Enhancing Our Stewardship: Towards a More Unified and Impactful Governance Approach

šŸ¤– DAO Governance and Vision
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Heya Gitcoin Community!

As we continue to evolve our governance structures, we are considering enhancements to our stewardship framework. This brings us to a pivotal discussion about our monthly stewards call. While these calls have been a vital part of our governance process, weā€™ve observed potential areas for improvement, including the possibility of cancelling the call in favor of more effective methods of engagement.

Why Reevaluate the Monthly Stewards Call?

Our aim is to foster a governance process that is not only informative but also highly engaging and participatory. The current format, primarily focused on updates, may benefit from a rethink to enhance community interaction and involvement. Weā€™re exploring various conceptual changes, including restructuring the format or potentially discontinuing the call altogether, to better serve our communityā€™s needs.

Exploring Alternatives and Enhancements

In the spirit of open and collaborative governance, weā€™re considering a range of options:

  • Transforming the call into a more interactive and dynamic platform.
  • Shifting towards other engagement methods that might better capture the communityā€™s voice and participation.
  • Potentially cancelling the call if we find more effective avenues for communication and decision-making.

Seeking Your Valuable Insights

Your perspectives are vital in shaping the future of our stewardship calls. Weā€™re not just looking for feedback on whether to keep or cancel these calls, but also on what potential changes you envision could make them more effective if they were to continue.

Please share your perspectives and ideas in the comments below. Your participation is crucial as we embark on this new phase of stewardship and governance.

How would you like to see the monthly stewards call improved to enhance engagement and effectiveness?

  • More Interactive Discussions: Shift focus from updates to interactive discussions and brainstorming sessions.
  • Breakout Groups: Implement smaller breakout groups to discuss specific topics in-depth.
  • Guest Speakers / Expert Panels: Invite guest speakers or organize expert panels to provide fresh perspectives.
  • Community-Led Topics: Allow community members to propose and lead discussions on topics of their interest.
  • Workshop Format: Convert some calls into workshops focusing on specific skills or knowledge areas relevant to our mission.
  • Frequency and Timing Adjustments: Change the frequency or timing of the calls for better participation.
0 voters

If you have any other ideas, suggestions or feedback - please comment!

Together Towards Better Governance

Our goal is to evolve our governance model into one that is more inclusive, engaging, and reflective of our collective vision. We value your input immensely as we navigate these decisions together.

Please share your thoughts, feedback, and ideas in the comments below. Your participation is key to our collective success and progress.

Looking forward to your insights and suggestions! wagmi. :green_heart:

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I would feel sad if these steward sync calls were cancelled altogether.

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Totally get it @PaigeDAO - can you let us know a bit more as to why? Working through the broader picture of what it means to have stewards and our community up to date and involved in a way that can result in separating signal vs noise is really important, and your insights can help us craft this more intentionally.

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Thank you for your interest in my further insights. Iā€™ll do my best here to share thoughts and feelings to, hopefully, further this exploratory discussion.

Firstly, Iā€™d like to say that I feel it is a privilege to be selected as a Gitcoin steward. Iā€™m always proud to say that I have this role. Itā€™s one of the great communities of this space and certainly one of the most dynamic.

Now for the steward sync calls - TBH I do look forward to these. Itā€™s fun to get a sort of inside scoop on the inner workings of the Gitcoin machine. Butā€¦ (said with utmost respect) I hardly feel that hearing the 7 minute reports from each workstream during the calls serves us optimally. 1) I donā€™t feel Iā€™m in a position to offer any oversight. I know that this is the process used to justify the budget requests, but I can usually read through those and approve on the governance forum. 2) I can only imagine that this puts considerable pressure on the teams to summarize significant workloads into 7 minutes in a sort of ā€˜evaluationā€™ type of atmosphere. Not sure how much fun that is for the teams?

Iā€™m more of the mind that it would be time well spent if we, as stewards, were used more as your eyes and ears on the ground as to what the community might want or need. We have a vocal community - another positive attribute and evidence for the healthy dynamic here - but each steward may have exposure to supra-Gitcoin tribes that could perhaps inform our overall productivity and addressable market.

By supra-Gitcoin I mean (since I just made that up) that as stewards some of us may be inclined to broaden our horizons or even perhaps laser target other sectors but donā€™t really feel that thereā€™s an appropriate place to hash this out. Itā€™s sort of BD but itā€™s also sort of just brainstorming amongst the trusted brain trust.

If Gitcoin would want us to sign some sort of confidentiality agreement to engage in such a way, Iā€™d be open to doing so. With that last statement I just want to assure that this is more about having the lever to be a more engaged team player and not about using steward status to get privileged alpha in an extractive way.

