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Past issues: Th, M, T, W, Th

5iyizm

Core problems being solved:

  • We, as a DAO, are not currently holding state. Gaining broad organizational context is difficult or impossible as there are now over 10 regularly scheduled meetings per week and dozens of forum posts daily;
  • Cross WG coordination on a timeframe of under 1-week is difficult given that the Weekly and Org meetings are the primary forum for that type of engagement;
  • APAC Owls have no easy way of gaining context;
  • Even Full Time and heavy contributors cannot make every meeting, nor should they have to, to stay informed;
  • Alignment is not enough, without coordination it results in a lot of double-work and wasted time.
  • Resources, while abundant here at IC, are not always easy to find;
  • An Owl would have to attend an average of 3 hours of meetings day, and spend 1-2 hours reviewing forum posts etc. to gain one-day’s worth of context equivalent to what the The sCoop provides in minutes; and,
  • While most Owls work within a WG, having a contributor community with broad organizational context is essential to Coop sustainability.

Why is this worth addressing today?:

  • " . . . we are at a scaling point where at least internally, there should be a frequent enough information base for cross WG understanding and engagement."
  • Currently, every Owl must balance productive work with maintaining context in the DAO - the more we can decrease the amount of time it takes to do the latter, the more we unlock the former.
  • Anything we can do to create a more inclusive framework for contribution is only going to increase the efficiency of the DAO.
  • The time-commitment required to stay well-informed has increased significantly in the last 3-months (3 new WGs, a 4th on the horizon), and I only see that increasing over time - perhaps exponentially as we scale.

How will you address it?:
The sCoop will endeavor to:

  • Provide a summary of WG meetings within a broad organizational context for those that may not already have it, or need to step away for a few days without worry.
  • Surface calls-to-action and opportunities for cross-WG engagement.
  • Foster engagement in IC initiatives, outreach, activities, and governance.
  • Link to resources, reducing the friction required to view posts and engage in governance.
  • Incorporate contributor feedback to improve the product and make it as useful as possible for the intended audience: Index Coop Contributors.
  • Memorialize Coop happenings for future reference.

What impact will this have?:
The impact thus far has been overwhelmingly positive and widespread. Owls love it and when asked “what’s something we are doing that you really like?”, an investor stated, “The daily newsletter is tremendously helpful - there should be a twitter bot pushing it out every day.” One Owl stated that it’s serving as a contributor dashboard. Ideally, this newsletter will remain useful in the ways it already is while becoming more widely used as a way for every Owl to stay well-informed.

While difficult to ‘measure’ impact, suffice it to say that in its first week the feedback has been great. I will chart engagement via the forum monthly and provide a report - should this newsletter be adopted and any Owl feel that it is not serving its intended purpose, a poll will be added to the monthly report with the option to renew or deprecate.

BONUS: Supporting this initiative allows this Owl to maintain and provide broad organizational context within the various WG meetings throughout The Coop, which has been reportedly valuable thus far. I can confidently say that with the exception of perhaps @overanalyser, no one attends ALL meetings. Having this context allows broad participation in the forum on inter-WG topics; I have been, and will remain, active in the forums, attempting to bring this type of insight when possible. Some WG leads have been kind enough to incentivize this general participation, however given that that participation would be funded through this endeavor there would be no additional reward for providing this type of discussion meetings. I will always endeavor to be the best possible resource for The Coop.

About me:
I hold degrees in the arts and engineering. I have over 15-years of experience in distilling complex engineering (building) projects in the $20-$500MM range into easily digestible reports for non-technical stakeholders. I also have 2-years of experience as a private investigator mitigating fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement in the New York City construction industry. In a nutshell, I figured out how to break things to best prevent them from getting broken; a framework that’s served me well DeFi.

Re crypto: I bought some kitties in '17 and got back into things during DeFi Summer 2020. I’ve built a couple mining rigs, I run an Ethereum node, and if I add up the L1 nonce of the dozen or so wallets I have it’s around 1k. I’ve farmed, staked, gotten rugged, airdropped, and spent more in gas than I care to admit to anyone outside of crypto. All this to say, I’ve been “in crypto” in earnest for about a year, and my brain has not cooled off for a minute of it. The concept of leveraging programmable money to organize labor without an intermediary has become my passion . . .

I have been active full-time within Index Coop for 3-months (I am not a FT contributor in the sense that it is commonly used relating to compensation, it was a speculative undertaking; I receive no ongoing or agreed upon reward at this time). I consider myself a technical generalist and tend to think that even the most ardent supporters of cryptographic tech haven’t scratched the surface of what will be unlocked over the coming decades. Although I do not typically link to personal information within this forum; I am willing to provide a complete resume to any contributor upon request.

