HAUS Party LIVE 🎉— What I wish I knew on my Day One in DAOs!

Season 4 Episode 3 (2/3/2022)

Published in

DAOhaus.club

10 min readFeb 7, 2022

Synopsis

In this episode the HAUS gang puts their hydra heads together to think about all the things they wish they knew upon first entering the DAO space. Some of us have been around for years and others are just getting started. What kinds of DAO cheat codes can we share? When does thinking about successful participation in DAOs become a meditation on how to build strong community? What are the tools and procedures that we wish someone told us about before falling so deep down the rabbit hole? Join us as we oscillate from the wide to the deep in an exploration of time, space, painting, restraint, governance, politics, and of course DAOs!

Join us for 🎉 Haus Party Live 🎉 every Thursday at 2pm EST on the DAOhaus Discord

Topics

“Things I wish I knew on my day one in DAOs”
DAO and Community “Cheat Codes”

Hosts & Guests

Felipe, dekanbro, Vanilladelphia.eth, vengist
Audience guests

🌱 Welcome to our metaphorical, infinite garden! 🌱

Day One in DAOs

It has been a long journey and feels like a perpetual day one since we’re so early in figuring things out. More folks will have “their first day in DAOs” since DAOs are growing in exposure and popularity, so we want to share the evergreen content forms we document to help shape what comes out of DAOs moving forward.

What does this look like as DAOs evolve and branch? DAOs are like amoeba at the moment, proto-vertebrates anticipating the sophisticated plants and specialized biological structures to come. At this early point it is important to identify our learnings and share what we know to avoid perpetually reinventing the wheel.

DAO Advice

💡 Sharing Documents and Access

We all use GSuite, Notion, and similar tools in our daily routines. Always send via “anyone with link can edit” to avoid folks needing to have to log in via their email as this increases coordination cost and may not be necessary if information isn’t sensitive. Is part of the problem in the “amoeba DAOs” related to our ongoing reliance on centralized coordination tools? Decentralized identity remains an essential part of the problem and we are still in the nascent stages of figuring out a viable solution.

💡 Utilize Time Tracking Software

Starting off with solid practices and time tracking tools is helpful. It’s a good practice to monitor your personal time, especially if you’re contributing to multiple DAOs and workstreams, so that you can reflect how your time was spent and valued. This is especially important when evaluating participation across several communication tools. We recommend having a clear tool for quantifying time spent and value created to increase transparency in accounting. Clockify can track how much time is spent in specific apps such as Discord and it’s also free to use. Harvest is a time tracking tool that can also be used for invoicing.

💡 Anticipate Taxes Early

If you’re not an Opolis member this can be difficult and you should think about this early on. CoinTracker is a helpful tax tool for considering how you’re exposing yourself to taxable events and as a feedback mechanism for inform how you’re managing your tokens across wallets. Wallet hygeine and trackable transactions is absolutely something to consider before becoming a fulltime crypto native DAOist! Being able to monitor your txns is key if you are paid in volatile tokens, as well as in visualizing what value is reciprocated in relation to the amount of time you have dedicated to a project. It can get confusing to avoid unintentional “double dipping,” so time tracking can help avoid conflicts of interest when contributing across many connected DAOs and sub-DAOs.

💡 Overcoming Loneliness

How do early contributors confront potential feelings of loneliness when working and establishing things? It can be a lonely journey when working to establish a DAO’s foundation. You might find yourself going from purely coding and doing some client management to starting your own DAOs and facillitating the birth of radical new communities. Community may have an organic genesis moment where everyone has an aligned incentive, but it’s difficult if someone isn’t there at the start explaining the initial idea, communicating, onboarding, and coordinating on Layer 0. Community Manager roles are critical and need to be deeply tied into the initiative itself. The early days of RaidGuild and DAOhaus required lots of time on Discord, working to keep everyone engaged and make sure that folks are heard and supported. Its critical to say hello to new folks and bring them into the community. The role of the Summoner is to help keep things moving forward, and its often a long term vision.

🌱 “It may have just been one relationship with one person, but it was really important to make sure that I could explain it to someone who is new and just came on.” 🌱
“Can I explain the vision to new contributors?”

💡 Document Everything!

We often say this to folks, but we tend to think about it after the fact. Its tempting to think that there will come a time later to “catch up” on documentation, but new things always happen and practices keep evolving. Figure out a way to document your learnings while forming them into best practices for yourself and others. This is key for DAO Summoners as well as new contributors. Write things down and share often!

🌱 “The process of trying to communicate became a guiding star, a navigational device to the building process itself.” 🌱

Folks often have bad experiences with documentation and many are opposed to it because it’s a standard operating procedure that often doesn’t change (at least based on common perceptions and prior bad experiences). Documenting the path forward makes it easier for folks coming after you, like cutting your way through a dense jungle and mapping it for others to follow. Even if they don’t go the exact same way, they can still use your map as a guide. Document what you’re doing when you do it for the first time. Documenting for yourself is important, but then being able to share this in a meaningful way is critical and opens doors. Documenting needs to become habitual for us all.

💡 Vulnerability and Trust

DAOs are more vulnerable when DAOs are first getting started and there is a high degree of trust involved (even with smart contracts). It’s important to not get in the way of folks who are excited and passionate about contributing. Let new contributors run with their ideas when they want to get something started! We all need to practice this level of trust when getting started.

💡 Understand the DAO More

Joining a DAO that’s established is a different experience than starting a new DAO. In the early days of joining a mature DAO its good to understand the core elements of the group. The early days are filled with conversations about mission and shared values. Once established, other things need to be done, such as the ongoing documentation mentioned previously. Early contributors rely on each other to plug the holes and remove bottlenecks so that the DAO can continue doing what needs to be done. Documentation greatly helps since it gives folks the information needed to do what they need/want to do to push things forward.