Ok, so hope this isnā€™t too TL;DR. Just some off-the-top thoughts. Bottom line, Iā€™d love the opportunity to get to know the workstream teams a bit better as people and not just worker bees. I participate in other communities, crypto and otherwise, where small breakout sessions of 2- 6 people, integrated during the larger group meeting, is a common format. This seems to facilitate more relaxed conversation and more human-to-human exchange and trust building. This is something I greatly appreciate and feel personally enriched by after such encounters.

In any case, thank you Team Gitcoin, for all that you do and keep doing for all of us.

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I really appreciate this chain of thought, I believe that the DAO can greatly benefit from

#1 Community led topics aligned with essential intents
#2 Action oriented interactive discussions

Aside these, Iā€™d suggest letting members from the community experienced with governance to drive some of these action oriented discussions and generally operationalise governance strategy. The main aim would be to get many items which do not explicitly require leadership from the core to be outsourced to the community.

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@jengajojo, thanks for championing community-driven topics and discussions in our governance process.

I agree with your points, but I also want to emphasize that simply encouraging community members to take charge isnā€™t enough. What we really need is an effective form of leadership to transform these ideas into action. Itā€™s about moving beyond suggestions and stepping up to guide these initiatives to fruition.

Your involvement could be highly impactful. Would you be open to joining me for a discussion to strategize further on this before our next steward governance design call?

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I agree with you. I donā€™t know if the existing contributors have the time or background necessary to steward this, but I am happy to offer my leadership experience, back it with references and help the DAO in driving these ideas into actionable proposals and meaningful outcomes. Letā€™s discuss further in DMs :slight_smile:

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The current format, primarily focused on updates, may benefit from a rethink to enhance community interaction and involvement.

Perhaps one thing to consider is: why seek more interaction and involvement? What is the ultimate output that more interaction brings?

I raise this since I have been lurking in DAO boards to understand DAO interaction dynamics. (For this project)

More participation from ā€˜non expertsā€™ seems to lead to higher noise levels and frustration (see this colorful discussion)

Another thing I have noticed is the obviously huge difference between voters and discussers. A typical post here may have 8 or 9 people commenting, but the eventual vote on snapshot will lead to 3,000 voters.

I raise this because it seems to me that:

  1. A single Proposer proposes
  2. A handful of Experts/ Technocrats discuss and give their point of view
  3. A few thousand Voters/ Delegators read the discussions
  4. A few thousand voters vote based on what they have read

I have been mulling over the above, and the only place I can see to add useful participation that is not noise, is Step 3 or 4.

Step 3 would be getting more readers (or viewers) if discussions are recorded
Step 4 would be getting more voters (or delegators)

These are just my thoughts - but I have been trying to understand:

  1. Do DAOs really need more participation in governance?
  2. If so, at which stage is more participation helpful and not noise?
  3. How can we add participation in those stages?
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I never directly responded to this @skyfoxx but I just want to share my appreciate for your thought process here. I have been asking many of the exact same questions and I donā€™t have all of the answers yet.

I will be busting out some more of my thoughts in the coming weeks and months and seeking feedback (including yours!).

Some things I have already started doing/thinking on:

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Attention Stewards!

Our next Steward call is on Monday December 11 at 5pm UTC. All Stewards (and those considering being Stewards) are welcome. Please make sure to check out ā€œStaffingā€ section to ensure you qualify as a Steward.

Whether or not you can make the call, please fill out this feedback form by end of day Thursday, December 14th: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScFLaexIROH75u7w_asgtjMWKymlhblPRU7aKI7LNLEpGIlTA/viewform?usp=sharing

In this call we will be discussing how and why we want to meet, and generally collecting feedback so that our calls starting in 2024 are highly productive, beneficial to all participants, and maybe even a bit fun :slight_smile:

Here is the call information:

Gitcoin Monthly Stewards Sync
Monday, December 11 Ā· 5:00 ā€“ 6:00pm
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Google Meet joining info
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/icd-qhya-pou
Or dial: ā€Ŗ(PT) +351 21 121 1620ā€¬ PIN: ā€Ŗ224 890 548 1986ā€¬#
More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/icd-qhya-pou?pin=2248905481986

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Are steward calls public domain? (Open to public attending as listeners)

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Yes, please feel free to attend

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Is there a role for the wider community to contribute to stewardship perhaps?

Particularly when it comes to processing round applicants there could be a useful signal provided.

Was really good to see some more transparency behind approvals/ denials for projects in the Climate Solutions round for example but many reviewers didnā€™t make their mark, probably due to time constraints or conflict of interest - not sure as the stewards/ reviewers are not publicly known, afaik.

Either way having more eyes on applications could ensure quality of projects and point out where there are inconsistencies.

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This is a great question. Iā€™m not sure and would love for @M0nkeyFl0wer to chime about how this might apply directly to participation in GG application reviews.

I also appreciate your view on stewardship going beyond the realm of governance. Iā€™m thinking that perhaps there is space to expand the definition of what it means to be a Steward at Gitcoin :slight_smile:

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