Purpose: To make community spaces for freedom-seeking changemakers

Governance DAO Transition
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With all the talk of purpose for our DAO, I decided to pen one to get feedback from the community. It’s in the title, but here it is again:

To make community spaces for freedom-seeking changemakers.

Why did I choose these words?

  • I think we need a simple, achievable, evergreen purpose. This fits the bill.
  • To me, the value of BanklessDAO wasn’t what it produced, but instead the ability to draw certain kinds of people together, hence “community spaces”.
  • In the past I have described the kinds of people BanklessDAO attracted as “self-sovereign”, but this term seems to be overly crypto-coded and perhaps exclusionary (ie can I be part of this if I WANT to be self-sovereign but aren’t there yet?). Therefore “freedom-seeking”.
  • Finally, we want to attract people who want to DO things. Changemakers.

This purpose has the brand I’ve been working on (:black_flag:Black Flag) in mind, but could be used even without that name.

What do you think? Let’s workshop it!

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I like this, although I think it could be slightly more specific.
I agree purpose can be evergreen, and strongly agree the value is linked to the community aspect.

In the Governance call earlier this week I shared this one:
We’re a tight-knit community with shared interest in distributed, non-hierarchical systems that benefit society. We support each other in the pursuit of new knowledge and innovation built on blockchain technology.

This one is not my ideal purpose statement either but I think it gets a bit closer to describing ‘why the community exists’.

Part of the difficulty in identifying organisational purpose, mission, vision, values, goals, objectives, principles etc. is that people may understand these differently.
I define them as follows:

  • Purpose: the reason the org exists
  • Vision: what the org aims to be or become
  • Mission: What the org will do to fulfil its purpose and realise its vision.
  • Values: What aspects of behaviour the org will prioritise when making decisions - provides guidance or a compass as to what is important - I think this is pretty similar to principles but open to correction.
  • Goals: The measurable achievements that contribute to the mission and align with values. Sometimes listed as sub-sections within a broader set of objectives but let’s not get bogged down!

So, imho @links the words you’ve suggested here are a good start, but I’d like the purpose to articulate a little more about the why and not the what.

Something like:

  • Our purpose is to create opportunities for people who are interested in designing and participating in change through blockchain technology to share ideas and collaborate.

  • Our vision is to be thought leaders and change makers in web3.

  • Our mission is to connect and energise our community through events, learning, funding, and conversation.

  • We value decentralised, appropriately empowered decision making over hierarchies and single points of failure.

  • This year our goals are to hold weekly community calls, send a monthly newsletter, and provide funding for further development of two new services or products built with blockchain.

OK so not saying these should be the goals but this is how I see the relationship between the different pieces we’ve been trying to pin down, and although the wording is not perfect this is pretty close to what I see as relevant for this community.

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Here you are hinting at something that is very important.

Like it or not, folk have language patterns they use. Devs, creators, legals, and so on.

If folk can see roles for themselves in any group, and mates they can talk with to ask questions, it’s easier to enter that group, and make a contribution. I fought against this for many years, but it was nonsensical of me. In fact Bankless helped me understand why clear role definitions are important. Would I could follow my own advice.

I also think purpose has to be about producing something of value, whatever that may be.

I’ve joined umpteen talking shops with bros who were happy in their space, but achieving very little in that space. They’d already made it, or had sufficiency in their day jobs. I’ve been a coordinator in a Facebook space like that, and was totally frustrated I couldn’t do more.

If there’s no collective effort, there’s no real reason to engage.

Is Web 3 going to be a full replacement for Web 2, or simply a place to grumble about Web 2?

If the former, it’s going to take some effort, and we are going to need better products and services. B Card is exactly such a case, but likely when it’s up and running it will draw heavily on your time. What happens then at Bankless? I’m even now applying at DAO Punks for a grant to develop a talent transition product, and at Bankless we’ve seen this a few times now.

As always, I apologise for my passion, but I’d like to see Bankless maintain activity levels, just with a better focus on sustainability, longevity, and yes even Perpetuity.

And I agree with TrewKat. Just making space isn’t enough, that would be like my Facebook group. Any group needs more definition and more focus on what its activities are. Digital space is plentiful and easy to set up. Building an action plan that others agree to join, that’s much harder.

We need some tough love here, I suspect.

:muscle::heart:

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First, thanks for the breakdown of your opinion! I love it!

