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###### tags: `Haus Party Live`
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# HAUS Party LIVE! Notes: Season 4 Episode 3 (2/3/2022)

## Synopsis

In this episode the HAUS gang puts their hydra heads together to think about all the things they wish they knew upon first entering the DAO space. Some of us have been around for years and others are just getting started. What kinds of DAO cheat codes can we share? When does thinking about successful participation in DAOs become a meditation on how to build strong community? What are the tools and procedures that we wish someone told us about before falling so deep down the rabbit hole? Join us as we oscillate from the wide to the deep in an exploration of time, space, painting, restraint, governance, politics, and of course DAOs!

Welcome to 🎉 Haus Party Live 🎉 every Thursday at 2pm EST on the [DAOhaus Discord](https://discord.gg/daohaus)

**Topics**

- "Things I wish I knew on my day one in DAOs"
- DAO and Community "Cheat Codes"

**Hosts & Guests**

- Felipe, dekanbro, Vanilladelphia.eth, vengist
- Audience guests

**Tags**

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🌱 Welcome to our metaphorical, infinite garden! 🌱

## Day One in DAOs

- Long journey -- perpetual day one since we're early figuring things out
- More folks will have "their first day in DAOs" since DAOs are growing in exposure and popularity
- Things we document in evergreen content forms are going to help shape what comes out of DAOs moving forward
- What does this look like as DAOs evolve and branch?
- DAOs are amoeba at the moment -> vertebrates -> plants and other specialized structures
- Important to identify our learnings and then share what we know