Hoot!
- @mel.eth

Fine print: Published daily, four days a week M-Th (to coincide with days having WG meetings). The 9.95 INDEX/issue reward fee may be otherwise allocated at my discretion to reward contribution to the newsletter (i.e. utilizing the reward to incentivize coverage when meetings overlap etc.). Cancel anytime, feedback very much appreciated; I’ll strive to make this newsletter as useful as possible. My guiding principle in continuing to produce this content will be: level-up an Owl, level-up The Coop. I see my role as a curator rather than a creator in this regard; y’all are doing AMAZING things here and I sincerely enjoy shining a light on that - so if you’ll allow me I’d love to continue to do it. Regardless of result, special thanks to @MrMadila, @Pepperoni_Joe, @BigSky7, and @fallow8 for their thoughtful feedback on the newsletter outside of the forums.

  • Sign me up! [FOR - Fund The sCoop at 9.95 INDEX/issue]
  • No thanks. [AGAINST - Do not fund this initiative]

0 voters

6 Likes

This needs to get funded ASAP, invaluable resource for everyone in the Coop :fire:

3 Likes

Signaling my vote FOR funding to the public. Great work @mel.eth!

2 Likes

Fully agree that this is a great step in helping to align and scale the coop!

Will leave the compensation aspect here to yourself and the powers that be to figure out. My vote FOR is to signal support of this function and hope it is funded appropriately. Great work @mel.eth !

3 Likes

Strongly approve this.

For one, this is a real value add to the Coop. Mel has been an excellent contributor for months, and provided nuanced insight and probing questions on every call I have ever had with him. He makes the nature of our debates more effective. Now, having taken those attributes and awareness, he has created a resources that we all can learn from, and that adds a layer of permanence to our discussions. This daily record solves a number of issues around transparency and accountability that have arisen as a topic of discussion in recent weeks.

Also, I have to commend Mel for taking a very DAO-like approach. He spotted a gap in what we are doing, fixed it and demonstrated the added value to the community. This is the kind of approach we should encourage all contributors to take.

7 Likes

Great initiative! I’ve been enjoying reading your sCoop posts this past week.

My only concern here is related to costs. How many issues would there be each week? It looks like you have been aiming for 3 / week. While framing it as 9.95 INDEX / issue makes it seems like a small expense, it adds up quickly. Assuming you never miss an issue and that current INDEX prices hold, we would be paying $59,000 per year.

I’m not particularly experienced with budgeting myself, but I’d be curious to hear what other owls think about whether the $59,000 price tag of this is fair.

Of course, I do not mean to offend or insinuate that the sCoop isn’t worth $59,000 per year. I just wanted to point out that framing it as a per-issue expense makes it easy to think that it is cheaper than it actually is.

4 Likes

@ncitron I intended to let the comments run for a bit without guiding the conversation, but you raise an excellent point that should be part of this discussion. I will put a sheet together later today outlining costs in INDEX & USD terms along with a little more context as to how I arrived at the amount.

4 Likes

No doubts that a newsletter would be super helpful for current contributors as well as new joiners; I agree with @ncitron about the costs. Maybe a breakdown of the costs and the average number of hours needed per issue would be helpful.

2 Likes

@Azz - I’m putting together a spreadsheet to model the reward as proposed; however, hours needed per issue is a lot easier: add ~1.5 to the number of meetings in a day. Last week that worked out to approx. 3.5+4.5+3.5+2.5; or ~14 hours on the week, which is the current minimum and will only increase. This does not take into account the ~3-months that I spent building context. There is no such thing as an hourly rate, but FT rewards can be found here; reward is based on impact, not effort.

I will link to a spreadsheet within the next few hours so you can play with the numbers to see if it makes sense in your case . . . first getting Tuesday’s issue of The sCoop roughed out! :owl:

I see you’re on day one here in the forums - so I’m especially curious to know your experience with the newsletter as a resource pointing to other resources, if you care to reach out on discord: @mel.eth#0001

Hi @ncitron and @Azz : I’ve provided a sheet for you to play with to see what the reward looks like in dollar terms. I feel I was pretty conservative in the ask (based on both effort and impact), but I’d really like to get your feedback. For reference, this week includes 12+ meetings of interest to contributors, meaning about 18 hours of work with writing. Please keep in mind that on a given day that spans a minimum of 4 hours and a maximum of 6 (it’s not back-to-back meetings), plus the time to actually write the newsletter.

Impact is more nebulous, and probably best captured by user sentiment, but I will point out that it is highly unusual for a post with a useful lifespan of a day or so to receive ~100 vies, which is below the average for the newsletter. Something like this is very hard to gauge, but is widely regarded as highly useful, so any input as to metrics you feel would be useful are very much appreciated.

2 Likes

Dear Fellow Owls,

I genuinely appreciate the constructive feedback and those that have voted! I will be closing this poll in 48 hours, or at 13:00 UTC on August 13, 2021. Please vote prior if you haven’t already. - Hoot!

1 Like

I think this is a fair consideration. However, the work required to provide this content/context requires near full time commitment. I think $59k/yr is reasonable as we should be able to capture synergies from this content. This should allow us to increase community wide collaboration and if refined appropriately, I could envision this being an external facing product as well. We should (as a community) think about how we can best leverage this information flow.

@ncitron I do appreciate the framing of cost to the coop and think it’s appropriate to frame it this way.

