Onboarding to DAOs. All Hand Hoy!
(Read this if you are in, into or against DAOs.
Also if you are in a corporate, looking for inspiration for your challenges)
Finally, I have joined an already existing, functioning DAO. Hurray!
Instead of researching, scheming, setting up one I joined an existing DAO.
It is such a beautiful experience to see the workings, efficiencies, connections, inefficiencies, psychology and observe myself going through it. I must highlight each DAO will be different hence the experience.
I stand with DAOs are for normies.
However I have seen there definitely chaos involved. Decentralise responsibly. Here you can find some of my suggestions to approach hybrid decentralisation.
Now because I think Daos are for normies and that I have onboarded to DAO in 2021, I will write about onboarding to DAOs. All Hand Hoy!
In the DAO I joined, we had a cohort experience which I think is an amazing approach. A batch of people starting together and going through a sequenced set of episodes. There is a heartbeat, there is camaraderie, there is condensed excitement and an “onboarding community manager” who is helpful and checking up on the milestones. I want to have hats of to Raidguild and Tae.
Yet I get lost! As a normie, I am the “user” type who does not read your app screens, only focusing if i know i will get something. Yet I am capable of thinking decentralised naturally as humanly as possible so why the little shock? The constant FOMO? (Well we find out later I actually did not have access to a distro list , that explained the fomo). Long story short, I have casted the onboarding as an opportunity to tackle.
Well, my objective was to experience to exist in a functioning DAO. Here I was willing to be sucked into the nooks and crannies so I live the glory and the shadow for you and translate it into a human form. And I must say I have achieved my objective.
Let me get a bit personal.
I did have a hard time juggling the discord channels, notifications, what I must do next, or whether I am missing something, yet again. I had a hard time putting the 10 activities required into my already full schedule. How to prioritise what I must do, and why were we here again?
I had a fabulous time when we were in a project call with people from new Zealand, US and London trying to solve the problem off onboarding for the cohort atfer us. I had a great time when my community manager pinged me that i am missing the cohort merge and even send me xDAI to get onto the season DAO. I had joy when I discovered and understood things as I go along and watch my expectation dissolve as things do not really work the way I am accustomed to. It was great to understang the amazing projects that the DAO has been working on like FRACTAL and SuperFluid and METL.
Enough waxing lyrical!
Set your objective!
Here I highlight the first most important thing. The objective, your objective, and why you are there. DAOs can be complicated if you do not have your own map. This is so much different from an existing organisation, who sets objectives and paths for you. That hired you because they need something done. Nothing wrong, just wildly different.
The experience is NOT linear, but you must go forward.
Set your own journey, but ask for a map. Be ready to chart the map. We are accustomed to linear in organisations. That the progression can somewhat be traced. in DAOs it is mostly uncharted territory and there is no linear path defined for you. This is liberating. But also puts more work on the individual to do your ecosystem mapping, understand the context, understand the value and choose the best course of action. All while most of the information is temporal, ever-changing, and hence out of date. The quest is promising in my opinion. The solutions and the maps productised from onboarding DAOs will help the traditional companies liberate themselves as well as making the DAOs thrive. I am excited.
Collaboration, Me hearties! Mycelium<3
If you told me we would be able to seed a gathering in 5 minutes, bringing together many OG DAOs together I would think it is a dream. I lived it in the second week. it was possible because all experienced it, and because we want to make it easy for others. Because of the nature of DAOs, we are collaboration natives! Inter DAO is fast and easy and powered by individuals who act like the Mycelium. Now, this has a lot of individual efforts not compensated enough, however I believe it will mature into a way that will help the DAOs and the traditional, rewarding fuse algorithms and the actors. I am grateful to Gama from DAOist , and Ben from Aragon for kicking this off with me.
I have also started to work on a project focusing on the onboarding experience with my cohortlings in RG, Govinda, Sean dB, BorrowLucid, and Ustwschill. I can share that next with you and the assemblage we are going to do with DAOist, RG, Aragon , Commonstack, PrimeDAO and Bankless.
I see opportunities everywhere!
It feels like there are opportunities everywhere! I have worked in opportunity scouting and venture building for corporates, startups and I can say my radars are overloaded. I am happy for us however I can not provide clarity at the moment. We need to meditate on the opportunity for who, when and how to seed it.
I need a Mycelium SPA!
I am working on Mycelium strategies, guidance cards to help people exist in a decentralised fashion. It feels like we also need a Mycelium SPA on how to adjust our emotions and senses to a decentralised world. I will be searching for this. Psychological, emotional wellness applications that are not trying to prevent but embrace the change as well as equipping us. Ping me all you find.
DAOs are full of book people!
well, I am guilty of tsundoku but seems everyone is and you are aggravating it, folks. Most DAOs i follow have a book club. I want to link one I saw as well as my stack.
I think I will finish here with these images of stacks of books.