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!
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24 facilitated sessions scheduled, 21 executed
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2 on-going interactive elements (Hot Takes Wall & DAO Confession Booth)
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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:
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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.
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Privacy in governance was a hot topic in various sessions and discussions throughout the week.
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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.
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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.
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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:
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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!
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The interactive elements were a big hit again this year, especially the DAO Confession Booth.
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It was helpful to have an updatable agenda available, especially given how packed the agenda was this year.
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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:
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Shelby Steidl - Governance Experience Lead at ZKsync Association
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Anna Alexa - Governance Lead at Celo Foundation
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Eugene Leventhal - Head of Governance and Operations at Octant; Research Director at Metagov
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Juan - Governance Facilitator at Sky (previously Maker)
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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).