💡 Finding Focus

All of this information and all of these opportunities can be overwhelming, especially when working to prove yourself to a group of anonymous strangers. Remember the difference between going deep vs. going wide. Going deep can be challenging when first exploring. Determine your own filters! Find what motivates you in the vision, values, and the vibes of the DAO you are courting.

🌱 “Does this organization have a vision? Are there values that I’m aligned with? Is it a vibe? Is it something I want to spend my time contributing to?” 🌱

💡 Make Suggestions For Improvements

New contributors often expect there to be processes in place in the communities and demonstrate a tendency to “play along with the process for awhile,” even if they have criticisms. DAOs are generally open to change (especially DAOhaus!), so don’t be afraid to make suggestions or propose radical pivots! If you can identify a better path forward it’ll likely be embraced and unravel the feeling of needing to fall in line with a current sub-optimized process. Fresh perspectives offer a valuable opportunity to make suggestions and advocate for changes.

🌱 “It’s a constant iteration of becoming better, together.” 🌱

Even if someone has a cool idea and is encouraged to pursue it, there is still a question of will they actually do it? Take the initiative! Don’t ask for permission, ask forgiveness after the deed is done! Consider creating prototypes to back up what you’re suggesting. As long as you’re not destructive, contribution and initiative will be often be welcomed.

Contributing and Governance

Folks onboarded from co-operative movements might think “…but this is so political.” DAOs are a voting technology so there are innate politics to the collaboration and coordination. People used to participating as a political agents are welcome, so long as they don’t impose constraints on divergent points of view. We all need to work together to unravel our biases in our collective conversations and processes.

Is there a significant difference between governance and politics? Governance might be considered the structure and design, while politics is the actual navigational path over the territory where agents deal with the constraints of that structure while coordinating to redesign the structures within the system. Governance is to politics what complexity is to complication. Complexity is granular detail, the minutiae of decisions and the architecture that we erect to represent them. Governance is how we accumulate and track the changes in the evolution of a shared knowledge base, whereas politics are the human element. Humans complicate ideal governance with politics, creating cultural bottlenecks and social coordination failures. Politics are the propaganda machine, symbolizing our need to align behind an ideology, even when it threatens to take over the ideal governance structure. DAOs allow humans to clean up their politics and focus on the core problems of governance.

We all want to jump in and start generating value, but there is a human element. If you can find someone to work with one-on-one it can make a big difference. Finding a buddy or a mentor requires humility and being courageous enough to understand what you don’t know. Mentorship is key to helping folks overcome their concerns, frustrations and challenges. It’s not so clear cut and cold as “come in and work,” and if so, we likely wouldn’t be feeling the same way about the work. If you can coordinate well you’ll be able to create exponential value.

🌱 “A DAO is a network of humans, and the strength of a DAO is our ability to coordinate.” 🌱

Find someone who you can work with, especially early on. Having daily opportunities to share progress and support each other in a meaningful way is what’s often missing in entirely async communication. These mentor relationships are reciprocal; the value and the learning goes both ways.

Community Hacks

These “DAO hacks” are really “community hacks” based on ritual and recognition. Ritual is an important part of community, providing a gravitational pull that pulls folks into the core. Recognition is a critical part of communities and it’s often easy to forget about. When folks do things (especialy if they’re new) they should be celebrated and recognized. There are risks on both sides, but if you can break the first onboarding barrier the value will become 10x what you’d expect. Making small investments into new contributors can make the difference between folks staying or not, and these contributors can explode in a good way.

💡 Be Willing to Wear Multiple Hats

There is a difference between going deep and going wide. Both of these are important and useful, so figure out what’s right for you as a contributor. Moving back and forth between roels and context is often difficult. Its akin to learning how to paint. The beginner mistake is to put everything on the canvas, but through time and experience the painter will learn how to say no to their own impulses and exercise productive restraint. Working within constraints can help structure your focus even more! Explore broadly and then dive in with eagle eye focus to maximize value. Look for synergies between where you want to work and where you can contribute, as there are lots of common problems across the ecosystem.

🌱 “What is the value that folks add even at rest, because of who they are?” 🌱

Find what areas motivate you toward action and balance this with how you prefer to focus and work. Find the source of psychic energy and keep experimenting until it clicks. Maybe it’s more like calligraphy in the way your body, mind, and hands move naturally when doing what you love. There is a psycho-physical component to how we act when practicing brushwork. Once you discover how to tap into this flow state, use it to drive things forward!

Onboarding and Processes

Since there isn’t a top-down hierarchy to direct us (nor should there be!), a lot of onboarding processes rely on the DAO culture and documentation. Handbooks, charters, and manifestos are leaned on heavily by current and new members since process is important. Processes need to fit with the culture, and when they no longer fit they need to be changed. A good starting point is outlining the steps for how to join the community. RaidGuild has a good handbook for illustrating this. Thinking about the minimum actions that folks need to take can help inform the documentation that is created.

“Time to Joy” is a common metric, but in a DAO this could be viewed as lowering the time to adding value to the community and being rewarded. DAOs should strive toward lowering the barrier for contributors to get started. Optimize for how quickly someone can enter the community, can add value, and get rewarded for it. This is a good goal for handbooks and documentation in general.

But is this the most optimal path or is a slower, more intentional onboarding process better? This could be an entire episode! We look forward to meditating on that in the coming weeks.

Resources

Join us for Haus Party Live 🎉 every Thursday at 2pm EST on the DAOhaus Discord!

More DAOHaus 🏰