Operations Department Season 8 Budget Proposal
Author: Rowan#3669
Editors: 0xZFi#4882, Trewkat#1933, links:black_flag:#7868, McEal#0001, nonsensetwice#3475, Above Average Joe#5427, anointingthompson1.eth:eagle:#0900, raybankless.eth 
#7390
Date Created: March 28, 2023
Date Posted: April 5, 2023
Season 8 funding requested: 1,286,520 BANK
Summary
Main responsibilities include: bots, cartography, communications, tooling, DAO-wide member compensation (formerly via Coordinape), membership perks, community management, documenting efficiencies between Guilds and DAOs, seasonal planning, surveying and analyzing behaviors and sentiments within the DAO.
Highlights of S7 include: continuously refining and improving Ops Department processes, receiving tooling collaboration requests and implementing pilots (e.g. Otterspace / Collab.land Badge Program, thrivecoin), implementing new roles and work streams as they are needed, and acting as a hub for the DAO, providing value via ongoing support.
Season 7 has been less eventful than previous seasons, though Ops members continued diligently to fulfill their responsibilities and make sure the tools bDAO needs are available and working.
The Operations Department has been and will continue to be a pillar of strength and reliability for the DAO. We study what has worked, what hasn’t, and make changes to our processes accordingly. We are constantly improving and defining our scope of work as well as making our current processes and frameworks as efficient as possible.
Season 8 Anticipated Spend: 1,572,258 BANK + 200,000 BANK buffer
BanklessDAO Treasury Ask: 1,772,258 BANK - 485,738 rollover = 1,286,520 BANK
Season 8 Plans and Goals
In Season 7 the Operations Department moved to longer-tenure roles at the Department level. While Work Streams retained the autonomy to determine their own governance and election cycles, Department roles and Work Stream Coordinators will see a maximum tenure (currently) of three seasons. Any of these long-tenured roles may be subject to election if there is consensus for lack of confidence in the role holder’s abilities or dedication to the role.
For election of these long-tenured roles, nominees must demonstrate the appropriate skills or experience to be considered for election. In this respect, the Apprentice Program will serve as a training and redundancy mechanism in an effort to ensure the Operations Department maintains a pool of skilled contributors. Each long-tenured role holder will be responsible for maintaining a role description and role holder transition document, for new role holder reference.
New accountability mechanisms have been developed to ensure long-tenured role holders are active and accountable to the Operations Department, and bDAO:
- Bi-weekly updates will be shared in a consolidated thread for public review; and
- Each long-tenured role holder will be required to provide a narrative seasonal debrief via shared document (e.g. GDoc), guided by (but not limited to) the following questions:
- What did I accomplish this season?
- Did I fulfill all of the responsibilities identified in the role description?
- How did I go above and beyond?
- What did I improve in my tenure so far?
These seasonal debriefs will be reviewed and voted on/approved by the Operations Department active membership. If the vote does not pass, the role will go up for election.
As a development to this role structure in Season 8, the Operations Department will explore the idea of progressive compensation increases for long-tenured roles. The rationale for this exploration is retention of skilled individuals in roles. As role holders develop their skills and abilities by performing well in the role, the organization benefits. Compensation increases are likely not to be guaranteed, and will likely involve ratification by vote on a case-by-case basis.
Should the Operations Department decide to implement progressive compensation increases for long-tenured roles, a compensation structure will be developed that includes a base rate along with maximum increases across the time duration for evaluation (likely seasonally). Maximum increases for each cycle likely won’t be guaranteed and will be based on the role holder’s performance.
The Operations Department will continue to develop the Otterspace / Collab.land badge program to improve security and automation within Discord, and to generate reputation markers for DAO members.
The Operations Department had plans to create a DAO Tooling Work Stream to consolidate and coordinate DAO tooling solution (e.g. Otterspace, thrivecoin, etc) requests for collaboration. Throughout Season 7, the Operations Department saw far fewer requests for tooling collaborations and establishing the DAO Tooling Work Stream saw reduced priority. Should such requests for collaboration increase in Season 8, said the creation of said Work Stream will be evaluated. Should it be created, Work Stream members would work collaboratively with DAO tooling developers to find and develop tools optimized for bDAO. The Work Stream would maintain transparent documentation on their efforts and the outcomes of collaborations.
During Season 7, the Operations Department created a thrivecoin management workstream to manage and coordinate bDAO use of thrivecoin and develop meaningful and attainable reward actions that: bring revenue to the work stream/treasury, propagate awareness of bDAO and the bDAO thrivecoin work stream, promote interaction across bDAO, foster community feedback, and more. Members of this work stream will continue their efforts to develop thrivecoin as a meaningful engagement and rewards mechanism for bDAO throughout Season 8.
Beyond the above detailed endeavors, we will continue to work to keep the DAO running as efficiently as possible and improve upon current processes.
- Continuing to map the DAO’s activities via Sobol
- Continuing to fund Notion Administration
- Improve and iterate on Seasonal Planning
- Focus on bDAO tooling solutions and public goods
For more detail, please see:
