First of all, I believe this project has a huge potential, not limited by D_D use. This is the problem a lot of DAOs are solving and eg MetaWork is very popular by solving the similar problem (in a less efficient way Iād say). Also, I think this is very aligned with what we are doing as a D_D - or at least how I understand it. Helping people to find the right projects and guilds and helping them to improve while keeping track of their achievements can be a game changer.
Wooow this is as indepth as it gets, I read the message like 3 times. I freaking love it
- Yes I super agree that this can be the central nervous system
- amazing potential feature āscrape the discordā and āattended meetingsā and more than possible to do that, we can extract crazy info from there
- reduce churn, I think that this is also super big part and I am grateful that you get it
Right now we donāt have a specific place that you can get information from, but we will have something like that in the next 4 weeks so I will keep you updated on when this will be ready
yeaa you get it so much, I love it! It was a pleasure to work with you, and I would love if we can collaborate in the future
Yes exactly drive the candidate directly into the projects, love how you put it there
This is pretty cool, I love the concept, and I think it would be really useful.
āremove the chaotic environment that a common discord chat might offerā - love that
ooo new idea alert ā āHelping people to find the right projects and guilds and helping them to improve while keeping track of their achievements can be a game changerā
helping track of their achievements that sounds really interesting at least in theory
thank you
Really interesting project with many possibilities, asides from being able to streamline community members to project I think that it will be able to showcase the projects and their demands better. And like @allWiseee mentioned this would be tremendous help when it comes to talent coordination and having talents be able to contribute to projects more efficiently and consistently!
Thanks @BluePanda @impactbilli.eth and @Milo.io this sounds like and interest idea seeking to address a key challenge in the DAO :))
This tool speaks directly to all of the D_D values, but especially to the one of Diversity and Inclusion, as today it is mostly the loudest voices & strongest self-starters that find their way in the DAO. This tool can help engage a broader set of people for the right reasons.
When it comes to the D_D goals, the tool falls right in line: (1) It creates the possibility to engage members on their specific interests, providing a more scalable yet personal education, onboarding & support path. (2) With the help of the D_D, this tool is well positioned to become a core web3 infrastructure that helps realize the promise of all DAOs, unlocking a huge set of opportunities for DAO members across web3.
Love the mission, values and goals alignment here. Right now it seems the only people who find an easy path to contributing are those who find it natural to push themselves out into the open and this is certainly not the case for everyone. Itās scary joining a DAO, joining calls and trying to insert yourself into projects/create new ones, looks like this might be a great way to help with that
Brand usage
Our current version of the tool is an alpha version that is under development - we could, however, see how other DAOs would use this bot too & having D_D as the birthplace of the tool that has the potential to become core infrastructure across all DAOs is how we would use the brand - very much in line of the idea of ābuild web3 with friendsā.
Love it. Anything that can be showcased as built in D_D by members of D_D really adds to the story of being part of D_D and the intrinsic value in membership.
ā
Seems like youāve really thought through he steps to making this a reality, some general observations that I think are worth thinking about:
- How do you see this playing with other tools in the DAO, for example Sobol. I wonder how much cross-over there is a if this tool could even replace the need for sobol? Iāve dropped the ball on sobol a bit whilst focussing on the foundation setup and budgets, planning to join @luan and co in the Community Guild weekly to talk about this, might be a good meeting to join so we can figure this out.
- How much control will projects have over if/how people are introduced to contributing? Seems most of the successful projects in the DAO are led by a small group, would a project be able to mark they are not currently looking for contributors/what contributors they are looking for so as to control of the flow of requests and not distract from the project?
- Similarly, can this include a way for people to read more about a project before seeking an introduction so they can make a call before taking up the project teamās time by joining their sessions?
- Given @wiseTy is in the team imagine youāve thought on this but how do you see it playing with onboarding efforts?
- Could this be used to replace the org mapping we get from Sobol
Loving the enthusiasm to solve a core problem in the DAO :)))
Is there a way we can test this on a small scale before asking the entire DAO to sign-up as it would mean a big change in everyoneās workflows? (although maybe that would be a good thing )
Super interested to hear others thoughts on this!!!
