Building the people’s internet: Mindset & Execution

The initial excitement of building a community-centered organization needs to be met with the practicality and the skills that allows you to create long-term growth and impact.

And no matter how much the internet will change in the next decade and beyond, educational content will have such a crucial role in making sure that the founders and the contributors meet half way through that journey and build impactful community and mission driven organizations.

We are sitting at a unique point in time and we should not take this moment lightly, as we are responsible for not only contributing to the biggest internet revolution, but we are responsible for driving it in the right direction through openness, inclusion, education, collaboration, kindness and transparency.

This is how I see it for myself:

My knowledge and my skills are not mine to keep, they are mine to share with others and build others up with them.

In my humble opinion, Web3 needs to be built on the following values:

If you know something, teach it and share it.

If you are building something, let others know and get feedback.

If someone you know is building something, find a way to help them, even if it’s just recommending them to join a community or connecting them to someone that can help them.

If you want to make a difference, come forward, share your intention and your values and take action.

If you want to go far, go together.

We are building the people’s internet folks and we’ve got a big chip on our shoulders!:handshake::hourglass_flowing_sand:

12 Likes

Thank you for sharing, I love the sentiment and values you have expressed here. The Community is in the process of establishing shared understanding and aligning around values and you’ve raised many here that resonate with me

As the founding document to which I rallied, I’m sharing the manifesto here because it includes a call, for community feedback to evolve it over time to a definitive version and I feel like the conversation you have started here is a step in that direction.

Do you think it is possible to frame the above values within the context of the existing manifesto or to ask another way are there elements of the current manifesto and the pledges it contains that you feel either uphold or negate the values you express?

2 Likes

Aside from creating awareness of the blockchain technology at the lowest educational level possible through the Know the Blocks initiative, this as been my drive, to ensure that everyone has a bite of the knowledge you have, this way you might never tell who will want more. Without this mentality of CONSISTENT learning and teaching cycle, the speed at which we are driving this innovation will remain just a little above that of a snail.

4 Likes

It’s a great roadmap and we can definitely start building on top of that. Besides the open space I’m working on with @MaxCaspar#6907 and the umbrella team, I believe we could start a proper educational program. All of us have developed skills (soft&hard) throughout life and it could be great if we could share them on a regular basis (let’s say once a week). Furthermore, once we’ll have clearly developed the values from the manifesto, we could also build a sort of “Aragon academy” that could span from “how to participate in a dao” to the best practices a new joiner or a contributor could develop to allign with those values.
These could be either a series of live sessions to be repeated several times throughout the year, or recorded video lectures and written materials that are always accessible. In anticipation of a broadening of the community this could also be the natural evolution of the new-joiners journey.
I truly believe that if everyone takes on a small part, great things can be built together.
I would be more than happy to take charge of organizing these sessions if the community is interested in the idea

1 Like

I strongly agree with you and I’m in for the Aragon Academy!

Let’s not leave it as just an idea and take action.

Here are some of my thoughts on the academy:

  • We could use different tags to differentiate the content and the audience, for example: Beginners, intermediate, advance
  • We could also develop different paths like DAO Contributor path, DAO Founder Path and build a library of beginner-oriented content that guide both groups of members through the process of contributing to or creating a DAO.
  • We should brainstorm about gamification ideas for the academy, it keeps members involved and offers them a clear goal.
  • I’d be more that happy to contribute to the Academy, both from a high level strategy point of view and from a content writer position. I’m already working on some articles that I was going to propose for Aragon’s blog, but the sound of the academy sounds much better.
  • Let’s create a MVP Academy plan, map out the foundation first and scale from there.

Before we go too far i think you all should speak with @Sixto5 He has already started a DAO Academy for the AN DAO and I’m sure he would love the help with his initiative and to be involved in this conversation as well. :slight_smile:

6 Likes

Beautiful, let’s make it happen, it would be my pleasure to connect and collaborate with as many leaders and community builders within our space!

