Governance Geeks Community Hub - Devconnect ARG

[theshelb]

Summary of Proposal

Back by popular demand, the Governance Geeks Community Hub (formerly Collective Intelligence Hub) will offer “governance geeks” a chance to tap into the collective intelligence of DAO & governance facilitators, experts and builders from across major projects who will be facilitating the Hub. Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of the current governance structures, review lessons from the past, examine new governance trends, and explore the legal, financial, operational considerations in an evolving regulatory environment. The space is designed to be a “safe space” for open discussion, where participants can share both excitement and critiques regarding developments and shortcomings in decentralized governance we experience today.

Potential Topics:

• “Burn governance to the ground” - if you had to design a governance system from scratch today, what considerations would be different than they were 5 years ago?
• Emerging governance trends (update from those who presented at the last hub & new projects)
• Automation - From AI to onchain enforceable execution
• Delegation, the role of Delegates, Delegate incentives, etc.
• Governance Infra & Tooling - what is still missing?

Motivation and Rationale

The Collective Intelligence Hub was THE homebase for all governance operators, participants and tooling providers at Devcon 7 in Bangkok. The space offered a series of facilitated and unconference style sessions that brought together diverse perspectives and stakeholders to share experiences and ideas to develop sustainable solutions that enhance the governance experience. Read more about the Collective Intelligence Hub Recap & Takeaways from last year and check out the Governance Geeks Telegram Group that was started at the hub and continues to see engagement.

It became clear that there was a strong demand for governance-focused spaces like this. With decentralized governance being a critical element to many projects in the Ethereum ecosystem, often as a point of high tension and debate, the need for spaces to discuss ways to evolve and better decentralized governance design and practices is critical for long-term success. Don’t believe us? See some X posts from last year’s attendees! EigenFoundation, Raphael Spannocchi (StableLab), Jason Windawi (prev Chainlink) and Theo Buetel (Ethereum Foundation).

This year, we want to make it even more inclusive, and will be inviting more diverse stakeholders to coordinate and host sessions. This includes governance research space, delegates and governance tooling builders to join in planning & facilitating sessions for the Hub. We also want to offer a few sessions in Spanish, and invite local governance geeks groups such as SEED Gov, ETH Argentina and ETH Kipu to attend and help facilitate in order to create an inclusive discussion environment for all of our LATAM attendees! With this expansion in stakeholders leading sessions, we expect the Governance Geeks community hub to be a mini “Governance World’s Fair” inside of the Ethereum World’s Fair at Devconnect this year.

Implementation

Similar to last year, our goal with the programming of this hub is to give some structure while offering flexibility for discussions guided by attendees’ interests and expertise. We found this format worked well to cater to attendees of different levels of involvement and leave space for topics to emerge organically over the course of the event. This will include a mix of facilitated and open sessions:

Facilitated Sessions: These are planned by hub organizers and actively facilitate sessions by governance experts, researchers and builders. We may run a survey to gauge appetite for topics this year in the Governance Geeks Telegram Group. Topics to be confirmed closer to the event.

Open Sessions: These are flexible sessions to give time and space for participants to bring topics that they would like to discuss with other folks hanging out at the hub. We know the huge value that peer learning environments provide and are excited to offer a space where the agenda can be co-created by the participants.

We are going to take learnings and tools from last year to guide our implementation process this year. A few things we will definitely be bringing back:

• The interactive boards (e.g. Governance Hot Takes & I Like, I Wish, I Wonder walls) were a huge hit and will plan to bring those back to the space this year as well.
• We will reuse the Governance Geeks Telegram Group to share announcements and updates for hub attendees.
• Produce a recap of the hub on the forum after the event is over to highlight participants, emergent open sessions that were not originally on the agenda, and any helpful links that were collected throughout the week for participants to reference.

Some things we plan to do differently is set up dedicated office hours where attendees can come and bring their questions or think through problems facing fellow governance operators.

In addition to the governance programming, we are working with the team behind DAO Confession Booth to potentially bring an iteration of it to our hub this year! This will allow the hub to serve a dual purpose of gathering research and creating more value for the community beyond the week of Devconnect.

