S1 Budget Proposal: Server Architecture Team 🧰

🏦 Budgets/Grants
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[Final] S1 Budget Proposal: Server Architecture Team :toolbox:

Author(s): @luan
Supporting Budget Steward(s): @kempsterrrr

You can find the original announcement in the #announcements discord channel (see link: here). For ongoing discussions, please see the #server-general channel under the Active DAO Projects category.

Summary

This is the Season 1 budget proposal for the Server Architecture Team. It outlines the high-level goals, how we plan to get there, the team working to make this happen and the proposed budget we’re applying for.

Motivation

This team is tasked with overseeing the ongoing maintenance of the different categories and channels within the Developer DAO discord — and its overarching purpose is to make it easier for members to navigate the server, and to quickly find the information that they are looking for.

Mission, Values & Goals Alignment

The genesis of this team stems from the original Onboarding Proposal — in that its premise is also rooted member flow.

Coming into the server can feel very overwhelming for new members; and even some members who have been around in excess of 6 months, have reported that they still find it ‘chaotic’. Considerations towards the Discord server architecture are inherently a UX issue.And so this team falls under the Community Guild in large part, because its focus is primarily on the members of the community.

The intention is that each season, there is an allocation set aside to fund the work undertaken by the SATeam. The logistics of which, do not have to be immediately defined; and are subject to change in future seasons.

As this particular effort is multi-layered, and has particular crossover with initiatives such as Onboarding; I’m strongly encouraging us to be pedantic about focusing on only a few core goals for Season 1 - in addition to starting small and scaling up gradually.

Brand usage

N/A

Scope of work

Two core themes across the DAO heading into Season 1, are clarity and focus. And that is what we want to dedicate our efforts towards: bringing clarity to the Discord’s structure, which in turn, should make it easier for members to focus on the things that they need to focus on.

Thus in light of the above, the scope of work for Season 1 will be divided into 3 phases:

Phase 1

  • Requests to add descriptions to channels
  • Enquiries into the purpose behind a channel
  • Archiving channels that are no longer needed, or have failed to meet one of the above standards

Phase 2

  • Establish a new Guild (category) framework
  • Consolidate projects into their own categories (where necessary)
  • Restructure the placements of categories and channels (i.e. rearranging the position of Guilds in the server’s hierarchy)

Phase 3

  • Roll out new category framework in sections
  • Design the Point Of Contact channels
  • Establish new Role structures
  • Create read-only Discord Map channel (big undertaking, and may flow into Season 2)

At a more granular level, the above also includes (but is not limited to):

Weighing in on discussions around channel management

Offering consultative services to Guild and project leads, as required

QA testing bots and software (luan)

Other miscellaneous tasks which serve this effort

Team syncs

Financials

The requested budget is based on a projected idea of operations that are needed to fulfil the Season 1 scope of work, as laid out above. The nature of the work we’re doing, sometimes means that we are not working in strict 1hr time frames. It can be much longer, and it can also be shorter. Regardless, these efforts are impactful. And so I want to reframe how we quantify and ascribe value to that work.

Taking a cue from the legal profession — billable hours. Any work we do that is in service of the server architecture mission, is valuable; and thus should accrue remuneration in the form of $CODE.

Budget Calculation = 𝒙 hours per-week X 16-week Season X 15 $CODE/hr

Buffer (miscellaneous) = 9,960 $CODE

Total requested Budget = 15,000 $CODE (3,750 $CODE per-month)

Contributor Est. Weekly Hours $CODE (Season 1)
MichelleBakels 2hrs 480
aakansha 4hrs 960
Alex1237 5hrs 1,200
luan (Team Lead) 10hrs 2,400

Team

The following people will comprise the initial team, based on prior work already completed, and previously expressing an interest in building this out.

Success Metrics & KPIs

Custom Bot

Code a custom JavaScript bot :robot: that can identify all of the channels in the server which do not have a description, and send out a message which requests someone to add one.

Channel Removal

Archive 20% of channels in the main server (i.e. non-Onboarding channels) by the end of Season 1.

