Aman (DAOstar)
Task
Status
Date
Feb 6, 2024
Completion Time
Email
Interviewer
Segment
User Details
Subject info
- Name: Aman Deep
- Role / Job title: Growth Lead
- Experience: DeepDAO
- Purchase summary
Company info
- DAOstar
- Size: 7 team members + 90 member organisations (mostly L1 and L2 protocols)
- Type
- Maturity
Links / references shared
Interviewer Observations
AI-generated summary:
- Aman shared his experiences with needs discovery and engagement strategies for Web3 projects, including conducting lightweight interviews with industry professionals and creating a metadata standard for DAO data. Aman discussed the differences in governance culture between larger and smaller DAOs, highlighting the importance of understanding the framework and speaking with delegates and core team members before making proposals public. Artem inquired about the decision-making process and Aman explained how DAOstar facilitates group discussions in roundtable calls.
- Aman's approach emphasizes the importance of direct engagement and broad surveys to understand DAO members' needs. Through targeted outreach and the use of survey tools like Typeform, DAOstar aims to capture a wide range of member insights to inform standards and infrastructure development.
- The main obstacles highlighted include low engagement rates in surveys and decision-making processes. Aman discusses strategies for overcoming these challenges, such as optimizing communication channels and providing clear incentives for participation.
- DAOstar utilizes various tools, including GitHub for forum discussions and Typeform (Metagov business plan) for surveys, to streamline governance processes. These tools facilitate the collection and synthesis of community feedback but also present challenges in terms of accessibility and user engagement.
- The role of facilitators within DAOstar's governance structure is crucial. Aman details how facilitators are selected based on expertise and their ability to drive productive discussions, employing methodologies that encourage active participation and consensus-building.
- Aman talks about his experience in governance and working with DAOstar. We also talk about conducting needs discovery exercises and surveys to gather insights from members of DAOstar. Aman mentions the challenges of engaging smaller DAOs in discussions due to less transparency and fewer delegates. The transcript also covers decision-making processes, strategic planning for DAOstar, the use of Typeform for surveys, facilitation during roundtable calls or workshops, and navigating politics in proposing standards adoption within different DAOs.
Outline:
Chapter 2: Aman's experience in sensemaking
- 01:01 - Artem asks if Aman has experience in sense making activities.
- 03:01 - Aman mentions examples of sense making activities at DAOstar, such as needs discovery exercises and authoring standards.
- 06:16 - Artem asks for more details about the needs discovery exercise.
- 06:58 - Aman explains that the needs discovery exercise involves 30-minute interviews and does not use specific tools.
- 08:07 - Artem refers to the needs discovery exercise as qualitative research.
- 08:29 - Aman confirms and mentions running a survey in some DAOs.
- 09:45 - Aman mentions Joshua Tan's survey with 2000 to 3000 respondents.
Chapter 3: Engagement and decision-making in communities
- 14:26 - Aman explains that engagement allows for follow-up questions and discussions.
- 17:37 - Aman discusses the organizational structure of DAOstar with core teams, representatives, and working groups.
- 19:00 - Aman describes the communication channels and milestones in DAOstar.
- 21:13 - Aman mentions using forums and Zoom calls for discussions and decision making.
Chapter 4: Synthesizing Responses and Facilitating Discussions
- 24:38 - Artem asks about the challenge of synthesizing responses from surveys.
- 29:21 - Aman explains using a business model canvas and manual curation for response synthesis.
- 31:01 - Artem asks about tools for synthesizing statements or responses.
- 31:26 - Aman mentions using Typeform reports and Chat GPT for summary.
- 32:06 - Artem quickly reviews the questions and asks about facilitation during roundtable calls.
- 33:23 - Aman explains the agenda and format of roundtable calls with presentations and discussions.
- 35:30 - Aman discusses facilitating discussions in working groups.
- 37:27 - Aman explains organizing weekly meetings for support and progress.
- 39:14 - Aman mentions the importance of internal discussions and proposal shaping before making it public.
Chapter 5: Conclusion
- 40:45 - Artem expresses gratitude for the insights and mentions sharing the results of his research.
Engaging members in standards development.
Conducting research in decentralized communities.
Organizational structure and decision-making process.
Creating seasonal milestones for a group of organizations.
Facilitating workshops and calls with a focus on validation and synthesizing responses.
Facilitation and politics in a decentralized organization.
Notes:
- Aman conducts a needs discovery process in DAOstar.
- They are speaking with members and non-members to identify standards and public infrastructure needs.
- Aman mentioned a standard called EIP 48 24 and regular communication with DAOs like ENS, arbitrum, optimism.
- Aman conducts 30-minute interviews with individuals for the needs discovery exercise.
- They do not use a notetaker or AI assistant tool during the interviews.
- Aman sometimes runs surveys in DAOs but finds individual conversations more effective.
