Nouns DAO Discord closing will bring diversified funding avenues; an assortment of pods/grants with a variety of focus areas will begin to appear.
I believe studying and optimizing pods’ structure and mode of operation will be an important step as it contributes to solving potential friction arising from slow velocity of capital deployment and lack of defined operations methods.
I am Brook. A Lil Nouner, podcast host, and DAO-to-DAO governance participant, and founding member of Lil Representatives. My interest in coordinating work, skills and talent towards a common goal led me to study pod structures from which I extract best practices and help build pod structures that help focus builders on what they like doing best – BUILD.
Past work includes this deck – which shows my study, deconstruction, and reconstruction of data pod. Content Pod was later established by using lessons included in the deck.
I would like to continue my research on defining scalable pod structures. And create a transferable, quick reference guide as well as a Notion organization system template that all future pods can use.
DELIVERABLES
Reference document for all future pods. This document will clarify these key areas:
Pod Structure – operations, membership
Pod Transparency – methods of transparent communication
Pod Onboarding – methods of transferring knowledge to new members
A notion template that readily useable to set up, and run said pods.
FUTURE
Should the work prove itself useful, I would like to continue my work as a pod operations assistant by:
Aiding newer forming pods maintain and uphold structure.
Creating pod reports, and further documenting their mode of operations at a decided cadence. I imagine this being a stack of documentation that contributes to the Future of Work.
Help me understand better. What potential work would a pod do for NounsDAO? Can you give a couple of categories where you think this might be helpful? It sounds interesting, but I’m not seeing the full vision yet.
Pods could focus on a variety of causes; my work however, focuses on creating a referable document + file and work org system on Notion that upcoming pods can use to setup and run their operations.
Can you give a couple of categories where you think this might be helpful?
Imagine this scenario in the future:
Pods/Grants begin to scale, in number, and size.
Lack of clear operations brings difficulties to make quick decisions, deploy capital quickly, rotate members, and hand-off work.
We have a chance at learning from the success and failures of all (future) pods and grants. But we don’t, yet.
I’d like to help solve the problem using these potential deliverables include:
Reference document for all future pods.
A notion template that readily useable to set up, and run said pods.
A pod directories for builders to go and get funding.
furthermore, I restructured the above writing and put together a deck for last week’s Nouncil call. I am sharing the deck with you here. I believe it will help clarify my idea.
i am also available on discord: Brook#5900
please let me know if there are any further questions.
Thanks for putting a deck together I was able to catch it on the Nouncil call and would be interested to see your proposal move forward. I think there’s great value in documenting starting paths for pods or groups that are just starting out. While every reference doc/template may be a complete solution for every group, each should be able to pull something from it.
This is a rewrite of the first post after gathering feedback. Presented here to gather more feedback.
CONTEXT
Nouns DAO Discord closing will bring diversified funding avenues; an assortment of pods/grants with a variety of focus areas could begin to appear.
PROBLEM
Pods/Grants begin to scale, in number, and size.
Lack of clear operations brings difficulties to make quick decisions, deploy capital quickly, rotate members, and transfer knowledge.
We have a chance at learning from the success and failures of all (future) pods and grants. But we don’t, yet.
SOLUTION(S)
I’d like to continue my research on pods and help solve the problem. Potential deliverables include:
Reference document for all future pods. This document will clarify these key areas:
Pod Structure – operations, membership
Pod Transparency – methods of transparent communication
Pod Onboarding – methods of transferring knowledge to new members
A notion template that readily useable to set up, and run said pods.
A pod directory for builders to go and get funding.
CONSIDERATIONS
The reference document will have flexibility in mind. Should some pods choose to run things in their own terms, they will have plenty of room to do so. The reference document will be available for guidance. It does that by simply asking questions and providing guiding examples.
The template will be on Notion and gives the Pod a full operational suite; from writing meeting notes, making announcements, to logging outbound and inbound funding. Upon further study, this template will be expanded to include more features that help streamline Pod operations.
In addition to providing a set of suggestions for Pod setup and operations, the solution I bring forth will help immensely in Knowledge Transfer in and outside of the pod. Consequently, a contribution to the Future of Work:
Thank you @devcarrot. I agree – the document could be something of a starting path for pods and helps guide them in finding answers to important questions. While the Notion templates help them start off right away.
Hey Brook, I heard you talk about this on the Nouncil call 2 weeks ago and I just read your rewrite. Sorry it took me so long to get here but just had a couple thoughts for you. I hear you’ve done some really good work on content and stuff w/ Lils (haven’t seen it yet). I do this kind of content work so I get what you are thinking here. My suggestions:
No doubt you don’t mean to convey this, but to me the idea seems a little removed from the fray rather than hands on. I’m sure it’s more presentation than your intent. But a 'research paper" and “I want to continue my research” convey to a reader (esp. one who doesn’t know you) sitting back and observing and writing.
Maybe you could call this a Nouns Pod Playbook, or a Nouns Pod Guidebook, or Nouns Pods 101. And could you describe the idea as more engaged, such as I’m going to interview ESports pod leaders and embed myself in the community for 3 months. I’m going to embed myself in the first new pod that crops up post Discord ending etc. And maybe you could offer as a deliverable that you will spend an hour or something with a few leaders investigating new pods to help them think through things. Also, a deliverable could be going on a Twitter Space or podcast to talk through your playbook and maybe creating an audio version of what you’ve learned in an hour for those that don’t want a whitepaper.
Again, I know you didn’t intend to convey being removed or anything (and others may not read it that way) but hope this helps you convey things in a more engaged and varied way (if you like the ideas) that’s more hand on and helps you flesh out the idea.
Hey @bradq - thank you, for the thoughtful comment.
You are right, the proposal may not have clarified how engaging I’d like it to be. Interviews, conversations, and even sometimes becoming part of the pod itself has been my method. With my research on Data Pod, I interviewed the leads and initiated calls to discuss the current and future structure of the pod. Strongly think a great way to learn about anything is by diving in.
I like naming as it further clarifies what I intend to do. I will take your feedback and explicitly state the process even more.
After taking into account all the feedback provided here (thank you, thank you), I have decided to make an on-going body of work by posting articles, essays, and thought-forms (inspired prose).
All writings will live here. Through my own judgement and/or community signal, more refined ones will be immortalized on mirror.xyz. This combination strikes a balance with temporary, conversation-inducing writings on one hand, and the option to transfer the knowledge on another hand.
That being said, I would like to briefly introduce what I am working on:
Working Title
What is a Pod? A Look at Coordinated Work in Nounish DAOs.
Brief
From my observation, Coordinated Work — people gathering and working for/toward a shared common ideal — has been given a variety of names: ‘guild’, ‘committee’, ‘workgroup’, and of course, ‘pod’, a term widely used in the Nouns Ecosystem.
The essay aims to bring a common understanding of what a Pod is by studying on-chain data, interviewing Pod teams and community members, as well as reviewing literature related to Coordinated Work Structures such as Organizational Theory.
Thoughts, recommendations and feedbacks are welcome.
