Request for Funding: AN DAO Gitbook 1.0

Category: Executive Sub Dao

Proposal Summary

The DAO Academy Guild requests from the Executive Sub-DAO (ESD) a total funding of 1,910 ANT / 10,500 USDC (18,000 USD (50:50 / ANT:USDC) for the development of a community handbook for the AN DAO on Gitbook. The aim of the initiative is to create a communication tool for education and skills-based onboarding to the AN DAO. The funding is to cover the progress of research, collaboration and strategic planning, the development of the content of the Gitbook, its initial operational expenses and the reward of contributors over a three-month period, allowing the delivery of the initial version of the AN DAO Gitbook, considering the content included in this proposal, by 31 March 2022.

Proposal description

General Structure of the Gitbook

Can also be found in Notion DAO Academy Guild

Introduction to Aragon

  • Intro to Aragon
  • Manifesto
  • Intro to the AN DAO
  • Culture & Values

Aragon Product Stack in alignment with the Technical Support Guild

  • Intro to products
  • Aragon Client (high level overview, detailed FAQ will be included in the Tech Support Guild Gitbook)
  • Aragon Voice (high level overview, detailed FAQ will be included in the Tech Support Guild Gitbook)
  • Aragon Govern (high level overview, detailed FAQ will be included in the Tech Support Guild Gitbook)
  • Aragon Court (high level overview, detailed FAQ will be included in the Tech Support Guild Gitbook)
  • Vocdoni (high level overview)

Explanation of the structure of the AN DAO

  • Timeline and history of the AN DAO
  • DAO Structure (sub-daos, guilds, working groups)
  • Tooling used in collaboration ( i.e. Notion)
  • The Charter
  • Governance

How to get involved

  • Join Discord
  • Have link to DAO Meetings Calendar
  • Instructional Content around participation
  • Information about Ambassador Program
  • Information about ANT Token and Governance process within the DAO

Vision:

The AN DAO Handbook hereby known as Gitbook will help educate and align the community by setting expectations before they arrive in discord.

Key Objectives:

The Gitbook is a tool to be used in the onboarding process with an education and skills-based approach providing clear knowledge of what the AN DAO is, the Aragon Product line, the structure of the AN DAO, and how to get involved. In each of these sections we will have subsections called modules which will dive further into the concept.

Contributors & and current collaborators:

Renzo D5#3503 and luizfernando#1966 are Cohort 1 Aragon Ambassadors who want to see the community grow and be successful. We have all been involved in multiple projects from UX research, Content creation, marketing strategies, and community management. We have deep knowledge of Aragon, the AN DAO, the Product line and have invested many hours in the evolution of the community and DAO as a whole.

How is this initiative adding value to the Aragon Network

The Gitbook will help to onboard people to AN DAO as the primary place to get support and answers to questions about the development and application of DAO. By creating a baseline of knowledge the community will be able to work together to help the Aragon Network evolve with the best interests of the user in mind.

Foreseeable Limitations and risks:

  1. Disengagement in the AN Network
  2. Misalignment of our efforts
  3. Duplication of effort

We recognise open transparent communication as the most effective means to mitigate these foreseeable risks and for this reason plan to interface with the community through the following channels:

  • Discord #DAO-Academy-Guild
  • Notion DAO Academy Guild
  • Monthly forum posts for transparency, visibility and project reporting
  • Monthly community call
    Weekly Office Hours Call

Duration, deliverable/s, and expected outcomes:

Q4 2021 Gitbook Activity Deliverables Key Responsible Person
Nov Information Structure and User Journey Research Gitbook Strategy Renzo/Luiz
Dec Community Engagement and Planning Gitbook Proposal Shawn
Q1 2022 Gitbook Activity Deliverables Key Responsible Person
Jan Skills research and mapping and content curation Gitbook 1.0 Draft for community feedback/input Luiz
Feb Research and assimilation of community feedback Gitbook 1.0 Final 1.0 Renzo
Mar Gitbook creation and process defined for ongoing edits Gitbook 1.0 published to [URL] Luiz
Q1 Research strategic planning & collaborations Strategic Road Map for Q2 Renzo