One other thought that could help make a tool like this really powerful is, could projects have a way to notify members who have specific skills when they need contributors? this could really help with activating members who couldnāt find a place to contribute when they did this process but then an opportunity comes up after the fact. Maybe by DMāing everyone or something else?
Love the idea, Iām one of those people who has difficulties pushing himself out. For the achievements I think looking into Verifiable Credentials on something like ceramic might be a better path than soulbound tokens.
Really looking forward to this! Excited for how this progresses in terms of the mentorship program!
If we want to look at things built by dao members, Sonr is built by at least 3 dev_doa members and may work for the purpose.
Disclosure, I work there as head of engineering.
Thanks for the kind words & great observations @kempsterrrr !
The way weāre currently thinking about how it plays with other tools is that we focus on creating great person/opportunity matches & helping the DAO get organised around that, specifically. Where sobolās mission seems to be more around helping you stay organised in āgeneralā by creating a nice visualisation layer on top of the discord, which we believe isnāt enough if you want to create great opportunity/person matches as it will always be a āpassiveā approach to creating these matches (you have to go find the project instead of the project finding you).
Soil is dynamic (taking into account time-sensitivity, team-compositions, skill-complementarities, ā¦), bidirectional (meaning you can find a project & a project can find you) & personalised (specific to your profile - you donāt need to understand the entire structure of the DAO to find the project/opportunity that matters for you.
We can build a visualisation layer on top of Soil and get a more dynamic & self-updating picture of the DAO than we would if we only built it on discord & aggregating static elements of the community, which is what sobol does. Since members are incentivized to share meaningful information as it increases chances at finding & being found for meaningful projects - where sobol the only incentive is wanting to be organised & my messy room currently vouches for that not always being a good enough reason to act . From speaking to other DAOās, what ends up happening with sobol is that mostly coordinating roles care about updating sobol - which makes it that a lot of information is missed. But weāll for sure join the community guild call to discuss further!
Yes - in general, weāre already thinking about meaningful gating mechanisms that balance inclusion & accessibility with team productivity - maybe for some projects youāll only be able to apply after doing a quest or showing you have the right āintellectual capitalā to apply. Another thing weāre thinking about is the ability to skill gate - meaning if someone has less than X endorsements around a required skill, they cannot apply, for example.
The core idea of soil, which is better project matches, means that in general, as weāll be able to be more specific as to who should apply for what project, weāll have less, but more meaningful applications to sift through in the selection stage.
And absolutely, by capturing dynamic updates & summarising those youāll be able to get caught up on the status & context of a project straight away.
As spoken about before, we think with soil as a basis, weāll be able to create a more dynamic, actionable map than sobol currently does - but happy to discuss that more in-depth, as it depends on what exactly weāre hoping to get from sobol.
Absolutely, weāre currently filling up a test-discord & onboarding people one-on-one, as weāll update & develop we can test-run there.
for your question about can we have projects, yes we can and this is already part of the alpha version we currently have.
Since @BluePanda gave me a demo of this app yesterday, I have had a lot of reflection (yet again) on missions and values and especially the fuzziness around them. Iām also left wondering what substance is underneath all the buzzwords that we use in our day to day life including those we use with our co-creators.
Quite Long**ā**, but please Do Read.
I think the app has great potential, but I would strongly suggest changing the language in the app if we do want to create a better future and not just business as usual. Language is the difference between a good story and a bad one. A truth or a lie. It has enormous power, and with power comes responsibility.
@allWiseee I had suggested before as part of the onboarding process to ask newcomers whatās important to them in the ir world as a person, what needs fixed in our shared world and what they think is going okay and therefore doesnāt need fixed. If we believe weāre building the future here, then itās important to address these questions as builders of whatever it is we create.
How do we match those folks to projects that theyāll get enthusiastic about? Well maybe we should think about how we name things that we direct them to, and give them a chance to ācategorise themselves differentlyā.
