Caution: this is lengthy, sorry, not sorry.
I think this makes a ton of sense. My following comments are mine and do not represent the Grants Committee in any way.
I agree with Brendan that Quarter makes a lot of sense. I think aligning with a non-fiscal quarters is easiest; January-March, April-June, July-September, October-December. It’s odd to me Grants is in the fourth quarter but it’s April, that’s just not how my brain works. In terms of fun words; laps or waves?
As we come into and develop this I feel like we will need to re-evaluate the direction, function, and costing of existing structures like the Grants Committee, Community Substack/Podcast, Treasury WG, and various Operation WGs. I don’t think everything needs to be rebuilt or that things need to be restructured. But I do think clarity of purpose and investment expectations (time invested, pay structuring, and KPIs for output) will need some firming up.
More broadly, I think this great to bring to the forefront of the conversation and this is something many protocols/projects are struggling to identify a way forward. This is a human coordination problem, but it’s also a human capital problem.
Coordination as a Problem:
- It’s exceedingly difficult to organize and collaborate in groups of more than 7 to 10, not impossible, just difficult. Synchronous work teeters on the edge of impossible.
- It’s hard to know what all the different things are that everyone is working on, there’s so much and so many people actively building it’s hard to have it in one location that is linked to from the many sources people interact with.
- Timing and goal setting becomes strange because crypto moves so fast, but so many are building part-time and have IRL things to maintain that get (rightfully so) in the way.
Capital as a Problem:
- People only have so much time, and unfortunately we as a DAO suffer from over-achievers. Many of us are involved in multiple projects/protocols and are split even further when taking into consideration IRL obligations.
- Documentation/Communication is hard, we all have great ideas and we’re all working hard but noting what happens in meetings or our own progress on different tasks is varied and intermittent.
- Too many helpers and not enough direction. We have a great community of people wanting to help, but we struggle with giving them the opportunities to do so. This isn’t for lack of opportunity or offering ways to get involved, it’s due to lack of assignment. Some people thrive on “here’s X, Y, and Z things you can jump into”, other’s thrive on “please do A, B, or C things”.
We almost need a Project Management tool combined with a Client Relationship Management tool, a DAO Integration Network Gizmo (DAO-ING). hold your applause
- Something where anyone can create an item which could be displayed in a Kanban style or something else.
- This links to the source of the task if there is one; Canny.io, Discord, GitHub, etc.
- A working group is tagged if one is associated.
- Members working on the task are tagged.
- Some sort of subset of the task allows for members to note their subtasks to the task, what they’re working on, who they’re talking to, what subtasks depend on this subtask, etc. etc.
- A flagging system to indicate if someone needs help with something.
- Some sort of push notification system for people to enroll in to know when subtasks or tasks are completed.
The above is just a rough brainstorm of what I think would be helpful. The trick is getting all our current builders on board and utilizing the toolset regardless of what that toolset is. I think Notion can accomplish some of this, I recall WGMI Community ticking a few of the above. The other trick is getting better with aligning and assigning, this is where I think we can really start encouraging new people to get involved.
In onboarding, if someone is willing and wanting to get involved, assign them a task. This new person is now in charge of documenting that task, reaching out to all the builders listed on the task to see if they have updates, need help, etc. This should make it easier for a new person to integrate with the ecosystem, build their connections, and further their understanding of what’s going on; all our builders are happy to answer any questions it’s how we all got where we are now. It’s often much easier and quicker for a builder to read over and edit notes, than it is to document everything as it’s happening or just after the fact.
Example case (theoretical):
- Grants gets a grant request for a Weekly Drawing hype video for a sizeable delegation every week. Grants approves this request.
- Taliskye and Torgin are the Grant reviewers in charge of this grant, one of us creates the task, adds a link to the grant summary from the Grants Funded Projects, adds the name of who we are in contact with for this, etc. etc.
- Taliskye/Torgin start the ball rolling with the grantee for how to fund, the milestones, etc.
- A new person, TentacoolPool, is onboarding and wants to help, Tjark assigns them the Weekly Draw task, they reach out to Taliskye and Torgin to ask questions as it looks like neither Taliskye or Torgin have made any notes in last 2 weeks and learn about Grants as a whole.
- TentacoolPool adds their notes on the different subtasks, and tells Taliskye/Torgin so they can review and edit as needed
- The next time Taliskye or Torgin meet with the Grantee they include TentacoolPool to document the conversation as needed, or schedule time with the TentacoolPool after the meeting to relay a quick summary.
- Tim notices this cool grant and thinks it would compliment a partnership with a big NFT DAO, and they note this on the task linking to the NFT DAO partnership task.
- TentacoolPool or Taliskye/Torgin update the subtasks. They also notice the note from Tim and begin discussing with everyone to see how these two items can work together.
- Rinse, repeat, and everyone learns along the way. The progress of everything is documented and open for all to see, and comment on where applicable.