Project Contributors

  • DAO Academy Guild
    • Renzo D5#3503
    • luizfernando#1966

Strategic Alignment

The gitbook is aligned with the strategic objectives and interests of the AN DAO and the AA as it should help with:

  • the understanding of how the developing community can begin to contribute;
  • the growth of the AN DAO community and/or contributors;
  • the connection of the skills needed and available to enhance existing work streams;
  • creating communication with existing and upcoming guilds and working groups to understand their functioning, necessities and related skills.

This initiative is symbiotic to other efforts of the AN DAO and the AA with the following feedback loops with:

  • Ben as the AA Operations Steward;
  • Taylor as the AN DAO Community manager;
  • Brent as the Tech Support Guild lead;
  • Shawn to understand the onboarding process.

Funding Information:

USD (50% ANT, 50% stable coin) Jan Feb Mar On Completion Total
core contributors rewards 6000 6000 6000 2000 20000
additional contributors rewards 500 500 500 1500
total 6500 6500 6500 2000 21500
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Thank you for the proposal! My understanding is that the below is the output of the effort to be funded.

Could you please indicate:

  • What is new content and what exists?
  • It seems most of the new content will be created by the Tech Support Guild, does that mean that most of the budget will be allocated towards the guild?
  • What is the reason for opening yet another medium of information (on top of FAQ, forum, discord, and Notion)
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Thanks for your reply!

  • The reason for making a gitbook is to consolidate information that we all feel is needed to gain a full understanding of Aragon and the AN DAO, how someone can be a part of the community, and how they can contribute. This information is out there but as you said it’s currently spread out among 4 or 5 different places. This would act as a precursor to all of those.

  • The content regarding the Aragon Product stack is being done by the Technical Support Guild and I believe they’ve got a plan in place for rewarding the people who contribute to that as it is also something they’ve been working on independently of the Gitbook project. We would just be utilizing this work for the gitbook as well.

  • Things such as the Manifesto, The Charter, and the Timeline already exist. There are others that may have articles that we can reference. However, this information will need to be formatted in a way that directs the user in a way that makes sense for our purpose. Which is onboarding and education not only of contributors but of general community members as well.

Edit: Adding The index Coop Gitbook for reference
Welcome to the Index Coop! - Index Coop Community Handbook

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I appreciated your interest and questions!

  • The Gitbook and its content aims for detecting the skillset of new and existing contributors with tasks and work streams with clarity. The overall community can benefit from an educational anchor that could guide engagement in the AN DAO.

  • The Tech Support Guild is the starting point. In this way we could iterate further the Gitbook content towards other work streams such as, PR and Business Development DAO2DAO.

  • By mapping the relevant info in one place - medium of information - we want to provide a touchpoint. For reference, I am sharing the research work we did with Deep Work to understand the Gitbook structure and the next improvements:
    Welcome to the Tech Support Guild! - Tech Support Guild

Hope this helps and feel free to ask more questions.

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Thank you both for your attempts, but I am not seeing an answer yet on two of the questions:

  • Can we see what’s new content and what is existing
  • Considering the majority of content comes from the tech guild is part of the budget directed in that way

With respect to the GitBook it feels like it’s a 5th place that is maybe a best practice but feels a bit out of context (i.e. I have seen it in communities that do not utilize Notion). Namely:

  • Notion is the landing page for new contributors and the Forum and Discord are where they contribute
  • We are setting up a new place that will increase clicks to target for contributors
  • Create yet another place to keep the information up to date

I agree the current set-up has a lot of room for improvement, but somehow introducing a new space creates more complexity. Wouldn’t a better-organized notion be a simpler and more elegant solution?

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Thanks for your reply!