Iāll give you a small chunk of my own story. I grew up around music, Iāve been playing instruments since I was six. I finally found my instrument of choice at 12. The bass guitar. You might ask yourself āwhat on Earth is the relevance of this in our web3 context?ā
I then started writing music which people around me enjoyed. Long story short, I didnāt become the rock star I wanted to be after years and years of persistence. Why? Maybe my music was crap, but I learned quickly how the recording, publishing and distribution industries worked hand in hand and pumped out brainwashing, cosmetic sounds on the TV to numb folks at home in the evenings, and on the radio during the day, so folks in factories, fields and offices would work obediently like zombies without question. So no WAGMI moment for me and my friends.
And this was a common theme right across the arts and culture āsectorā. Big companies would spot a good new idea, buy it, ruin the quality of it by commercialising it, mass produce it, brainwash everyone with it and exploit it until it was completely soulless. Therefore they didnāt need that many āproductsā (quality), only churning out quantity from the record plant(ation) was a priority. The artists got ripped off, but somebody got rich and controlled the narrative.
You can tell a lot about me, when you read this. You can see where Iām frustrated, and itās less about my music that didnāt work, but more about why. So based on the above, if I want to get working on a project, how am I going to get matched to it?
In the list of high level skills in the Soil app, I see:
- General Consulting Skills; Technical Skills; Product & Design Skills; Marketing Skills; Operations Skills; Legal Skills; Finance Skills; Web3 Expertise; Exposure to Consulting Specialism; Soft Skills; Other
Which one of these āskillsā would you choose for me? Should you put āOtherā and look for musician, or angry person, wants to change the world? These skills remind me of a corporate world. Itās not at all new, but a lot of it comes out of the industrial ārevolutionā, which created an education system to turn people into products with our CVs and resumes, and then web2 has taken it all to new and scary limits.
I think we should do a reality check and do a WAGMI for the world and all the lives on it. We could be helping our folks find meaningful projects to work on. We should take the time to rewrite the above list. We could be thinking about things that reflect well being, full bellies of healthy food for all, clean water and air for everyone, bio-diversity restoration, and conservation of our most precious resource, āsoilā, so we can achieve the preceding issues and the important message that comes with it āliving within our means with the resources that we have, so that we have something to leave for everyoneās childrenā. These are public goods that we need for survival at the most basic level. And they all continue to be exploited in the same way as the art in the music industry I described. An industry for music. My soul weeps.
There are a lot of things that need fixed. Urgently. And I believe that weāre the ones that can do it, but only if we create a culture that gives the space to those that are willing to pursue it. Language is the key to any culture.
This tool can also serve to be a public good and has the potential to facilitate DAOs beyond our own. Letās make sure what itās facilitating is something to be proud of.
If you made it this far, thanks for taking the time. Iām trying to get a healthy conversation going around the past, present and future of what we create.
Soil is an innovative, wonderful product that is needed within our DAO. Soil will help structure the opportunities to ensure no opportunity is lost which will provide a Win-Win situation for both the members who bring such opportunities and those who need them.
Can you link to the product?
Soil is dynamic (taking into account time-sensitivity, team-compositions, skill-complementarities, ā¦), bidirectional (meaning you can find a project & a project can find you) & personalised (specific to your profile - you donāt need to understand the entire structure of the DAO to find the project/opportunity that matters for you.
Really like this ethos
From speaking to other DAOās, what ends up happening with sobol is that mostly coordinating roles care about updating sobol - which makes it that a lot of information is missed. But weāll for sure join the community guild call to discuss further!
Think beneath the well executed product and nice visuals I had similar feels about how Sobol would benefit us. Same to your points in the first paragraph. Iām not at all wedded to sobol FYI just seemed to solve a problem we had, would much rather see us solve it better if we can
Yes - in general, weāre already thinking about meaningful gating mechanisms that balance inclusion & accessibility with team productivity - maybe for some projects youāll only be able to apply after doing a quest or showing you have the right āintellectual capitalā to apply. Another thing weāre thinking about is the ability to skill gate - meaning if someone has less than X endorsements around a required skill, they cannot apply, for example.
