Here’s a quick summary of my first month as a moderator for the Creatives DAO. It was a very steep learning curve for me, but I feel quite confident now from all of the reading and insight from all of the moderators that previously were part of the council. This month was the first for a lot of instances in the near ecosystem, and one substantial change has been the new payout system and how creatives dao has restructured itself around this to become more decentralized. It’s had its bumps, but is definitely on the right track.
Summary
Attended each of the weekly Creatives DAO calls via telegram.
Attended two internal team meetings of all of the moderators to discuss the transition and the future of creatives DAO.
Began interacting with several DAOs in the forum and guiding them through the proposal process
Several one-to-one interactions for guidance through the form both digitally and in person
Several discussions, in person, with new creatives keen to join the community
Attended each of the weekly Creatives DAO calls via telegram.
Attended two internal team meetings of all of the moderators to discuss the transition and the future of creatives DAO as well as a discussion with @mecsbecs about the development of the creatives dao.
Assisted in the onboarding, transition and first proposal for the new Graffiti DAO council
Provided general guidance for several DAOs in the forum and guiding them through the proposal process (also via telegram).
Several one-to-one interactions for guidance through the form both digitally and in person
Active participation in telegram group both for moderators and general creatives dao
Active participation in assisting with various Astrodao UI queries.
The reading continues and we moderators are very much keeping an eye on all the developments in the ecosystem, as well as discussing the future of the DAO and its governance.
Wrote a guide on writing a report for the Creatives DAO.
Scheduled a call with @mecbecs about the future of Creatives DAO and NEAR foundation that will take place tomorrow evening (at the time of writing 2/5/22).
Attended each of the weekly Creative’s DAO calls via telegram.
Started development on a Creatives DAO and NEAR hub collaboration.
Assisted several DAOs with their weekly needs and some newer DAOs become more familiar with the space
May saw quite a lot of movement in the Creatives DAO on a macro scale, especially considering the future path of the DAO and onboarding the new moderators who will come on board to take our place this month.
Personally, I feel like this month saw the community come closer together and pool resources in order to move towards a sustainable future for the DAO and I have been really impressed with the input and energy that has been presented by the community on these matters.
Activity Overview
Guided 13+ individual DAOs through their funding processes directly
Co-hosting the weekly community calls on telegram
Brain-storming topics to discuss on the community calls
Along with the other moderators developed our system for choosing and onboarding new moderators, which consisted of a combination or assessment and direct conversation/debate about candidates and I’m very happy with the outcome of this.
Established connection with NEARhub about the Creatives DAO space and began developing the idea for proposal.
Running Astrodao troubleshooting/direction for people with issues
General scheduling of our internal team calls
Collaborative drafting of the future roadmap of Creatives DAO post & plan
To summarise, it’s been a very busy month with a lot of large-scale conversations as well as one-to-one interactions, quite a few of which may have slipped my mind in activity overview, but I feel that it has been a real starting point for some very interesting conversations throughout the community and the momentum is rolling in our favour.
June has been the busiest month of moderation duty to date, for me. With the introduction of the new moderators, a lot of important (and possibly overdue) conversations have been instigated, and the new perspective has been greatly appreciated on my part. Creatives DAO is yet again in a big transition, but I’m quite confident that the new mods that have come on board are pushing in the right direction.
Activity Overview:
Active involvement in the process of onboarding the new moderators (and learning from them in the process).
Main contact point for 17 DAOs for their monthly proposals, with the assistance of the new moderators on some of these proposals.
Co-hosted two of the weekly community calls and participated in all 4.
Initiated a call between Creatives DAO and Marketing DAO (hopefully the first of many) where we exchanged processes, outlooks, and ideas.
Contact point to gather information from previous moderators re: grants application
2 to 3 internal weekly meetings covering topics such as: proposals, grants application, new moderators’ feedback, and the future of creatives DAO.
1 community call with the Brazilian community, initiated by @blusw (also, hopefully, the first of many).
General day-to-day contact in the moderator’s chat and relaying that info to the community, which is by far the most time-consuming, but also the most essential part of the process.
Managed to catch one fine dose of covid in the process, but with minimal symptoms, so more time for reading
Thanks once again to the community for their contribution to and patience with the process so far!