## DAO Advice

- 💡 **Sharing Documents and Access**
- GSuite, Notion, etc. -- always send via "anyone with link can edit" instead of folks needing to have to log in via their email
- Doing otherwise increases coordination cost and time and may not be necessary if information isn't sensitive
- Is this part of the problem in the "amoeba DAOs"? -- we're working in DAOs but still relying on using centralized coordinated tools that require emails
- Essential part of the problem as we're still working toward figuring out decentralized identity
- 💡 **Utilize Time Tracking Software**
- Starting off with solid practices and time tracking tools is helpful
- Good to monitor your personal time especially if you're contributing in multiple DAOs and workstreams
- Useful for looking back and seeing how time was spent especially when evaluating participation using several communication tools
- "What did I do? How did I spend my attention and how did I generate value for all of these organizations?"
- Having a clear tool for accounting for this and quantifying time spent and value created is helpful when starting
- [Clockify](https://clockify.me/) can track how much time is spent in specific apps such as Discord
- 100% free app
- [Harvest](https://www.getharvest.com/) is a time tracking tool that can also be used for invoicing
- 💡 **Anticipate Taxes Early**
- If not an [Opolis](https://opolis.co/) member this is difficult and you should think about this early on if tracking yourself
- [CoinTracker](https://www.cointracker.io/) is a helpful tax tool
- Consider how you're exposing yourself to taxable events and have this inform how you're managing your tokens across wallets
- Wallet hygiene and being able to clearly track transactions and is absolutely something to consider before diving into DAOs and web3
- There are different considerations when working in web3 (as compared to working for traditional companies)
- Being able to track and monitor your experience at time tracking (and also value around what you're getting paid, especially if paid in volatile tokens)
- See what value you get back from the value you provided -- especially when considering your time investments
- This can make your experience as a contributor much more coherent
- Because of "fuzzy nature between DAOs and sub-DAOs" it can get confusing to avoid unintentional "double dipping"
- Time tracking can help with avoiding conflicts of interest when contributing across many connected DAOs and sub-DAOs
- There are different needs when contributing to a single DAO or across several DAOs
- 💡 **Overcoming Loneliness**
- How do early contributors confront potential feelings of loneliness when working and establishing things?
- Can be a lonely journey when working to establish a DAO's foundation
- **dekan's experience about the early days of DAOhaus and Raid Guild**: Going from purely coding and doing some client management to starting DAOs, which really meant starting *communities*
- Community may have an organic genesis moment where everyone has an aligned incentive
- Difficult if someone isn't there at the start explaining the initial idea, communicating, onboarding, and coordinating
- Community Manager roles are critical and need to be deeply tied into the initiative itself
- Early days of Raid Guild and DAOhaus: spending lots of time on Discord and working to keep everyone who is interested engaged and make sure that folks are heard and supported
- 🌱 "It may have just been one relationship with one person, but it was really important to make sure that I *could* explain it to someone who is new and just came on." 🌱
- "Can I explain the vision to new people?"
- Critical to say hello to new folks and bring them into the community
- Role of the *Summoner* is to help keep things moving forward, and it's often a long term vision
- 💡 **Document Everything**
- We often say this to folks, but we tend to think about this after the fact
- Tend to think that there will be time later to "catch up" on documentation, but new things always happen and practices keep evolving
- Document best practices for yourself and others
- **Elco:** 🌱 "The process of trying to communicate became a guiding star, a navigational device to the building process itself." 🌱
- Especially useful for DAO Summoners
- Write things and share it with folks!
- 💡 **Vulnerability and Trust**
- When DAOs are first getting started they're more vulnerable and there is a high degree of trust involved (even with smart contracts)
- Important to not get in the way of folks who are excited and passionate about contributing
- Let folks run with it when they want to get something rolling!
- Need to have this level of trust when getting started (and a lot of luck)
- 💡 **Understand the DAO More**
- Joining a DAO that's established and been around for awhile is a different experience than *starting* a new DAO
- In the early days of joining an established DAO, good to understand the core elements of the DAO
- In the early formation days there are lots of conversations about mission and shared values
- Once established, then other things need to be done such as documentation and the key is to clear bottlenecks and plug holes
- Early contributors rely on each other to plug the holes and remove bottlenecks so that the DAO can continue doing what needs to be done
- Documentation *greatly helps* since it gives folks the information needed to do what they need/want to do to push things forward
- 💡 **Documentation**
- Folks often have bad experiences with documentation and many are opposed to it because it's a standard operating procedure that often doesn't change (based on their perceptions and prior bad experiences)
- **e2t**: Documenting the path forward to make it easier for folks coming after you -- cutting the way through a jungle and mapping it for others. Even if they don't go the exact same way, they can still use your map to get started
- Make it easier for the folks coming behind you
- Document what you're doing when you do it for the first time -- every new process needs to be documented
- When going through the steps and asking questions there will be others with the same questions and going through the same processes
- Documenting for yourself is important, but then being able to share this in a meaningful way is critical and opens doors
- 🌱 Documenting needs to become *habitual* for us all -- 1) document for ourselves as individuals and then the next step is to *share* those learnings in a meaningful way that can benefit others
- 💡 **Finding Focus**
- **e2t**: So much information and so many opportunities that it can be overwhelming, especially when working to prove yourself
- Going deep vs. going wide
- Going deep at first can be challenging when first exploring
- Determine your filters: Find what motivates you and what you find important -- "vision, value, and the vibe"
- 🌱 "Does this organization have a vision? Are there values that I'm aligned with? Is it a vibe? Is it something I want to spend my time contributing to?" 🌱
- Figure out your criteria for evaluating communities and projects
- 💡 **Make Suggestions For Improvements**
- New contributors often expect there to be processes in place in the communities and a tendency to "play along with the process for awhile" even if they have criticisms
- DAOs are generally open to change
- Don't be afraid to make suggestions for radical changes -- if something is a better path forward it'll likely be embraced (instead of feeling the need to fall in line with a current process)
- Fresh perspective is a valuable time to make suggestions and an impactful time to advocate for changes
- 🌱 "Constant iteration of becoming better together" 🌱
- Even if someone has a cool idea and is encouraged to pursue it there is still a question of *will they do it*?
- Importance of *taking initiative*
- Create prototypes to back up what you're suggesting
- As long as you're not destructive, contribution and initiative will be often be welcomed