Quick question (just for my understanding)

What is meant by distributed? Like distributed in different avenues (YouTube, podcast, written)

Thank you!

And @links ; this is a good start to finding the purpose, I believe. We are change makers and freedom seekers,

In church on Sunday the Rev said something that resonated with me

Be a climate changer. Change the climate for the better in the space around you.

At first I would think of something like having community spaces to change the climate of world around you,

But then there is literal, climate change so yeah that’s probably going to be a no.

But it seems like what we want to be now is a place to nurture talent, ideas, and vibes. No?

People faired best in bankless DAO when they had a home to create their ideas, hone their ideas, and then, fly away resilient and ready to take on the world. It seems like that’s a good way to consider this new community.

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By ‘distributed’ I meant ‘not centralised’ but I was trying to get away from decentralised.

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Agree!

Hot take - I don’t actually want to mention a technology in our purpose (although may make sense in other areas) because I don’t want to limit our community to any specific tech.

Like the idea of creating opportunities tho!

First - who said digital only? Making space could be (and probably should be) also about making community spaces IRL as well.

Second - just because it’s easy to create spaces doesn’t mean anyone will show up. Building spaces that people regularly visit (ie community spaces) isn’t easy.

I think the challenge is creating a space which encourages people to do things for themselves. This was something that lagged in bDAO, and something I’d like to push forward.

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Yes agreed. I also tried to create a Zoom space during the early days of COVID. I think it reassured people they weren’t alone, and there was a road ahead, but it wasn’t really enough, and attendance tailed off. :motorway:

As we are saying, purpose is important, and that’s what folk sign up for. Maybe my Facebook Systems Thinking group is / was an outlier, but maybe that’s just the profile of Systems Thinkers. :thinking:

How would we define our ideal avatar? Someone who wants to make a contribution, and is limited initially by a lack of local physical resources and talent contacts? :construction: As we have seen from the exodus here, lots of folk turn up once opportunity becomes visible, and leave when opportunities dry up. :arrow_right: Opportunity makers are a rarer breed. :unicorn:

I physically can’t have these discussions locally, folk can’t take the scope of it in, and assume I’m raving. Which might be a feature of mine in any case. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

So I have always found the most sense through digital communities, and then looked to see whether local instances could be possible. That is happening currently with Solana in London in the UK. :dart::guardsman:

But I accept others will have different paths. :national_park:

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Thanks for that!

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I like your framework @Trewkat and yes we need to agree on one.

I don’t have a suggestion on the wording of the purpose. But it’s important to use words that resonate with everyday speech. “To make community spaces for freedom-seeking changemakers” yes, 100%! Can we say this in normal-people-wording?

Personally I’d like a place where I can meet other curios individuals, I like to learn, connect over ideas that leads to projects and maybe a new form of income

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Hi. I’m an original member of the DAO, and I’ve seen lots of changes in the two years that I have been unengaged and not even making weekly calls. Many of us left because of the takeover of the DAO by a handful of members who were anti-Ryan/David and who were, quite frankly, overly reactive. It became difficult to participate because members were expected to be all in or you would be sidelined. And many of us were part of Bankless because we liked the innovation, not the expectation.

I hope a few of these things can change so that the DAO can be revived.

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Unsure if you know, but Ryan and David pretty much disavowed the DAO. As a result we are restructuring and hence this conversation. As part of restructuring, we are supporting active contributors, so if you want to be involved feel free to show up.

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Interesting. I’ve been here since around Season 1 and very active the whole time. I’ve never picked up on that vibe at all. If anything I’ve been a little guarded with my opinions when they don’t line up with those from HQ.

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I tend to agree. If anything, the DAO’s need to be independent from HQ and the personalities involved in that meant HQ distanced itself from the DAO. Ryan was often on calls in the background in the beginning. When that dropped off there was tension and many of us were here because of what we thought the DAO could become.

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I’m in. Even that we have the colors and still using the Bankless brand, also we are facing the hits and the side knifes that the community throws against us. Moving forward with something that also represent us as a Black Flag it’s going to be great, and why we decided to make a little change in the organization to be rebranded as Be-DAO but we continue coordinating Nacion Bankless as all you know.
So yes, also i’m not agree that we are anti Ryan/David, i think that we are grown enough and independent to not be related, becase some people continues thinking that they control our decision, but no one really cares to read and understand what’s happening, the just react in both ways.
Black Flag sounds cool, and sound like a fresh start =)

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