The sCoop
Fresh Owlpha, curated daily. This is @HOWweDAO .
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Today is one of those not-uncommon days when it feels pretty darn great to be an Owl. After knocking around the powerhouse of ideas and talent that is the Institutional Business Working Group meeting we flapped on over to the special session on Organizational Feedback and Action Planning, representing the culmination of six weeks of intense focus by an industry expert in her field, and several Owls that have dedicated exceptional amounts of time to making this organization a safe and effective home for contributors. While weāll never stop asking the question, āAre we an effective team?ā, todayās interactive presentation and ongoing efforts will help push us ever closer to that limit.
Calls to Action:
- @Crypto_Texan has posted the pre-interview question request for the next Conversations with the Coop on Thursday Sep 9 at 15:00 UTC featuring Benjamin and Kila from Qi DAO: Qi DAO is a lending and stablecoin protocol native to Polygon. Users can lock various tokens to mint MAI (Polygon official stablecoin). MAI is a collateralized debt position (CDP) stablecoin, similar to MakerDAO and Liquity.
- Discussion - Metagovernance Fei Protocolās INDEX Holding
- IIP-83: Wintermute Market Making Proposal goes live in a few hours, please vote!
Context Corner:
- Finance of the Future #1 - workshop outputs & next steps by @Pepperoni_Joe
- Official FLI Fee Split Offer by @BigSky7
Institutional Business WG (10 attendees) notion
Opener: What was your first job? A couple of lifeguards, some legacy finance, and a few in construction; @Metfanmike having grabbed the brass ring with his first paycheck having been issued by none other than the New York Mets baseball team!
The co-chair cadence of this meeting is a refreshing change-up, and one that might be useful to leverage among other WGs with either a strong organizational or technical lead that could use some balance. @fallow8 kicked things off by noting that although the vision for IBWG revolves broadly around education and infrastructure there is a lot of whitespace regarding what this WG can be; so attend meetings, build context, and throw your ideas out there if youāre interested.
There are too many ongoing IC token-listing initiatives to run through here, but suffice it to say that the names on the other side of those conversations are recognizable; updates will be discussed here once progressed. To that end however, having a market maker is essential to getting listed at Tier 1 CEXs and thereās an IIP going live tonight to do just that, so please go vote.
There was some discussion about formalizing a process and budget for having an Index Coop presence at events, the result of @MrMadila et al. working through the process in an ad-hoc manner currently for the October '21 Token 2049 event in London. Notable comments coming from @fallow8: hosting a side-event is effective, @Metfanmike: gaining context from past participants is essential, and @BigSky7: perhaps a budget-council specific to funding an event presence might be the way to go. When I think about what elected leadership would make good stewards of such a council I think IBWG, BDWG, and GWG have the most context; however it would likely tie heavily to CDWG, LOWG, and POCWG as well.
@Eric_Tomaszewski is still laser-focused on family offices, highlighting a fintech solution through iCapital that may leverage those efforts; more to come. @ajay55 has been in talks with several custodians, mainly getting these institutions comfortable with the new paradigm that is DAOs (this is a common theme and any Owl with context in this regard would be doing this community and the ecosystem a favor by collecting those thoughts in a long-form article or Twitter unroll). @fallow8 closed us out by outlining his view that the WGLs in this group are here to make sure people are comfortable to develop their thesis, empowered to execute with consensus, and fairly compensated for their work.
Organizational Feedback and Action Planning (25 attendees) slides
I canāt say for sure if @MaryQ sensed us Owls were going to be working through organizational challenges six weeks ago when we locked eyes at an IRL event, but I can confidently say that she couldnāt have swooped in at a better time. With the aid of @DarkForestCapital, @helmass, and @Pepperoni_Joe, today represented the culmination of her context-building, survey-deployment and analysis, 23 separate hour-long+ contributor interviews, and an interactive presentation today that sparked more positive debate and participation than Iāve ever seen in a single meeting. While itās hard not to be bullish on The Coop, distilling this gathering into a few words will be the hardest thing I have to do today; the slides are well-worth reviewing.
The presenting team of @MaryQ, @helmass, and @Pepperoni_Joe took us from a contextual setting, through the data and their journey, gained our input, and highlighted areas worthy of additional exploration - no small feat in 90 minutes. The foreword by @DarkForestCapital highlighted that anyone coming into this organization and producing something of this nature in six-weeks requires a near straight-up learning curve, that having an external perspective from a expert adds a great deal of legitimacy, that this type of introspective activity isnāt happening at other DAOs, and that it takes a lot of maturity and vulnerability to open ourselves up as an organization to this type of critique. Worthy of note, @nic, in his new role of Community Operations & Strategy at Set was in attendance and participating in the discussion.
Over 50 Owls responded to the survey which highlighted areas of broad alignment and areas where either context or change may be needed. Bright spots from the surveys included: a high level of trust, common values, and the ability to attract top-notch talent. Some clarity around āmissionā (business purpose) and āpurpose statementā (why we show up every day) was provided with the need for both being roundly agreed upon. The contributor and leadership perception of strategy was discussed (people or product first?/open source causes some tensions/whoās the primary customer?), along with āThe DAO Journey We Takeā (slide no. 21, worthy of review).
The two breakout sessions served to help integrate the presentation into our collective understating (@Metfanmike in my session noting how helpful it is to have someone tell us that these scaling-pains are ānormalā) and highlight the more nuanced challenges being faced. Back in the main session @Mringz said something more eloquently than I can convey here, but distilled the process of an effective initiative down to Owls leveraging technology and the skillsets of other Owls to get things done. Some further discussion highlighted the difference between principles (business sense) and values (individual sense), with Owls in leadership roles generally valuing: the importance of being receptive to critical feedback with grace, humility, and putting The Coop ahead of onesā own initiatives.
Some closing highlights and conclusions being that transparency is as much about communicating value-adds as it is about adding value, that a source of frustration can seemingly stem from the varied expectations of contributors approaching a DAO, and areas of additional exploration as seen by @MaryQ and team that I will drop below as I think theyāre great questions to mull over as we continue the Index 2.0 discussions and workshops.
In speaking with @MaryQ there is follow-up planned and weāre all grateful for this huge value-add to our organization. While the POCWG broadly have been instrumental in bringing this all together and @Pepperoni_Joeās use of breakout rooms has proven essential to driving large-group conversations forward, @MaryQ asked me to give a huge shout and thanks to @helmass; this presentation was as impressive as it was because of his amazingly hard work within a short amount of time.
Wednesday Meetings: (UTC/1-hr, UON)
1600 - Business Development
1700 - Talking to DFP
1800 - Leadership Forum
OOO:
Daily DAOwlpha: Today we highlight a book recommendation from @anon10525910: The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture. My physical copy has just been ordered; The sCoop will cover the cost of this book should any Owl want a copy and be unable to easily afford it. Just reach out and Iāll make accommodations.
Hoot!
- @mel.eth