On your first question:

On your second question:

  • most of the content on the Gitbook should not be created from scratch, but assembled (and properly referenced) from all actual info sources from Aragon. As we have seen the tech support guild also discussing the curation/elaboration of material and FAQs around the Aragon product stack, we wanted to point out that either the material done by the tech support guild can be repurposed for the Gitbook or the other way around, to avoid duplication of efforts. I think we should clarify this on the proposal
  • I don’t think the Aragon product stack section would make up the majority of the content. The idea of this section in the Gitbook is to give an overview of each solution, for contributors to be familiarized with them if they already aren’t (the FAQs on the gitbook should help with that). As the Gitbook is to be a community/contributors handbook, I believe its focuses would be on the “Explanation of the structure of the AN DAO” and “How to get involved” sections, as well as in the introduction to Aragon
  • regarding the budget, the tech guild can be mapped as additional contributors if that’s the case

On having the Gitbook apart from Notion:

  • the handbook is to give an overview and explain the structure (properly linked) of all current spaces in use by the AN DAO (Notion, Discord, Forum). I think it would be beneficial for the handbook to give an overview and explain these different spaces without being inside any of them
  • I think it can reduce complexity for contributors (i.e. new contributors would know that all information needed for them to start contributing would be on the handbook). This way the contributor wouldn’t need to look for information (necessary to be able to contribute) across multiple locations, by having them either located in the gitbook itself or linked/referenced on the gitbook, being easily maintained/updated
  • I think it can provide a better structure that is easier to follow, as Gitbook allows a good flow for users to find all the information they need
  • it would be easier for people not familiarized with notion
  • Notion could be primarily used as a workspace for the AN DAO and its guilds, WGs, …, while Gitbook could be used as an onboarding tool and information hub, as it’s used in some other DAOs and projects
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Considering the majority of content comes from the tech guild is part of the budget directed in that way

Concerning the budget information. After attending the weekly Tech Support Guild meeting this morning I learned that they will have bounties for their members to create this documentation. I asked if it would need to be supplemented by this proposal and Brent said they already have a budget allocated for bounties and that shouldn’t be needed. The 500 dollars should be adequate to supplement the amount they already have allotted for bounties if needed.

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Congrats @Sixto5 @luizfernandosg @Shawncubbedge for this proposal which reflects your initiative, commitment and ongoing efforts to improve the DAO onboarding experience and to model the importance of research and system design thinking. I have no doubt of your teams ability to deliver the proposed Gitbook.

As I have attended some meetings (~2) to learn about the project and provided feedback on the draft proposal (review) I have had the opportunity to ask my questions and receive answers and to understand the experience and strengths these team members bring to the project. I understand @daniel-ospina & @fartunov may have further questions.

My one request is that monthly reporting be added to this proposal as a new comment each month to create a consolidated, public source of project information from proposal to completion.

Gitbook

As a version control system (VCS), consolidating onboarding information in a Gitbook makes clear sense to me. The IndexCoop and Deepwork examples show that step-by-step introduction makes the information easy to digest and navigate, at least for people like myself that seek to build context before participating/contributing within the community.

In my experience DAO lurking I have always read the website and .docs (typically gitbook) before joining Discord and well before accessing Notion. Should we get to the stage of automating elements of the onboarding process, the Gitbook provides a key reference document.

Tech Support Guild

It is my understanding that documentation is a priority for the tech support guild @brent can you please indicate the tech support guild position in regards to the proposed Gitbook. I am also aware that members of the tech support guild actively participated in this project as per the Deepwork example.

Request for Funding

@fartunov content curation is listed as the first stage (Jan) of the project. This is a request to fund the time needed for @Sixto5 & @luizfernandosg to answer the question you/they ask

  • “what content exists and where?”
  • “what content requires creating?”
  • “how to ensure community response/feedback?”
  • “which skills are a priority in onboarding community?”

SMART Deliverables

As the first AN DAO community-driven initiative this project sets an excellent example of how to progress from broad vision and multiple ideas to a focused project with Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound (SMART) objectives and clear deliverables.