Guild Framework

Rollout a new framework for Guild categories.

Assigned Roles

Design, test, and roll out v1.0 of the new role structure for the main server.

SLA: Response Times

  • Maintain a first-response time of 48 hrs for all inbound enquiries

  • Maintain a first-response time of 24 hrs for all active channel petitions

  • Maintain a first-response time of 72 hrs for all archived channel petitions

Next Steps

The immediate next steps are focusing on finalizing the custom bot’s parameters, and then running it. We have already begun Phase 1, and so the main focus is beginning the process of archiving all non-crucial channels.

VOTE

  • Yes, I support this application
  • No, I do not support this application

0 voters

1 Like
2

Feel free to check the current bot: GitHub - myz1237/Developer-DAO-Channel-Clean-Bot

3

Would love a KPI to include an SLA response time for issues or something similar. Right now there isn’t really any KPI for significant parts of phase 1 and 2

4

thanks for mentioning this. I’ve added a KPI for SLA: Response Times.

For the others, I’m mindful of the team’s various roles across the DAO and their lives outside of it. Including myself, who works full-time; and is juggling Community Guild Lead (and Co-ordinator), Onboarding, OKRs, AxisOne, and now the SATeam. Main focus is establishing a cadence for functionality during Season 1, and building on those small successes. Creating wiggle room is going to be a core part of that.

There’s things still being worked out, in terms how to best approach some of this, and other things that are already in-progress. I’m intentionally not being overly granular, because I like having a lot of flexibility in how I work. The overarching goal remains the same - but how we decide to reach it can alter for any number of reasons. Server Architecture is a multilayered endeavour, perhaps especially because we are not working from a blank canvas; so I want the team to remain cognisant of that.

1 Like
5

The work that I have already seen going on in regard to this initiative is far from linear. I think it’s a valuable undertaking, which involves a loooooooot of discussions, analysis, deliberation, (re)callibrating and patience. I appreciate:

in order to keep it on track as well as possible.

Wishing the team lots of support, success and hopefully some fun in solving one of the major challenges of our communication stream :revolving_hearts:

1 Like
6

added me as the supporting budget steward

7

Month #3 Rundown

Milestone Summary

We archived and removed a number channels in the server, and established new forums that allows for new (and improved) ways of interacting and coordinating. Some of these forums also serve an additional purpose of consolidating other channels that have now been removed from the server. We’ve done a lot of work to consider how we can make obtaining information and context easier for people. In terms of automations (led by @myz1237.eth), we’ve also worked on refactoring the code for the custom bot, for the sake of improving its functionality — and have also successfully brought its utility to other parts of the server.

I personally wrote all of the guidelines for each of the forums that have been created. And since we do not currently have an official moderator team, I am manually screening posts in the forums to ensure that they meet the set guidelines.

A great deal of effort has gone into figuring out the permissions and role assignments, as it pertains to the overhauled Onboarding structure. This has involved researching certain plug and play bot solutions, troubleshooting with the Guild.xyz team, and running experiments behind the scenes.

A lot of the work that the Server Architecture team has been doing, is what informed (and led me to create) ‘The State of Developer DAO’ thread. This broader discussion around the structure of the DAO is integral to the work that we’re doing. And we arguably sit at the forefront of parts of this discourse, because we have firsthand experience on a lot of the server-specific limitations, and the challenges that are (in part) a result of DAO’s existing structure. We first proposed the idea that the Operational side of the DAO should be spun out into an entirely separate Discord server (it was @aakansha12 who first broached this). And this itself, stems from my repeated (but rejected) efforts to not only push for Partnerships to exist in a designated server of its own (see image below), but also to get us thinking about how there’s a need to consider how projects scale in the DAO. There’s little room remaining in the existing discord, and under the existing DAO format.

Ref.

Ultimately all of this has led to suggestions of having a separate entity altogether, that the operational side of the DAO can fall under. Server Architecture has been integral to this discussion and to the continued work.

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Allocation Revisions (Optional)

N/A

2 Likes