Awesome. The lens through which I made the comments wasā¦ āas a champion of a project I wouldnāt want to spend the majority of every sync meeting explaining it to other people if we couldnāt support more contributors at the present momentā.
Having some kind of way for projects to signal if and what kind of contribution they are currently looking for might help them balance progress with inclusivity, assuming we have good practices around maintaining a record of projects people can asynchronously consume.
Also acknowledge in the pursuit of a better system that might not be a viable MVP feature whilst yāall ship , just sharing thoughts!!
ā
Everything else sounds great I personally really like this idea once the draft budget is finalised
Believe getting others thoughts who have been working on onboarding etc. would be valuable in case they have been trying to solve similar problems cc @luan @Hmz @myz1237.eth
I think itās important we distinguish between DAO-specific initiatives (such as the Scribes effort, OKRs Initiative, Guild admin etc), and projects started in the DAO. As I remarked last week, the two often seem to be conflated; but they are fundamentally different.
The former should welcome all, regardless; and depending on what the responsibilities entail, craft a system to regulate how it gets done. What weāre endeavouring to do on the Onboarding Team ā by having at least one fixed onboarding session that anybody can host (by claiming the task on DeWork), is a close example of what Iām referring to, here.
The latter, however, may potentially need to have some kind of cap on the no. of contributors. As a bare minimum, reach a point where there needs to be a limit on more people joining the effort. Think of the OKRs Initiative as a pre-alpha of this: various people are involved, but at a certain point, a āworking groupā is going to be formed, who will be tasked with seeing it reach its next points. This allows there to be some accountability, without necessarily restricting others from participation.
So I think itās good to draw that line of distinction between the 2 types of projects, and tailor parameters for each.
I spoke with @BluePanda this morning, as he walked me through some of this - and I did bring up SOBOL. It didnāt initially appear like there would be crossover, but based on the fact that SOBOL largely pulls data from Discord and Soil (in part) intends to feed data into the server, there may be some fragmented experiences that result in some work being manually actioned somewhere. The intended v1.0 of SOBOLās usage is serving as a directory. So the primary need would be feeding data from Soil into profiles in SOBOL. BluePanda said heāll look at their APIs. Iāll also put him in contact with Alex
Discovery is one of the core things undergirding the Onboarding Proposal I put together, as well as what was formerly called the āFellowshipsā Program. Itās important that people are able to come to projects and initiatives in an organic way. Many people with ADHD, for example, are interest/emotion-based learners. Thus, there still needs to be a natural inclination for things. Without room being made to facilitate that, then they will have difficulty finding a place to fit in. This is also true for people who have no clue what theyāre doing in the DAO (i.e. theyāve no immediate goals), but just want to vibe and see where the āwindsā take them.
And so what this can look like, is having an overview of active projects within a Guild, as well as its points of contact. This has been the intention for the new channel structuring, whereby it resides in a single read-only channel under each Guild. The feasibility of which, is yet to be fully determined (critical assumptions are still assumptions, after all).
Iāve thoughts towards something off-platform, but I wrestle with pulling people out of the discord experience, in non-meaningful ways. Iām yet to see Soil in person, as much of our meeting this morning was taken up with discussions; but it would be beneficial to have a way to address what Iāve described above.
In the budget proposal for the Onboarding Team, I mentioned that the v1.0 of the Guild Onboarding for Season 1 is simply steering new members towards actioning a minimum viable contribution. We donāt yet have a Guild Onboarding framework, and it isnāt something Iāve wanted to rush ā so it sits as one of the duties for the Guild Lead for Season 1. I believe Soil is a great step towards building out that framework, and whoever takes on that role as Guild Lead; Iād encourage them to work with the Soil team on this.
The premise of Soil, as described to me this morning by @BluePanda, should mesh quite well with the Onboarding structure Iāve designed. Because as mentioned in the proposal I put together, itās largely rooted in member flow and UX.
Okay this is interesting. I like what Iām reading.
As long as Soil can help to facilitate clarity, without removing the ability for organic discovery; then I think we can have a winner.