I’m slightly delayed with posting this one, as everything has been in the ecosystem this month, but regardless of said delays, it’s been a very productive month.
Updates this month include the “old” moderators staying on for one more month to ease the transition, delays in funding and a new payout process from NEAR foundation, Quarterly reports from Creatives DAO & an overall monthly report and new steps for the overall organisation and online presence of Creatives DAO.
I wrote a summary of the various updates/happenings in the Creatives DAO for july here.
Main contact point for 10 DAOs for their monthly proposals, with the assistance of the new moderators on some of these proposals and also having assisted on other DAO proposals lead by other moderators.
July update post (linked above).
Relaying information regarding the funding delays from NEAR foundation to the community.
Facilitated a conversation with mintbase about a potential inbuilt revenue system for Creatives DAO to generate future income for sustainability.
Participation in weekly community calls via telegram.
2 to 3 internal weekly meetings covering topics such as: proposals, grants application, new moderators’ feedback, moderators transition and the future of creatives DAO.
General day-to-day contact in the moderator’s chat and relaying that info to the community, which is by far the most time-consuming, but also the most essential part of the process.
Assisting with tagging and better organisation in the forum as we build towards a more organised, decentralised DAO structure.
Here is my final monthly report as a Creatives DAO moderator, and I will also use this space to conclude and give some perspective on my experience in these past months. This month I was working on a collaborative art installation with both Garden Collective DAO and muti DAO at a Portuguese music festival and therefore was less available towards the middle of the month, but I was very happy to see the “new” mods take full control and responsibility of all of the tasks necessary in that time. Happy to say that Creatives DAO is in safe hands with the new team of moderators.
Attending 2 of the 4 weekly community calls
Internal team meetings
Discussion & planning with the “new” moderators on practices going forward, systems to improve.
Ecosystem call with mintbase to talk about DAOs and Creatives DAO in relation the NEARcon
General contact with the community via telegram and in DM for certain issues.
Working on a Creatives DAO collaborative event & meetup for NEARcon (news on this in the next day or two)
Summary
First of all, having a connection with so many different creative minds from many diverse communities has both been hugely challenging and more importantly, a hugely beneficial experience. I appreciate each and every interaction (also looking forward to meeting some of you in real life at NEARcon next week).
As someone who has worked in the “traditional” / non-web3 creative industry for several years now, in many different roles, from event production, venue management, sound technician, musician and artist, I can easily say that my introduction to NEAR was hugely impactful in comparison to any other previous opportunities, funding rounds etc. that I have taken part in outside of web3. I went from entering the space as a designer to create a logo to a place as a moderator for the 70+ DAOs that make up Creatives DAO within the space of less than a year, and every single moment of that has been a learning curve. Being an artist has, and continues to be a very difficult path, financially speaking, and this can be a huge barrier to budding artists to take a risk, and NEAR protocol’s trust in the process and the platform provided by Creatives DAO has allowed for a lot of creativity to flourish, to which I am very grateful for.
As always, nothing is perfect, and there are definitely some things that we as a community of creatives need to improve on!
:: Things to build on ::
PR/communication: how do we communicate what we do to the outside world? How can we use our huge network to better promote each other’s work and grow in unison?
Moderation: More moderators to spread out the load and diversify opinion/input. I would say a minimum of 7 would be required to manage the proposals, advise properly and allow time for constructive conversation about the future of the DAO.
Community building: This comes hand-in-hand with the above point on moderation, but I think a constant special effort to keep clear lines of communication between moderators and the community is essential, as the primary function of the moderators is to be representatives of the council and the community in this DAO structure.
Astrodao: a better way for DAOs to vote. I believe the DAO of DAOs model we have is quite revolutionary since it’s inception, but like many experiments, it definitely needs some refining. I think the custom function call process to vote has quite a few people in the ecosystem confused as to their voting rights, and I believe that having the option to vote YES or NO with equal ease would do a lot to assist this. As it stands, it’s quite a workload to propose any vote, and therefore only YES votes are proposed, which blurs the intention of the overall DAO structure. I hope that the astrodao devs can work alongside the Creatives DAO to refine this unique structure and build for a better, more decentralised structure that is easier to interact with.
Thank you,
and all the best to the new team of moderators
