Frontiers of Coordination #1 with Richard D. Bartlett The Pre-DAO DAO OG

Richard D. Bartlett, aka “Rich dB”, has been working in pre-blockchain “DAOs” since the 2011 Occupy Wallstreet Movement. An engineer by training, Rich has merged his problem solving skills with his passion for compassionate, intelligent and inclusive ways of being together. He is the co-founder of Loomio and The Hum, and a director and longstanding member of Enspiral. Rich is rich with thoughts about “small-scale, high-trust cooperative organizing” and is now on a mission to fill in his knowledge gaps about what is happening at the cutting edge of DAO tech in web3.

In this episode, Peth picks Rich’s brain about pros and cons of decentralized orgs, pros and cons of hierarchical orgs, DAO benefits and drawbacks, common DAO misconceptions and... Wtf even are DAOs?! There is a huge focus on the core values and needs of members within decentralized groups, and how we can use these to create and scale projects.

Some of the Topics:

Occupy Wallstreet movement
Pros/Cons of Hierarchy
Scaling of leadership within armies
Leadership within decentralized orgs
Conflict Transformation & Reflection
Trusteless Orgs
Voting & Decision Making Processes
What makes a DAO?
How to create meaningful change

Peth & Rich explore a wide range of DAO concepts and perspectives. Rich explains some critical lessons learned from his experiences with decentralized orgs, in particular, the necessity of building and maintaining trust. When conflicts arise, there needs to be a process to resolve them and, better yet, reflect upon them to make organized change for the future.

The episode concludes Rich’s advice to metagamers to consider “the microscale”. Before completely redesigning society, consider the relationship between just two people: How can you increase mutual trust and support within that relationship?. “Organizations are just a big stack of human relationships,” so what you learn about trust and coordination between individuals can teach you a lot about organizing as a decentralized team.

References

Rich’s Site
Loomio
The Hum
Enspiral
Microsolidarity
Multi-stakeholder Cooperatives
Team of Teams Book
Agile Project Management
Emergent Strategy Book
The Tyranny of Structurelessness

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