Interim ESD funding is imo designed to support this type of community initiative, to enable teams to create a track record of delivering impact while working towards the longer-term vision, in this case around the DAO Academy.

I am 100% in support of funding this project.

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Thank you, that makes sense.

To Renee’s point, the purpose of the ESD is to support initiatives and experimentation so I am in support of the proposal and would love to see how the Gitbook is synergetic with other tools the FAQs in the Forum, and the Notion.

2 Likes

Please note for future reference the purpose of this section is to demonstrate that the initiative is aligned with (and if not, why):

  • Other community contributors who are leading efforts in the relevant direction - i.e. @b3n (Talent), @Tayy Community) @brent (Tech Support Guild)
  • Communicated objectives of the AN DAO (i.e. the invite for TSG members here)

The provided answer does not address this in a meaningful way. It would be great to amend it as per the template here

2 Likes

Thank you for your proposal. A few considerations from my side:

All our documentation should have a clear focus and single responsibility.
There should be minimal overlap between documentation. Ideally, there is a single, well-known location where information can be found.
Redundancy, increased maintenance work, and confusion about where to find information are concerns I have with creating more documentation.
Furthermore, brevity is very important because time and attention of people are scarce resources everyone is fighting for. Accordingly, I share the concerns raised by @fartunov.

However, the AN DAO Gitbook can clearly fill a gap. IMO, its purpose is to address newcomers that found out about Aragon and its values and want to become contributors. Resources related to that seem to be missing. I imagine a button on our main website (close to the manifesto) labeled ‘Become a contributor’ that refers to the document.

So what should be in there?

I like to think in terms of barriers that people could have. A big barrier to newcomers seems to be uncertainty/the unknown:

  • Uncertainty about their potential role in the organization.
    • Can I make a contribution? What skills are needed?
    • Do I fit in culturally?
    • What actions/mindset will make me a valued contributor?
    • What should I avoid?
    • Will I receive guidance? Will people invest resources (time/money) and provide, e.g., trainings?
  • Uncertainty about compensation
    • Will I get paid for this?
    • How much will I be paid?
    • When will I get paid? Do I first have to prove myself without receiving money?

If those uncertainties are cleared, there is a lot of knowledge transfer that needs to happen (that you listed as well):

  • How do people organize/coordinate?
    • What are the functions of the different bodies (Aragon Association, Aragon Labs, Ambassadors, AN DAO community operate internally and with each other
    • What tools are used (organizational, development related)?
  • What is the Roadmap?
    • What products are out there?
    • What is planned?
    • What is the greater vision behind all of that?

Spoiler: Some things are unclear even to ourselves as our organization changes rapidly, grows quickly, and tries to decentralize itself. There is a lot of room for chaos to happen :).

There are probably many more questions that newcomers have that I don’t remember.

In summary, providing answers to the questions above is an important task, and the budget requested seems reasonable to me.

3 Likes

I’m also in support of the proposal.

The point about duplication of work is a key challenge for the initiaitve and so I would encourage the team to address it as the first item of work i.e. coordinating with other teams and perhaps agreeing to delete some redundant content in the Forum, Notion, and other places to give priority to the Gitbook, or at least create a content map that’s agreed with the other teams and serves as a reference.

4 Likes

@Sixto5 @luizfernandosg just confirming you have 3/3 support from the ESD to fund this project. Trust you will take into account the wealth of feedback provided by the community here and make updates to
the main proposal as @fartunov requested re: strategic alignment, once current discussions provide this clarification.

2 Likes

Your questions and feedback are precious because they are reminder to design with user in mind. The questions are very much aligned with my intent to orchestrate the awareness needed between the provider - say this existing project team members, and other guilds - and the users - the upcoming contributors.

Frankly speaking, these questions were with me back in August 2021. Therefore, I and we do want to clear those uncertainties through the Gitbook is the first step.

The driving force to complete the answers should come by enabling and aligning the community collaborative work force to navigate in the chaos, with confidence.

Thank you for your time and words.