Team

The team organizing and facilitating the Governance Geeks Hub will be a group of DAO operators and researchers who are focused on governance design and coordination for various major projects across Ethereum, and have experience organizing and facilitating community hubs at past Ethereum events:

The core hub coordinators will be:

• Anna Alexa - Governance lead at Celo Foundation
• Eugene Leventhal - Head of Governance and Community at Scroll
• Juan - Facilitator at Sky (previously Maker)
• Shelby Steidl - Governance Experience Lead at ZKsync Association
• Theo Beutal - Ecosystem Development at Ethereum Foundation

In addition to the core contributors, additional individuals and teams have committed to or expressed interest in coordinating & facilitating hub sessions. We will add additional facilitators to the thread as they are confirmed.

• Erin Koen - Head of Governance at Uniswap Foundation
• Jamilya - Governance Facilitator at Scroll
• Butter team (Conditional Funding Markets)
• Anke - Ecosystem Growth at Stellar
• André - VP of Growth Safe (prev Governance at Safe)
• Zeugh - anticapture & Blockful
• SEEDGov - Governance Operations & Research

Hub organization and facilitation includes a variety of governance experts that bring fresh perspectives and provide a holistic picture of best practices and challenges to governance discussions:

• Governance operators: Direct, lived experience in designing, running, and troubleshooting governance systems. They know the practical realities behind what works and what doesn’t. Natural community managers, and are well connected to key stakeholders.
• Governance researchers: Analytical depth and comparative knowledge of governance models across history, disciplines, and ecosystems. They connect theory to practice by highlighting patterns and contextualizing challenges.
• Governance tooling & infra builders: Intimate knowledge of the technical and structural requirements that make governance systems functional at scale. They understand how tools can either empower or constrain communities.

Neutrality & Inclusion:

In order to ensure that the hub remains a neutral discussion zone and stays free from marketing or promoting of specific tokens or projects, we plan to do the following:

• Intention setting: Make sure to open each discussion with a disclaimer and reminder why we are here and what we are not here to discuss (e.g. shill specific projects/tokens)
• Encourage everyone to share their affiliations, interests, etc. to ensure everyone feels represented and included in Hub discussions
• Make sure to pull examples for the presentations and workshops from various projects

[eek637]

The hub was my favorite part of devcon, super excited to run it back in November!

[anna]

Organizing this hub was such a blast and definitely the highlight of Devcon SEA for me! Excited to have the chance to do it again and apply all the learnings from last year.

[OrnellaWeb3]

Hello @theshelb and co-organizers,

Thank you for applying to organize a Community Hub for Devconnect ARG! Your proposal has now entered the voting phase.

In the coming days, the Devconnect team will review all submissions and select the ones that best reflect the spirit of the first Ethereum World’s Fair. Selected proposals will be announced during the week of September 8. After that, we’ll move into a collaborative phase to refine each Hub’s concept, programming, and production needs.

We appreciate your contribution to shaping the first Ethereum World’s Fair.

[theshelb]

Thanks for the update @OrnellaWeb3!

[OrnellaWeb3]

Hi @theshelb and Governance Hub community,

Thank you for submitting your proposal for Community Hubs. As mentioned in our announcement post, your proposal has been selected to be part of the first Ethereum World’s Fair! Kudos

Your submission stood out for its diverse, collaborative approach and unique programming. We can’t wait to see your ideas come to life at Devconnect, and we’re here to support you along the way. As part of the selection process, I’ll be reaching out to coordinate a preparation sync, support new collaborations, share programming deadlines, and define production needs.

Congratulations once again, and thank you for your contributions to the first Ethereum World’s Fair!

With gratitude,
Ornella & the Devconnect team

[kbw]

Yahoo!! thanks Ornella for letting us know

[theshelb]

Such great news!!! Thank you for the confirmation and kind words @OrnellaWeb3!

The core hub coordinators will start working to make the Gov Geeks Hub come to life! We can’t wait to see all of you at Devconnect in a few short weeks!!

[theshelb]

Governance Geeks Hub @ Devconnect Recap

Hey there governance geeks!

The Governance Geeks Hub was 1 of 15 community hubs that were at Devconnect in Buenos Aires this year. The Governance Geeks Hub exists to unite governance enthusiasts from diverse perspectives, creating space to share ideas, explore important topics, and build meaningful connections that drive more sustainable and accessible governance for all.

Building on the success of the hub at Devcon 7, this year’s organizing team expanded the program to include more contributors, presenters, and interactive elements, while maintaining the “governance safe space” energy that participants valued so highly last year. While the core team helped curate select sessions, governance geeks were invited to apply to host sessions throughout the week. The schedule filled up quickly, unsurprising given the number of talented individuals working on exciting governance projects.

