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:
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
