.
  • In short: I don’t believe that this purpose sets the MD up for success
• @eren notes that the MD actually has 3 purposes (all having come organically as a result of their drive to retain quality contributors)
  • To steward DAO social channels
  • To pursue revenue (to attract and retain contributors)
  • To onboard and educate contributors (to increase dept capacity)
• ACTION: @eren to discuss purpose with the Marketing Department

RE: asset stewardship and rev generation

• Departments are meant to be essential and there will always be pressure to keep this small. Revenue generation is all about getting bigger. This is a conflict IMHO
• Putting these two goals into the same bucket make it hard to see how BANK is being used - if it’s being used to steward resources or pursue external revenue.
• Contributors in these dual roles can also easily get confused about what their role is at any given time: to steward a resource or maximize revenue.

IDEA: Splitting MD into a Department (to steward social channels) and Paroject (to pursue external revenue)

• @Eren notes that the MD has definitely talked about this, and have a way to split campaigns to potential achieve this. That being said, it’s not a fast process and requires dept consensus.
  • ACTION: @eren to discuss if there is will to do this within the MD

Personal responses to other questions that came up in this thread

@sandeepdas9179

Also there is no clear demarcation between creating and running a campaign and stewarding it.

I agree with you, splitting up MD this way will create more effort than it’s worth. That being said, there are lots of other ways to set clear boundaries. For instance, one way would be for one group to run ALL campaigns, and the other to ensure quality of social channels. Another way could be for one group to steward socials and run bDAO campaigns only, while the other group runs external campaigns.

There are other ways - and the key is to create clarity, which I think many DAO members (myself included) are asking for.

@Ornella

Are we being PAID for in the DAO? To my understanding this is voluntary work and the reward is governance tokens to participate and vote in how the DAO develops.

Saying that the MD or any other unit in the DAO ‘is being paid for’, seems like a top-down approach or as if we had a ‘boss’. I thought we earned governance tokens, not payment.

Just to be clear, when I said “paid” I mean paid in governance rights. Sorry that didn’t come across. I agree with the things you’re saying here - it’s best to treat contributors as volunteers who are mission-aligned teammates working towards the DAO’s purpose, not employees or anything of that sort. I believe we are a team of teams aka groups of equals working together to accomplish something bigger than we can do on our own.

The point I was trying to make is if people are being given governance rights and stablecoins, it is very difficult for outsiders to understand how the governance rights are being disbursed - for profit or for stewarding assets. It’s important as a DAO that we make this clear for all groups (not just MD).

@sandeepdas9179

From being an honest discussion it has now started taking an accusatory tone.

I can’t speak for @Jengajojo , but I want to make it clear I’m not accusing the Marketing Department of anything, and I don’t think the MD has done anything wrong. My intent is to have an open conversation about these difficult topics, because I believe the DAO as a whole will improve if we figure these out.

@sandeepdas9179

Each and every thing we create in the MD is auditable and tangible.

@Ornella

@chunz you can find the accounting directly on Parcel or sync with @Osewe our Treasury Lead this season for more details.

Social media documentation can be found [here.]
(Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases. )

This illustrates the issue I am having - as a GC reviewer, my job is to audit DAO groups, and it’s extremely difficult for me to understand what’s happening by consuming the resources you have mentioned/posted. I can’t find a link to your Parcel, and even if I could I can’t see what individual payment to contributors are for. I have visited the Notion link you have sent, and I don’t see any metrics for the social channels (for instance, if I click on Twitter, the latest stats from December 2022). @sandeepdas9179 mentioned Dework - but I can’t find a link to it on the Notion page.

It may be easy for you as someone integrated into the MD to understand the success of the Dept, but as someone looking in from the outside, it’s hard! As your GC reviewer, I want to help the MD make it easy for anyone in the DAO to see the great work you are doing.

@Ornella

I’m pretty open and agree with many points in this discussion, but I don’t believe this forum post will solve them.

I agree! That’s why I have taken the time to meet with the Dept Coordinator, and plan to have a CC roundtable on Dec 1. Everyone in this thread (or not in it) is welcome and encouraged to participate.