1 Like

It’s clear from the feedback to the initial issues that the community broadly feels that this effort has produced high-quality work, which has kept us better informed, which is so badly needed given the million+ things we’re working on.

I (unfortunately) have considerable experience with budgeting as a startup CFO. :nerd_face:

This ask is fair. I’d compare this to an enterprise subscription for something like CB Insights. Their lowest package (providing 3-5 licenses for a small team) would run around $35k (at last check) and would scale up with more licenses. In the case of the sCoop, the entire Cooperative enterprise would effectively have individual licenses, with access to Index Coop-tailored content, which makes it even more valuable.

I know the spirit behind what you’re saying, @mel.eth, but another way to look at this is to back out the hourly rate here. At $38, it’s $75/hour (assuming an average of 5 hours/day), which is absolutely fair. (I would argue it should be a bit higher).

Finally, if we again assume 5 hours/issue, that’s around 80 hours per month (5 hours/issue x 4 hours/per week x ~4 weeks/month). That’s half the month for 172 INDEX. Comparing that to WG lead monthly comp, it’s less than half (another reason why I’d argue it should be a bit higher). But half of WG comp is certainly fair (plus, it requires Mel to actually hit all 4 issues a week consistently).

The only tweak I’d recommend would be - just as WG lead monthly stipends are reset each quarter and fixed in a new INDEX amount based on the prevailing moving average - you would similarly raise or lower the price to reflect the INDEX price at each quarter. That prevents the construct from getting out of line while allowing you to take price risk for the quarter, which you seem happy to do (like me!).

FOR!

4 Likes

Great initiative Mel!

1 Like

I find the sCoop very useful personally, and recognize it takes quite a bit of thought (and time) to digest all of the day’s activities to try to summarize the most important items.

I like the suggestion of tweaking the INDEX amount based on prevailing moving average.

I am FOR it!

2 Likes

Dear Fellow Owls,

The poll has been closed. Thank you to all that have provided feedback and voted! It’s only because all of you are out there leveraging your unique skills that I’m able to pull this together. I will endeavor to consistently publish the best possible newsletter for a DAO that is consistently worth writing about!

The only open suggestion I see unaddressed here is around compensation adjustments (@Metfanmike, @ajay55 ). I acknowledge that these adjustments will need to occur:

I accept this method of periodic price adjustment given that the fee is denominated in INDEX. My hope is that Owls will always feel they are getting significantly more value than the spend.

@DarkForestCapital, as the only Owl on the Treasury Committee please let me know if this can submitted via the standard monthly rewards process or if anything else needs to be done.

Thanks again all - I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be on this journey with you!

Hoot!

5 Likes

Sup Owls!

It’s my pleasure to announce that The sCoop will be sponsored by BDWG for the remainder of Q4! Thanks for the support @BigSky7 and @Mringz! I came to The Coop via BDWG and the show of support by this WG, well, I can’t wipe the smile off of my face. :blush:

Really excited to open this initiative up to the broader contributor community. If you’re interested in covering WG meetings (writing) or editing/assembling the newsletter please reach out - I will be attending some events in the (very) near future having some basic coverage would be ideal. The hard sell: no single initiative has given me greater insight and broad organizational context than putting the newsletter together daily - if you’re newish and looking to level-up FAST, or a grizzled note-taker and looking to contribute, this is a way. As always: ideas, inspiration, and Owlpha, all welcome!

I also want to give a HUGE thanks to @Pepperoni_Joe for working through the upcoming challenges with me 1:1 - your feedback has been a gift and it’s so appreciated! Another special shout to @Crypto_Texan - you probably don’t know it but your ‘Conversations’ are such an ongoing inspiration. I’ve never considered myself a writer - y’all have NO IDEA how much your feedback and support (and even your emojis of support) have fueled me over the last couple months while trying to get this thing off the ground - THANK YOU!

Hoot!

8 Likes

Hey Mel, love this and super stoked, this newsletter has done a lot for me in terms of feeling like I can take extended time away from Discord and Forum activity, so its truly been valuable imho.

One thing I wanted to highlight was we could potentially repackage the weekly update we used to do based on highlights from the sCoop dailies.

Conscious of adding another 20% of work to your load, but wanted get your thoughts.

6 Likes

I love this idea! Would love to get more on this if you have some links:

@Pepperoni_Joe was the most recent Owl to float some version of this idea so looping-in for thoughts as well.
The latest iteration, and imo the most fun, would be to do something live/recorded on Friday’s (maybe EU/pm US/am) to wrap the week; maybe 10 mins of dense info flying at you, 5 or 20 mins of actively managed AMA/discussion? Full disclosure - while I like this idea I have zero video experience being on video or editing/posting any kind of video - so might be jumping well over the intended outcome @LemonadeAlpha.

1 Like

Agree with @LemonadeAlpha - it is a huge stress reliever to know that you can take some time away from Discord / Meetings and still keep up with the community. I really trust @mel.eth vision for how he wants to grow the sCoop and I’m excited to see what direction he takes it.

The sCoop will be our history :receipt:

6 Likes