Copper Owl Dev Report

[jd899]

Hello everyone, this is my first post in the forum. So take it easy on me. Jokin!, roast me as you like.

First of all I wanted to say I have joined a few DAOs but this one is still my favorite. I like the vibes a lot!

Wanted to share some of my observations I made along my journey so far (Bronze Owl soon ) and what I think could be improved.

What did I do/see so the far?
To give some context, I was mainly involved in the engineering working group adding some PRs to the website and trying to help here and there with tasks in the #wizardry (the starter group managed by DeFiJesus). Also, while not always active everywhere in the discord, I was reading quite a lot and joined a few calls of different working groups

Observations/Challenges
I worked with lots of remote teams/startups before and expected DAOs to be kind of similar - especially being async. But it’s way more async as I thought it would be.

With this kind of asynchronous working I think the main challenges are:

• Transparency
• Source of truths
• Lots of engineers interested (big number of wizards to handle)
• Different levels of commitment (due to availability)
• Processes + documentation

Since I liked the docs (docs.indexcoop.com) as the helped me a lot to get onboarded, I think they would be a good basis to be extended further and help document the processes even better.

So here are some first proposals (which should be quick to implement) of how to create more transparency among common tasks/processes and possibly make working together more efficient.

Proposal #1
Create a team/contacts/roles table (however you wanna call it) to make it easy for everyone to see e.g. who is in the core team (or also in the wizardry), who is the right one to approach about different topics.

For more absent members (like wizards) that just work a few hours per week/month this could be very helpful. Add a column for hours available so others can estimate how much they’ll be around.

Some examples for possible columns in those tables.

Core Devs
discord name | role | availability? | responsibilities | comment

Wizards
discord name | role | availability

This might be interesting for other working groups as well?

Proposal #2
Written daily stand-ups for wizards (+ devs?) in a discord channel.

This would be additional to the weekly stand up call happening for wizards now. This way DefiJesus (or other core engineers) can always have an overview and it’s very async (at the same time transparent) for everyone.

Proposal #3
A channel where to get updates for deployments, PR opening/closing and so on (github discord bot).

This will increase transparency in a central place which everyone being able to manage notifications as they like.

Of course, this might exist already for the engineering team without being public?

—

As I have worked with many (remote) startups and teams also in terms of scaling from one to many team members feel free to approach me about other topics around organizing teams etc.

Let me know what you think.

JD🕶

[pujimak_in]

Tagging the following people into this

@Cavalier_Eth as it’s related to EWG
@bradwmorris as he’s heading the general onboarding process.
@emault discord bot specialist

lastly
@Pepperoni_Joe as POCWG Lead
@DefiJesus as Wizords Lead.

Cheers~

[bradwmorris]

Thanks @jd899 ,

This is great feedback.

Echo your thoughts on asynchronous communication.

We’re working on creating working group specific onboarding processes which I think will incorporate your proposals.

Proposal #1
Agree with this. I think it’s difficult in the short term though as things are growing/changing really quickly at the moment. Once working group onboarding’s are up and running we’ll be better positioned to create a database and details.

Proposal #2
Good feedback, would need to be discussed as part of the engineering onboarding and weekly communication strategy. Different WG’s will have different requirements.

Proposal #3
Again, i think this will need to be WG specific.

Would be great for you to connect/contribute with the eng/dev to provide feedback/insight to help with distributing communication.

Thanks again!

[lee0007]

@jd899 On asynch communication blatant copy paste edit from Discord Index 2.0 #3-leadership-and-strategy-public

Someone coined disjointed communication to me recently, and I think it’s maybe a good idea to be very clear (in handbook) that effective remote working is asynchronous and at times disjointed. Gitlab’s handbook shares their culture of embracing asynchronous communication

TL;DR

While GitLab has a bias towards asynchronous communication, a strategic balance between synchronous and asynchronous is useful for achieving maximum efficiency. Generally, if two people go back-and-forth more than three times on the exact same topic — and it’s impractical to break it into smaller async-friendly decisions — it makes sense to temporarily pivot to synchronous or leverage a richer communication medium such as Yac, Soundbite, or Loom

It’s impressive, admittedly I’m a bit of a documentation geek because having invested time w. a number of early growth stage startups too, process documentation is imo critical to scalable growth.

I know there’s templates, frameworks and excellent examples throughout this forum and @pujimak_in has an excellent reference list

Even w. VCS sorted I’m also aware that keeping documentation up to date is a tasks easily avoided @bradwmorris maybe a future copper owl task, haha (as am still copper owl myself)

[Cavalier_Eth]

This is awesome - pinged you on discord to talk more about your suggestions for Wizards

[Don-ETH]

As a fellow wizard, these proposals are great! Hopefully, we could implement that soon.