- They struggle to process a large number of survey responses manually and prefer qualitative interviews.
- Aman uses a business model canvas to process and synthesize the responses.
- They also use Typeform reports and Chat GPT for response summarization.
- Aman mentioned a roundtable call where presentations or discussions on interesting topics take place.
- There is a set agenda for each call to avoid deviation.
- Facilitation is done by having presenters and taking questions from participants.
- Working groups are formed through manual outreach to interested individuals.
- Telegram groups are used for communication during the working group stage.
- Aman mentioned a technical standard and offered to share the link.
- needs discovery exercise (what standards of public infra on conversation they want to happen)
- ERP 4084 (?) similar to NFTs, adoption through individual DAOs often requires gov vote,
- talked to ENS, Optimism, etc. delegates
- support related (grants to support other DAOs)
- need to get those delegates / protocols aligned
- ...
- needs discovery
- keep it lightweight (reach out to people I know)
- usually 30 min interviews, questions about orgs, pain points, value add DAOstar could provide
- not using notetaking tool (convos go differently depending on whether it's recorded or not)
- take notes manually
- haven't run any surveys
- generally easy to speak to large DAOs and delegates
- when you talk to sub-5000 tokenholders they don't have delegates and don't have doxxed personality (if you look at gov culture and large and small DAOs like Shapeshift or Unlock or smalled Arbitrum DAOs they don't have professional delegates, their own community members acquire voice over time so it's less corporate that gov at Arbitrum or ??? where you know who are responsible people, they also come back to ??? and contribute to discussion, not the same approach to transparency, hard to chase them down and ask them to talk, they want to remain anons)
- in some of those tried to initiate forum discussions but they don't want to share stuff publicly (when you can ask Qs and get answers, difficult to do on a forum, people can do it but they withhold, difficult to go into detail)
- tried to use forms but it's less effective than 1-on-1 interviews
- Joshua Tan ran a survey about personalities in web3 (2-3K respondents), they released a paper
- ...
- DAOstar doesn't have memberships, need to be representative of one of those orgs
- DAOstar team is around 7 people incl. Josh and Eugene
- we write standards that concern a lot of people and work gets done in working groups
- ...
- don't have framework for proposals, don't have a forum
- we have internal Telegram chat
- individual chats and docs for working groups
- most of the info is on github, most of the plans re: strategy, focus
- anyone can start github discussion
- ...
- we have seasons (two quarters)
- technical milestones, adoption milestones
- came up with this through a mix: internal discussion re: priorities, used to have round tables, run a survey in late October or early November (mission) for DAO representatives
- typeform only got around 13 responses, but we have individual conversations
- survey run for 1-2 weeks, shared in the group 7-10 days before round table call, based on the responses we conducted the workshop
- in general we use typeforms as metagov, either Aman or Josh made the form
- processing responses might be difficult to go through 90 scripts (something I struggle with needs discovery)
- what I normally do I use business model canvas so I try to validate each script with draft BMC
- typeform has report function, and then we put it into GPT and ask to summarise
- ...
- round table = presentation from someone
- DAOstar team members usually facilitate (set agenda, discuss unveiled grants innovation lab for 30 min, QA for 20 min, discussion of interesting stuff for 10 min)
- this is the call with the most meaning, but ??? is all about facilitation
- most of that facilitation is manual, e.g. "this is a standard for DAOs and people"
- what we do is manually reach out to people who might be interested and pull together a group and facilitate a conversation to discuss the problems
- we have a WG building on-chain delegation registry, folks from [protocols] ... it happens naturally as a regular WG call
- ...
- conflict avoidance or politics: internally no (DAOstar is grounded, we solve problems). but when we go to DAOs, propose something, we do have to navigate politics, ... many delegates... it's not easy for them to see the benefits, so normal forum proposal in disadvantageous, you need to go to stakeholders first and shape
Decision-Making Timeline
- Decision-making step 1
- Decision-making step 2
- Decision-making step 3
- Decision-making step 4
- Decision-making step 5
Action Items
- Follow up with Joshua Tan from Metagov to get more information about the survey he conducted on personalities in Web3.
- Send Artem the link to the vision survey conducted by DAOstar to gather insights from its member organizations.
- Consider implementing a tool, like a Google Doc or Miro board, to synthesize and summarize responses from surveys or interviews more efficiently.
- Investigate the potential of using Typeform for facilitated sessions or workshops within DAOstar.
- Share resources and information about DAOstar's organizational structure, decision-making processes, and facilitation practices with Artem for his research.
- Provide Artem with access to the GitHub repository where DAOstar tracks its plans and milestones for each season.
- Consider reaching out to DAOstar members who did not respond to the survey to gather their insights and perspectives.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of using forums and explore alternative methods for engaging smaller DAOs in discussions and decision-making processes.
- Gather feedback from DAOstar members about their needs and pain points to inform future initiatives and standards development.