2 Likes

I think it is exactly these questions that are difficult to answer that belong in such an onboarding document.
If you don’t find answers to those questions, don’t hesitate to ask the people that are responsible.
If this still does not lead to a satisfying answer, it might be a good idea to write that openly in the Gitbook (so that others don’t have to figure out themselves that this is an open question).

I think this has a much higher relevance than, for example, the history of the AN DAO or the product stack intro.

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AN DAO Community Handbook January Update

As the first month of 2022 is over, we would like to share with the community what has been the progress in our initiative and what our planned next steps are.

January deliverable:

Observation: the main goal of the community handbook rough draft is to give an idea to the community of what structure has been thought on and what it should include. Its content is still being developed and it will need more work. Therefore, we would love to listen to the feedback from the community.

January activities summary:

  • Team meetings occurred 3 times per week to share and discuss progress and reviews;
  • Building of a knowledge base for the handbook with actual information about Aragon and its solutions, including information mapping, curation, consolidation and structuration activities from current sources (websites and documentation);
  • Establishment of open communication channels between the initiative and AN DAO working groups;
  • Conducted participatory action research in discord channels engaging each working group to learn and understand related skills and workflow, with analysis and clustering of information in Notion;
  • DAO ecosystem collaboration assessment with Level 1 and Delicious;
  • Developing documentations through a collective writing experience to create an Aragon blog post by March 1.

Next steps

  • Research and assimilation of community feedback
  • Gitbook 1.0 Final 1.0
  • Gitbook creation and process defined for ongoing edits
  • Gitbook 1.0 published to [URL]
  • Research strategic planning & collaborations

Open workspaces

The monthly community call to listen to your feedback is planned on Friday the 4th of February from 4 pm to 5 pm CET. Look forward to it!

2 Likes

While we were already looking forward to the year for the AN DAO and the development of the community handbook, we were thrilled to see multiple other initiatives popping up from different fronts for the development and engagement of the Aragon community. Would love to receive your feedback on the handbook with the expectation and excitement for further collaboration in the following months.

4 Likes

Excellent work @Luiz and @Renzo. This documentation is mission critical to onboarding, great to see the xDAO collaboration going on. Im aware of other proposals that intend to feed into this project too. Great work guys i look forward to participating in the upcoming feedback process.

1 Like

thanks for the update, seem like excellent progress

AN DAO Community Handbook February Update

@lee0007 @daniel-ospina @fartunov

Being now more than halfway through the initiative, the activities performed in February established and maintained a feedback loop with the Aragon Community. This has allowed us to steer the development of the handbook as the initiative enters its final month.

We are keen to share with the community the progress we made in February and the plans we have for March!

February deliverable:

Observation: During the troubleshooting of the functional document, It is relevant to highlight the ongoing evolution of the community in terms of tools, growth and structure. This implies continuous adjustment of the research findings and the need for iterative feedback.

February activities summary:

  • Performance of recurrent team meetings occurring 3 times per week to share and discuss progress and reviews;
  • Planning of prototype testing and interviews across the whole community;
  • Set a design process to perform the interviews (Notion and Miro board);
  • Sorting, clustering and analysis of interview notes (Miro Board);
  • Elaboration of feedback insights summary;
  • Prioritisation of recommendations and design decisions;
  • Planning of open joint meetings with Onboarding WG.

The usability testing of the AN Community Handbook: in-depth report

Context and background

As the Aragon community begins to walk with her own legs, multiple moving pieces start taking shape: working groups formation, the exciting noise of the bounties bazaar, the development of Aragon’s ecosystem strategy, among other initiatives. During the first Handbook testing phase, our investigation into the community brought us to test how the document serves its purpose of authenticity, accessibility and inclusiveness and find out whether it works for that purpose.

We connected with the community to listen to the three profiles of contributors: Aragon Team members, core contributors - who have been active in the community since August 2021 - and new contributors - who have just recently joined it, in January 2022These diverse backgrounds provided us with views and insights that open clear opportunities to improve the handbook and understand how the DAO Academy can grow alongside the community’s needs.