1 Like

Definitely check out the DAO Academy Channel in discord @Bogdisjourney @Incandenza

@Sixto5 @luizfernandosg @Shawncubbedge began the Academy Journey with the development of the Handbook which is a key element of the DAO contributor path. The academy team will no doubt welcome contributors to help drive the vision.

Education is a S1 strategic funding opportunity and the ESD would welcome proposals that set clear deliverables and milestones to advance this work

1 Like

@Bogdisjourney @Incandenza
Fascinating to see this thread coming back. Thank you for sharing your instinct to address adoption through education. Your ideas can find life in what we have already covered trying to generate a sustainable living organism for Web3.

In December last year I launched the vision of DAO Academy with @luizfernandosg. We designed a potential roadmap of the vision with three main projects that will become iterative. This implies the learning engine never stops with a peer-to-peer approach.

1- Aragon Handbook -
This implies constant curation, listening and and action research to update the content every three to five months in multiple areas, especially where the changes happen swiftly - compensation. This must be done across the DAO with open channel within the organisation.

2 - Educational Team Development: Learning & Experimentation Squad
Here we thought to establish a guild that could research, design and solve pain points - proposal process - and enabling a mentorship program. Finally, learning frameworks for experimenting the emergent community needs. Very similar to what @Blockchainlore described.

3 - DAO University on Decentraland
This is the final very long term step in connection with Metaverse.

The handbook was the kick-off of the DAO Academy. But point 2 it is where the DAO Academy is run ashore at the moment. Our proposal was supposed to be the springboard to achieve a flow of learning action and expand the team. It has been rejected by the ESD in a tricky process where we struggled to find clarity, stability and alignment.

See here..

With this, I want to share my honest and transparent experience sending you a positive, mindful approach while making you aware of ebbs and flows.

Happy to expand and collaborate with you if and when there is a concrete terrain to reboot all the above with a clear compensation framework.

@Shawncubbedge @lee0007 Thank you for the engagement.

2 Likes

Oh lord. In Italian we have this colourful expression that perfectly describes my blunder and literally translated it sounds like “pissing out of the pot” - I don’t know if that makes sense in English or if there’s anything similar :slight_smile:
Anyway, thanks @lee0007 and @shawncubbedge for pointing out and the clarifications. I actually read the handbook when I started getting interested in Aragon and I found it very very useful (and pretty understandable although I’m not a techy). I also admit that I saw the academy channel in the discord, but completely forgot about it maybe because, in fact, it is left a bit in standy, which is really a shame. But it is great that someone had already started the project!
@Sixto5, I read with great interest the proposal that you and @fabs had submitted and can only espouse its spirit and contents. I too like everyone here support the value of sharing and I believe that skill-sharing initiatives are strategic not only to align with the values of the manifesto, but also in terms of team building and community involvement. I fully share the spirit of @blockchainlore and join @bogdisjourney in saying the more the merrier.
I have read the long discussion that followed the proposal (and if a proposal spawns discussion it is a sign of its fertility, although it might be criticized) I think it would be great if a compromise or an adjustment could be found and you could take over and lead what you’ve already started (it’s such a shame to leave it there), point two in particular is something that imho could positively impact the work of the whole network and I would be happy to make my contribution if you decided to give it another try.

4 Likes

Thank you for this post. I share your thoughts about education being crucial to the rapid growth of Web3. I think the barrier to entry in Web3 is pretty low, except for programmers sometimes, and this highlights the need for education in the space as it can get all too overwhelming for newbies without enough education. It is also worthy of note that only after proper understanding can one realize what is lacking in the space and build things to plug these holes.

2 Likes

Hey Everyone,
I’m checking out the information here and I’ve also visited the DAO Academy channel and was wondering how this project is doing? It seems like there was a proposal then the conversation stalled. Are there any updates? I’m new so I may not be looking in the correct area.

Education remains critical to onboarding people into web3 and inspiring and providing tools for the next wave of DAO builders. Discord is the best place for these conversations and I would encourage you to check out the #learning-library channel and connect with the community experience team members like @Shawncubbedge @Blockchainlore

1 Like