Hi all, building on a discussion raised on the Governance call today:
We currently have a number of known needs for the network and opportunities for people to step in and take substantial leadership positions for compensation.
To name a few:
Awareness: this committee needs substantial support and stewardship, especially if we want to allow @Brendan and others to take more direct focus on Secret Agents and community onboarding (another massive public good for the ecosystem).
Business Development: with @scrtISLAND likely stepping away soon from this committee, it would be great to have more community leadership working in tandem with Enigma, Secret Foundation, and others in driving new opportunities for integrations and growth.
Development: we need someone (or someones) who can be a substantial resource for new developers in our ecosystem looking to get onboarded with Secret App development, as well as for existing developers looking for support, best practices, and other guidance.
There are a few options for filling these needs, some more centralized than others. For example, an entity could directly recruit for these part time opportunities and pay contributors directly. However, that’s likely not a good long term solution (despite some short term efficiencies).
Another option is for a group of contributors to craft a Request for Lead - clearly laying out responsibilities for potential leads (perhaps in the form of a charter) but allowing community members to “pitch” themselves into these open positions, as opposed to having Leads ideate their own committees.
There’s a ton of immediate needs and opportunities to get paid within the ecosystem right now. The questions from my perspective are:
what is going to be efficient and effective now?
what is going to be a sustainable approach?
how do we make the maximum number of people aware of these opportunities? (not just becoming Leads, but all open projects / bounties?)
#3 has a lot to do with how the Agents program evolves going forward and how well we can capture broad community interest. Ultimately what we’re looking for is existing community members ready to take the next step of involvement and ownership, by whatever means will get us to the best outcomes for the network.
I know @Stefan_DomeriumLabs and some others had thoughts - please post here if you have ideas on how to move forward!
Ultimately what we’re looking for is existing community members ready to take the next step of involvement and ownership, by whatever means will get us to the best outcomes for the network.
I think we simply do not have a massive talent pool from which we can source community members ready to step up to the plate and deliver, and some holes are starting to show. Particularly in some of the aforementioned committees where we either rely on people from Enigma also helping, or mostly on people that were already leading before we moved to on-chain. We haven’t really seen new leaders arise in the past few months.
For that reason, I think it is important that at least for the near future we realize some of this selection process and search for human capital might require to rely on some more centralization for the sake of having the right people at the job.
For anybody still banging the drums of war of decentralization and crying about “Enigma and friends”, I would invite you to read Kain Warwick’s “An Old Dictator Appears” to see some of the issues SNX is/are facing with a project/community that is MUCH larger than ours.
I’ll also say that I don’t think all committees seem to be underachieving. Infrastructure, design, and education are examples that seem to be doing fine (at least from an outsider perspective).
I think we have to appreciate that some committes are more easy to assess and there impact is more clear to the community of its impact.
Analytics and the Website committee both do a lot of work but unless you’re aware of what they’re doing, you would probably see it less.
Note that I agree to an extent on the struggles that Networks face in attracting community support.
I’ve helped here and there when there is a need for work to be done and would’ve looked to step up for the BizDev lead if it wasn’t for me having to go back to the office from next month.
It’s definitely difficult to get the appropriate human capital that is both available and committed.
Whether it is Enigma, the Foundation or the Community that steps up for it, I have no problem. I will continue to provide my upmost support to get stuff done.
I agree with what you say about decentralisation, it is better to let Enigma or the Foundation take it on as opposed to let a certain committee die.
A completely centralised, operating entity is better than a defunct entity.
I will lead this post by saying I support a more centralized approach to find the human capital.
My reasons however are not because of the speed or simplicity. I simply don’t see a decentralized approach to locking in human capital in compensated roles as feasible.
With a centralized party we could all do a job interview, privately, and if we don’t become the nr.1, we can privately back down. Nobody has to know we applied for the position and a relationship could actually form that leads to a better suited role in the future.
With decentralized hiring and people pitching, I see the potential for people getting hurt. It could result in people that are willing to contribute alienated from the network.
A combination between the two, by having a community appointed group of people out on search could potentially be realized, but at that point, why not have the foundation take lead in this?
Depending on the role, we could still fund through the community pool and let the community have their final say.
Enigma is happy to take more initiative around BizDev and product. I’m more involved in it these days and we have a new hire starting in a couple of weeks (but will take time to onboard).
We are also open to searching and funding community members to take #2 and #3.
The one thing we’re struggling with is coordination with the community. The weekly committee calls are too demanding given time zone differences. We have one general leads call a week which is a good way to sync, but given how crowded that call is it makes it hard to sync on everything. I don’t have great solutions here, just bringing up an existing issue.
The one thing we’re struggling with is coordination with the community . The weekly committee calls are too demanding given time zone differences. We have one general leads call a week which is a good way to sync, but given how crowded that call is it makes it hard to sync on everything. I don’t have great solutions here, just bringing up an existing issue.
This feeling is shared by a number of other people who are in other time zones. Most run in the middle of people’s work day. I think there are talented people who are active and not contributing still in the ecosystem, not for lack of want, but they can’t on the timeline required. I don’t have the solutions either but adding to the sentiment.
I echo this sentiment. I feel passionate about the Network and have therefore done everything I can to attend committee meetings because I can create some additional flexibility while I am working from home.
However, I am expecting to have much less visibility from next month and will have to rely on minutes when I am back at the office as I think most meetings are around 4pm GMT. However, I don’t have an answer to this, it seems like the majority of the Network hovers beyond UTC-6 and UTC+4 which is a massive spread of time. I don’t even know if there is a good way to resolve this.
I’ll be sure to add this to the upcoming governance agenda(s), communication and information exchange between the committees and those unable to attend the meetings is definitely something we should aim to improve.
As @orageux101 already mentioned, it’s not as easy as improving support for one timezone and I therefore think our initial focus should probably be on improving asynchronous input/output for committee meetings. Increased use of the forums could be one aspect in achieving that.
Even though this topic is related to the RFL discussion, it deserves it’s own thread in my opinion. If time permits during tomorrow’s Transparency Report Gov call we can have an initial brainstorm, followed by a forumthread summarizing the results of that brainstorm and kickstarting discussion on the forums.