Inclusivity was top of mind when curating session topics this year. This resulted in a wide range of topics - for governance beginners, for governance researchers, for technical & tooling experts, and even for the policy & legal nerds. We also saw a range of formats, from presentations, to workshops, to interactive games & role-play! You can find the full agenda, including session descriptions and facilitators on the hub agenda!

• 24 facilitated sessions scheduled, 21 executed

• 2 on-going interactive elements (Hot Takes Wall & DAO Confession Booth)

• Countless new friends & connections made!

Thank you to all of you who attended the sessions throughout the week! To those who showed up every day - thank you for your time and dedication during a VERY busy week.

The sessions were unfortunately not recorded, but a few session leads are sharing their slides and brief session recaps in “Session Chats & Summaries” channel in Governance Geeks Hub telegram group!

DAO Confession Booth

A highlight from the week was certainly the DAO Confession Booth - a sacred space crafted for weary souls of DAO operators and participants. The DAO Confession Booth invited participants to share their raw DAO experiences & grievances in an anon-friendly way. The “Father Governance" interface takes the individual stories, anonymizing and analyzing into a dataset, and outputting collective themes and challenges into the “Sin Leaderboard”.

Father Governance collected a total of 132 confessions collected during the week, that made up 22 different sin categories. Check out the Sin Leaderboard to find summaries of the top sin categories from the week!

Not only was this a really fun experience for hub attendees, but is also a useful collection of DAO participant sentiment at this point in time which we can collectively reference as we all “go forth” in trying to build better DAOs.

Shout out to the very creative devs - Martin Karlsson & Max Nova from coordination.network - who brought us the Father Governance interface and the Sin Leaderboard!

Governance Takeaways:

• The DAO and governance space is beginning to mature, drawing on lessons from the past 5–6 years of experimentation. There’s a clearer understanding that what you govern matters, and that different projects and ecosystems require different governance approaches. We’re starting to get better at calibrating the scope of governance to the actual needs and use cases of each project, rather than applying one-size-fits-all models.

• Privacy in governance was a hot topic in various sessions and discussions throughout the week.

• There is an ongoing frustration between DAO operators/Foundations and governance participants, driven by misaligned expectations and differing views on governance priorities and the appropriate “surface area” of governance.

• Compliance and regulation are increasingly shaping token and entity deployments and decisions, marking a shift from ambiguity toward greater certainty. New structural models are emerging as reference points, including Uniswap’s DUNI and MetaLex’s BORG models.

• We still have a lot of work to do!!! While it was inspiring to witness the reporting of governance work and research from the past few years, we believe almost everyone would agree we have a long way to go until we crack the decentralized governance code. Meaning we will likely have a demand for future Governance Geeks Hubs!

Hub Organization Takeaways:

• The hub once again became THE special governance space - acting as the meet up point and networking hub for anyone working on or participating in governance!

• The interactive elements were a big hit again this year, especially the DAO Confession Booth.

• It was helpful to have an updatable agenda available, especially given how packed the agenda was this year.

• While TG channel is great for comms & announcements for those already in the group, communication of agenda and announcements throughout the week could still be improved. We are exploring the idea of creating a X account for the Hub next year, although the ideal scenario would be for the Devconnect interface to have an announcements system for all hubs.

Core Hub Contributors

This year’s Governance Geeks Hub was brought to you by:

• Shelby Steidl - Governance Experience Lead at ZKsync Association

• Anna Alexa - Governance Lead at Celo Foundation

• Eugene Leventhal - Head of Governance and Operations at Octant; Research Director at Metagov

• Juan - Governance Facilitator at Sky (previously Maker)

• Theo Beutal - Ecosystem Development at Ethereum Foundation

We once again walked away feeling inspired, excited, and deeply fulfilled. The shared experiences at the Hub make this our favorite part of Devconnect, and we hope to keep creating and/or supporting similar spaces at future Ethereum conferences.

We would like to extend a big THANK YOU to the dozens of session organizers and presenters, as well as a variety of volunteers who helped man the hub throughout the week. You all played a special role in giving the hub life!

Feedback

While we have been grateful to receive lots of positive feedback, we also would love to hear how participants think this space could be improved for future iterations! Please share them here or directly in the Governance Geeks Hub Telegram group.

Want to stay informed of future Governance Geeks Hubs? Join the Governance Geeks Hub Telegram group! This is also a place to share & discuss governance news (see General), meet other governance geeks (see Intros) and keep up with open governance role opportunities (see Open Gov Roles).