• The human component is one of the most crucial elements in the health of a DAO, yet often overlooked by community builders because they are either technologists or are used to leveraging tech to control or insulate from human interactions. Technology can mitigate some aspects of community management and foster positive growth, but the founders must bake in “human first” frameworks from the beginning so that the community scales in a holistic manner that is constructed with equanimity, empathy and positive conflict resolution.
• The community must have mechanisms in place to account for friction among its members and have a protocol in place to deploy when friction arises, from the founding members all the way down to the casual lurkers. We can create containers for such friction so that it can be addressed and hopefully hold the space effectively enough that a beautiful spark of innovation or solution can arise from the point of friction itself.
• Protecting the core founders of the community from external forces— either from the ecosystem or the community at large is necessary. Yet so is ensuring that this group of founders is not isolated from the community itself. Town Halls, active engagement throughout Discord, Spaces and special events— both virtual and IRL will help support the bridge between the founders and the community.
• The reason to be diligent about protecting the founding members is that they are the ones who are building the framework of the community and the mission itself and that community+mission will be a direct reflection of the core group’s humanity. From the inside out. If the founders have unaddressed friction that festers or is not in alignment with the mission, the community itself will begin to fracture or will never scale.
• We stand at an interesting intersection with JournoDAO. The existing founding members all have a deep human connection, a similar outlook on the mission of the DAO and we all genuinely care for one another and have a very deep familial vibe. This is very rare in the DAO space that is dominated by technological connections and interactions. I believe we must view the founding group as a family unit and do whatever’s necessary to maintain this fabulous human element that we’ve managed to coalesce, all “Bad News Bears” like (to interject Keith’s analogy here).
• Maintaining a clear DAO mission rather than trying to be too many things all at once. Such as impactDAO vs service DAO. This probably needs more time and space to evolve, but I believe we should just discuss this now or in a follow up Founders meeting, so we are all aware of the long term vision as options surface during growth. For example, we keep seeing a need for a service DAO for those needing journalistic services. We discussed using something like the Ocean Protocol marketplace as a tool for this very thing and possibly being a facilitator of the tool itself, but not building a “Journalism as a service” DAO. We’ve kind of explored this alot in conversation, but fleshing it out at some point in these early growth stages is probably a good thing. We can also gently thread the needle now by offering strategic services, as also discussed, similar to what is now evolving with Diamond DAO. This type of advisory role will help us shape tools for journalists from the DAO ecosystem itself through collaboration, establish us as authorities in the ecosystem and help us build our treasury faster so we can reach our compensation goals. Using Circles or Pods is a method used in larger DAOs and works fairly well. See a chart & deets about the concept here: https://www.sociocracyforall.org/sociocracy/
• Compensation and delegation of roles must be fair for all, reflect the value/contribution of the individual to the DAO and have the space for people to come and go as they are called to.
• Maintaining a compensation structure that is insulated from internal politics and deeply equitable and also in alignment with our founding members belief systems is vital to establishing our foundation for a holistic DAO that can navigate the ins and outs of unknown market forces and provide longevity and sustainability for us all while we change the world.