What we’ve learned.

We have run interviews with nine Community members, each interview lasting roughly 40 minutes. Based on the current dynamic context, we have gleaned multiple learnings. Below are some relevant ones that will give direction to the next phase.

Visual content & communication.
The modern readers seek easy to understand content and strive for time management for their attention span. Charts, tables and videos could enhance those needs, creating more accessibility and fun in understanding the AN DAO community.
More spice and diversity in the language. The language of the gitbook should be more concise and adapted to the modern reader. Elements such as bold, italics and TL;DR should be included throughout the documentation. Also, Aragon is a global community and can improve its accessibility and dynamic global impact by translating its content to different languages.

Aragon Product Stack: foster how to create a DAO.
It could be beneficial to present solutions with similar purposes together, such as Client + Govern and Voice + Vocdoni. Then the difference between them should be made clear. How-to guides can be added for how to create a DAO. It is important for Aragon contributors to have familiarity with its solutions.

The importance of supporting a personal experience with emotional aspects.
Handbook must improve the personal and emotional experience with support for new and current contributors in the community. Current and new contributors need to perceive a clear direction and guidance and to know what to expect, which could be addressed by the contributors’ journey with more details. One example is to have clear descriptions of meetings and an explanation of the calendar with a clear call to action.

A potential barrier is the understanding of working groups and guilds.
A better definition of what guilds and working groups are should provide an open and light decision process for new contributors on where and how to participate. We observed that we should assess if guidance to working groups - due to its transient aspect - would still be relevant to foster active contributors, as bounties are starting to serve this purpose.

There is not much clarity on the reward systems.
Sourcecred might be explained as a temporary solution. The reward system portfolio needs more exposure mentioning, for example, the Coordinape experiments and considering including information about bounties. Another important insight is about ‘how to make a proposal’. Financial proposals with a quick start guide should be included in the rewards systems section, with its process clearly and visually described.

Cultural values need a reinterpretation to generate a cohesive community approach.
An alignment and discourse might support one course or approach that unifies the collective intent around the culture and values of the Aragon community in relation to the Manifesto and Charter. This entails that there is a challenge to activate collaborative dialogues about its future and values as it continues to evolve.

The impact of these learnings and their consequences

A particular insight came to our analysis, which is the legacy of the documentation and the consequences of this product, the service it provides to the community. With a potential speed of change, it requires data stewardship in the near future, a commitment that should match the innovative drive of the members. This demands an engagement plan with the various implications in each area of the current handbook and which mirrors the community culture and values.
If future accountability will not be addressed, the handbook content and structure might not be relevant in 6 months’ time.

A glimpse into the AN DAO current evolution

An overarching insight, gathered in this first usability testing and analysis, is an important shift in the engagement flow with structured experiments to unlock a step-by-step decentralisation in the AN DAO. One clear indication comes from the bounties as a decentralisation and coordination mechanism for delegating roles and responsibilities to the community.

This comes from the nature of DAO itself as a new emerging organisational design with its decentralisation and autonomous impact. This awareness is crucially connected with the learning agility needed to practise as a whole community with empathy and knowledge coordination. The handbook documentation wants to capture the momentum and help the readers, the members to achieve their goals in the community, reducing frustrations and friction in the experience of joining the AN DAO.

Next steps

  • Create the handbook repository on Gitbook and define its maintenance and update processes;
  • Update the content of the handbook with the input and feedback from the community gathered from low fidelity prototype testing in February
  • Transfer the feedback loops into the high-medium fidelity prototype (Gitbook)
  • Plan and run the final prototype test
  • Set up official Gitbook link and plan its promotion
  • Complete the collective writing experience (Luiz and Renzo) for the blog post on the handbook initiative experience to be published (post)

Open workspaces

The monthly community call to share our design research process and listen to your feedback is planned on Friday the 5th of March from 4 pm to 5 pm CET. Look forward to it!

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