Co-building Ops Hacks with the community
In the spirit of building in public, I want to let you in on the latest experiment I'm running at Ops Hacks.
Co-owning and co-contributing to the community
As I got deep into building Ops Hacks - and becoming a creator and a community builder as part of that process - I started thinking a lot about the current state of online communities and how they're evolving. This led me down a rabbit hole of exploring of DAOS (here is an excellent primer on what DAOS are), which are redefining the notion of what a community can do.
I see DAOs as a decentralized (i.e. no clear hierarchy) and fluid (i.e. non-binding arrangement to collaborate) organization of people with a shared mission and wallet. What distinguishes DAOs from other forms of community is the co-ownership and co-contribution aspect of it.
In a DAO, people come together to form a community around a shared mission and put their resources together to achieve that mission - whether it be to buy a copy of the US constitution or to crowdfund and support longevity research.
Key attributes of a successful community
I've lurked in many DAOs' discord servers to come to a conclusion on what a DAO needs to be successful:
A strong mission that resonates with members
Enough room to allow members to step up, run with their creativity, and contribute
Co-ownership of the community which aligns every member's incentives (or as they say in web3 - WAGMI, or "We're All Gonna Make It")
Compare this novel approach to traditional online communities - which are usually led by a founder or a founding team and monetized primarily through a recurring membership fee. In DAOs, there's no extractive membership fee but rather the expectation that members will contribute to creating value from within.
So how does this relate to Ops Hacks?
Let me start with a disclaimer: I'm not planning on turning Ops Hacks into a full-fledged DAO with its own native token or anything like that.
But I want to borrow some of the features that make DAOs such an exciting community to be a part of.
Specifically, I am creating room for other founding members to co-build Ops Hacks.
We have started the project a couple weeks ago, and I'm already impressed by and excited for all the ideas the members have come up with to drive engagement and membership growth.
What's been the most interesting for me is how some of the ideas are so obvious when a member mentions it. For example, having an onboarding checklist that requires new members to do certain things that will drive engagement and connection with the rest of the community. It makes so much sense but it might have taken me a while to think of that had someone not suggested it.
Riffing on ideas with other members has been a great reminder of the importance of having a team.
As a solo founder, I'm susceptible to have more blind spots and have less bandwidth than a team. So I'm grateful to have other members chip in with their contributions. And this co-building arrangement enables it.
Stay tuned - the co-build crew will be sharing more initiatives and projects as they kick off.
And if you are interested in co-building Ops Hacks... Apply now!