---
# System prepended metadata

title: DAO Journal
tags: [Research, Journal]

---

# DAO Journal
###### tags: `Journal`, `Research`








## Fotis

### [GLF Orca x Other Internet](https://glf.digital/thematic-pod-placements)

#### Day 1 | Network Assembly - *Orca*
###### 18/8/2022

#### Day 2 | *Community Engagement Processes* Pod
###### 19/8/2022

The Knowledge Steward for this pod, Bartoke had extensive experience on governance in a city planning context. Bartok outlined various of the governance proccess involved in the city planning of Kingston area and specifically about rent control and zoning. He then dipped right into *community outreach practices* and methods for acquiring census from locals that he has been through and spoke about their relaive strenght and weaknesses. Amongst them was a wide variaty of practices from open-to-public city-hall general assemblies, to closed circle specific stakeholder meetings. 

According to Bartok, the outreach methods that got the best results where the ones that where more active and focused from the side of the governance practicioners such as going into neighbourhoods and directly surveying people in a door-to-door salesman way, or small assemblies focused on very specific stakeholder groups. City-hall assemblies ehere the ones that could attract the biggest crowd at the same place but where not succesfull in terms of engagement and participation, while very private small group meetings were constrained in terms of their scope.

But in terms of structuring the whole proccess of outreach, the best course of action was to employ a variety of methods at first, consolidate all data and then assess what worked best and adapt and iterate at every checkpoint. Translating this to cross-pollination practice can be a very valuable exercise. For example, thematically-constrained event participation or organization which facilitate breakind down and re-assebling groups and promoting constructive conversations that are not too formalized, can be the most effective in terms of enagegment, gaining insights and not veering of into irrelevant issues. As a personal sugestion, a good tool for organization is [Liberating Structures](https://www.liberatingstructures.com/), while a good practice for event participation is trying to take notes of shared issues and seek to follow-up up with more convivial conversations after events.

After Bartok's presentation, the pod starting to brainstorm various comments inspired by the presentation on a figma board. The facilitator then clustered each of them into three categories and we where assigned to expand on each.  Into thematic breakout rooms and where invited to go through a process outlined in the figma board. I was put into the "Community enagement" room along with Sasa from API3 (formerly) and Danile from RnDAO. Right away we completely ignored the whole process and started having a more informal but very insightfull conversation into each other's experiences in DAO. Both Sasa and Daniel seemed to have a no-BS mentality and where not afraid to openly share their criticisms of DAOs and how they approach organizations. Both of them had various criticisms targeted at their previous orgs they where involved with. It seemed that both in API3 (Sasa) and Aragon (Daniel), there was power consolidation, core group contributor siloing and an overall hierarhical structure. Both where concerned about shadowy moves and decisions taken by a very small clique at the top of the organizational pyramid refer to it as a "mafia". Sasa is now developing a trading bot.

However, when the question "What are DAOs good for?" each expressed differning opinions. Sasa mentined that she thinks that social DAOs are the ones that can work the best as DAOs (and even in that case, in a limited capacity), while for building a product, corporarte companies are better suited as an organizational model.

Daniel was more optimistic about DAOs. He had a more flexible way of perceiving DAOs and believed that they can be managed and organized in a way so as to be able to build tools and technology. He refered to RnDAO as an organization that has been quite succesfull at that and described the inner working of it. According to Daniel, RnDAO had a dual function: a) **incubation** of projects that wish to build a product and while having testing and distribution also taken care of and b) bulding its own **tooling** based on previously conducted research by RnDAO itself. In both respects, the organisational model that RnDAO uses nd to which Daniel atributes a lot of its early successes is **polycentric** governance with **do-ocracy**.

What was quite surprising is that Daniel also mentioned that the organization had initially attempted to DAOify but is now moving away from looking like a DAO. For an organization that is as self-referential and organizationally-aware as RnDAO, moving away from the traditional DAO structure is quite telling. What is more, the product that RnDAO is building is community metrics and analutics tool which Daniel mentioned is now in shape. I volunteered to test that. Seems like organizations would greatetly benefit from knowing about this tool and that it designed based on basic research.

We then set out to complete our board although late and unsure how to go about it, which can be seen [here](https://www.figma.com/file/7pjBVl5sSF8sNkQGVbQJHZ/Bartek-Starodaj-%E2%80%93-Community-Engagement-Processes?node-id=1412%3A385). After that, each group presented their own session's results. Group A was significantly more commited to the workshop structure and produced some valuable outcomes. They then presented this and I hesitantly tried to present what we did in group B, being honest of the fact that we where intially more interested in our conversation and getting to know each other and their experiences. After both where done, I brought up a point to the other team about the use of one's camera in calls and brought up the issue of privacy. Some interesting opinions came up. Jake's insight was very helpfull that humanization and privacy where not contradictory. I brought up ways in which somebidy can respon more actively though using next-gen conferencing apps.

Metanote: I brought up SCRF at some point and I gave a TL;DR of it to Sasa who wasn't aware of it. After also mentioning that the name is not that representative of the depth of themes that SCRF is exploring Daniel commented that "It might be time for a re-branding". I thinkg this will be usefull for SCRF that RnDAO itself was once contemlating re-branding which eventually didn't happen and to hear that from Daniel given this context, seemed very inetersting.


#### Day 2 | Offboarding Session - *Are Values Valuless?*
###### 19/8/2022

The event was hosted by Toby Shorin and Jihad. It seems like it had highest attendance compared to the other room whose theme was middle-management in DAOs.

What was very obvious right from the start was that there was a lot of hype and excitement in the room and a high degree of audience enagagement, facilitated by the app used (*ohyay*) and by the openness and wholesomeness that the hosts brought to the room right away. They specificaly encouraged hot take and a non-judgemental attitude and many people jumped in to share their own. It was also interesting that there was a common sentiment that people involved where in a way buildin the future of work.

#### Day 2 | Post-event Social Space Discussion
###### 19/8/2022

Waterfall:

Toby, Stefen, Kydo, Sasa, Connor, Fotis, Kara,...

**Kydo:** Critical towards DeSci -> "DeSci is a bunch of scientists discovering finance".


### RnDAO

#### Modern Slavery and the Private Sector

Matt Friedman: - Big Data from Numbers

People seem to be gravitating towards radical transpareny when confronted with the issue of privacy

People are very critical and militant in terms of transparency when the issue of trafficiking surfaces in discussions of anonymity.

Daniel: 

Idea: White-hat scamming applied to DAOs


### Maker

### Thoughts from Offboarding Call
- Very constrained definition of "community"
    - Limited to on-chain governance participation


# Meta

- Do a Retrospective about what works and what doesn't. (Done)