## Contributing and Governance

- Folks onboarded from co-op movement said "...but this is so political"
- DAOs are a *voting technology* so there is innate politics to the collaboration and coordination
- People becoming used to participating as a political agent in this format is a positive thing, but comes with the constraints of needing to understand other points of view and the biases folks bring to the conversations and processes
- **Question**: Is there a significant difference between *governance* and *politics*?
- **Elco**: *Governance* is the structure and design and *politics* is the actual navigational path over the territory where agents deal with the constraints of that structure, and coordinate to redesign the structures within the system
- **TravisWyche**: Governance is to politics what complexity is to complication
- Complexity is granular detail and minutiae of decisions and architecture that we erect
- Governance is how we accumulate knowledge and track the changes in evolution of the knowledge and politics is the *human element*
- Humans complicate ideal governance with politics -- not just bottlenecks and coordination failures
- Politics is the propaganda machine and our need to have an ideology -> ideology takes over the ideal governance structures
- Things that DAOs allow for humans to do in coordination can help humans clean up the politics and focus on governance
- On the human element: Appreciate sentiment of jumping in and generating value, but on other hand there is a human element and if you can find someone to work one-on-one it can make a big difference but this is difficult to find
- Finding a buddy or a mentor requires humility and being courageous enough to understand what you don't know
- Mentorship is key to helping folks overcome their concerns and frustrations and challenges
- It's not so clear cut and cold as "come in and work," and if so, we likely wouldn't be feeling the same way about the work
- If you can coordinate well you'll be able to create exponential value
- **ven**: 🌱 "A DAO is a network of humans, and the strength of a DAO is the ability to coordinate." 🌱
- Find someone who you can work with, especially early on
- Having daily opportunities to share progress and support each other in a meaningful way is what's often missing in entirely async communication
- These mentor relationships are two-way -- the value and the learning goes both ways

## Community Hacks

- These "DAO hacks" are really "community hacks"
- **Ritual and Recognition**
- **Ritual** is an important part of community
- These rituals are a gravitational pull that bring folks back into the community
- **Recognition** is a critical part of communities and it's often easy to forget to do
- When folks do things (especialy if they're new) should be celebrated and recognized
- There are risks on both sides, but if you can break the first *onboarding barrier* the value is 10x what you'd expect
- Making small investments into new contributors can make the difference between folks staying or not, and these contributors can explode in a good way
- 💡 **Be Willing to Wear Multiple Hats**
- Difference between going deep and going wide -- both of these are important and useful
- There is value from each of these approaches -- finding what's right for you as a contributor is helpful
- Going deep and going wide:
- Moving back and forth between this is often difficult to context switch
- **TravisWyche**: Analogy to teaching painting: Beginner mistake is to put *everything on the canvas*
- Learn how to say no and exercise restraint
- Benefit in saying no and working within constraint -- often when working within constraints it can help structure your focus even more!
- Explore and then dive in and maximize value to the ones you want to contribute to
- Look for synergies between where you want to work and where you can contribute -- there are lots of common problems
- **Elco**: What do people seem to do when they think they're doing nothing?
- 🌱 "What is the value that folks add even at rest because of who they are?" 🌱
- Find what areas motivate you toward action and balance this with how you prefer to focus and work
- Find the source of psychic energy and keep acitng and experimenting until finding what this is
- *Calligraphy*: Way your body, mind, and hands move naturally when doing what you love
- There is a psycho-physical component to how we act (especially when painting) -- find this harmony and getting into this state while contributing
- Once finding this, then use it to drive things forward to receive psychic energy and become unstoppable

## Onboarding and Processes

- Since there isn't necessarily a top-down hierarchy, a lot of onboarding and processes rely on the DAO culture and documentation
- Handbook, charter, etc. are leaned on heavily by current and new members since *process is important*
- Processes need to fit with the culture, and when they feel like they don't fit is when they need to be changed
- A good starting point is outlining the steps for *how to join the community*
- [Raid Guild Handbook](https://handbook.raidguild.org/) has a good handbook
- Thinking about the *minimum actions* that folks need to take can help inform the documentation that is created
- "Time to Joy" as a metric, but in a DAO this could be viewed as lowering the time to contributing, adding value to the community and being rewarded
- DAOs should strive toward lowering the barrier for contributors to get started
- Optimize for how quickly someone can enter the community, can add value, and get rewarded for it
- Good goal for handbooks and documentation in general
- But *is* this the most optimal path or is a slower, more intentional onboarding process better? This could be an entire episode!

## Resources

- [Harvest (Time Tracking)](https://www.getharvest.com/)
- [Clockify](https://clockify.me/)
- [Opolis](https://opolis.co/)
- [CoinTracker](https://www.cointracker.io/)
- [Raid Guild Handbook](https://handbook.raidguild.org/)