[jd899]

thanks @bradwmorris. looking forward to the new onboarding processes.For proposal #1 I agree this can mean quite some work to maintain. Maybe there could be a way that everyone has to manage their own entries?

@lee0007 gitlab is a great contribution, thanks! I really like their handbook. Also, I think it’s a good idea to make it little tasks for new joiners helping to keep documentation up2date. This is done in lots of software development teams too.
Also, I’d be curious to see @pujimak_in reference list that you have mentioned.

[pujimak_in]

@lee0007

I know there’s templates, frameworks and excellent examples throughout this forum and @qomarcrypto has an excellent reference list

the reference list is basically my own study into the coop… basically most of are all in the forum.

@jd899

Also, I’d be curious to see @qomarcrypto reference list that you have mentioned.

Honestly its nothing much, but please find the below my study list… which @lee0007 said is a good list for New Joiners to start getting into context.

• Reaffirming Our Focus (North Star & Core KPIs)

• Business Development & Partnerships Strategy

• Proposing a Business Development Working Group

• DeFi Partnerships & Integrations Strategy

• DeFi Partnerships and Integrations Q2 and beyond

• DPI Institutional Sales Strategy

• Investor Relations Q2 and Beyond

• Proposing a Business Development Working Group II

• [Updated] Proposing a Business Development Working Group II

• Proposing a Growth Working Group III [NEW BUDGET + POLL ADDED]

• Proposal for the creation of the People, Organization and Community (POC) WG - **UPDATED**

• Proposing an Institutional Business Working Group

• [POLL ADDED] Proposal: Language Operations Working Group (LOWG)

Credits is due to the authors of the said proposals & research. So much inspiration and work has done thus far… and getting their wisdom would be advised.

Cheers~

p.s. @mel.eth should we do a reading list for those who wants to build context?

[bradwmorris]

Hey @lee0007 , I think a documentation audit > suggestions would be an epic start. We need more clarity around which documentation sources are recorded/stored in which location. Then we should create a master directory document.

As an example, @BigSky7 made great suggestions fleshing out the code of conduct ([Discussion] Affirming our Code of Conduct and Guiding Principles) this needs to be updated in the Gitbook.

We need a directory detailing working groups and working group leads (I’m working on this). So people know who/how/where to make contact when they have questions.

We need conflict resolution documentation and repository.

We need a process for detailing and discussing new proposals and projects prior to posting in the forum.

Any of this stuff would be a bronze owl quest completion task I believe if you wanted to take this on with your experience? @pujimak_in what do you think about this? Do we have anything in place in terms of a directory? You’re the project management king

[lee0007]

Hey Brad @pujimak_in has me working on a document project atm, it’s super exciting and hopefully proves worthy of bronze owl level up

##Master Directory

For document master directory we have https://docs.indexcoop.com/sitemap.xml

@jd899 would a decent UI need design & wizardry I suspect it’s low priority for EWG. Thoughts?

##Recommended Reading

Happy to pull together an ‘owlets’ recommended reading list, from forum content - see if there’s anything to add beyond @pujimak_in pretty comprehensive list above.

Would need a copy of the gov.indexcoop.com sitemap (or insomnia) I tried the standard /sitemap.xml search and receive Error or Private

@jd899 wizardry can you

1. access & copy me the forum sitemap
2. Recommend preferred format
3. Do you think add reading list here or can create
   https://docs.indexcoop.com/new-joiners/essential-reading/

Appreciate your guys insight

[pujimak_in]

Tagging @bradwmorris and @0xMitz for education and perhaps a gitbook for reading list.

[jd899]

I would like to help but unfortunately don’t have access to gitbook. I see @Pepperoni_Joe and @mel.eth should have access and probably know how to get it.

That’s a good spot for the reading list

[christn]

As a fellow wizard who is currently going through the process I love all of your suggestions, which would have helped me a lot.

For me the main hurdle so far in onboarding was a relative lack of transparency in the engineering area compared to the other working groups.
I get that not everything can be public there but I think allowing some kind of (maybe initially rather passive) participation of wizards in Engineering related calls etc. would be great.

I was able to gather quite some context regarding the coop in other working groups by just listening in to their calls, something that I have not yet found how to do for engineering, although this will probably change with the newly set up wizardry “stand-up”, which I’m looking forward to a lot.

[pujimak_in]

Tagging @blockdev and @Cavalier_Eth for this.

[blockdev]

Thanks @pujimak_in. @christn thanks for the feedback. Other wizards also reported the lack of transparency in EWG. @Cavalier_Eth and I are working on it and you should see this happening in some form soon.