[Closed] Salaried Facilitator, Chief of Staff Position

This is an initial draft of the Facilitator proposal. Community and CoE input are encouraged. Changes and updates are to be added in later versions as they are needed.

Overview: The current CoE’s primary responsibility at this time is managing the treasury and proposal pipeline. The general consensus in the public CoE rocket chat is, that some version of @aventurine’s “Facilitator” concept could help with the management of emerging processes and further decentralize the CoE as the group grows, and add a single point of contact for communication between the community, professional parties and all of the future CoE subgroups.

It’s also been suggested, after the final version of the position is voted on, and the CoS is voted in, other positions are added to the CoE for those who have ideas, time, and energy. This again encourages forward momentum and further decentralizes the process.

Proposal: What follows is a basic outline of community input for the position.

Duties of the Facilitator/Chief of Staff:

  • Will act as a liaison between the CoE and community members on new and existing proposals, communicating status and final vote via the forum or a future app agreed on by members and the community. The Facilitator will also work within any finalized process for dividing the workload between members, which is currently in discussion.
  • Will generate new proposals from community input and ideas as RFP’s after CoE input and general review. This includes managing any process for idea generation such as town hall meetings, idea contests, etc.
  • Will organize and maintain CoE meeting scheduling and minutes for those meetings for general dissemination to the community.
  • Will work with the members and community to identify topics of concern and internal or external expertise to address those issues: i.e. Corporate structure, domicile, tax issues, securities, legal concerns, and so on.
  • The Facilitator will keep all CoE subsets (treasury etc) informed of operational needs in a structured way, via an official memorandum and proposals to meet all requirements and keep the DAO in good standing and its members safe.
  • Will provide oversite on projects so as not to interfere with production but keep track of items that may have fallen through the digital cracks.
  • The Facilitator will recruit, organize and work with other CoE members and volunteers to keep projects on time and moving forward.

Time Expectation:

  • The facilitator will agree to provide a minimum of 4-8 hours a week to the position. All hours will be documented and reported based on a schedule TBD.

Salary:

  • 200 NMR annually for the four to 8 hours of weekly production.
  • up to 200 NMR incentive bonus annually based on performance. This could be distributed “as desired” by the CoET, or regularly on a predetermined schedule, i.e. monthly or quarterly.

Probation: The position requires a 90 day period of probation, where both the CoE and the Facilitator can feel the process out and determine if the fit is good. Base salary but no bonus in this first 90 day period.

Best case scenario: The addition of the position improves all phases of the existing proposal pipeline, adds much-needed clarification to business, legal, and tax issues, and increases efficiency as operational complexity grows.

Worst case scenario: For one reason or another, there are many possibilities here, the desired result simply isn’t achieved, wasting the money spent on the probationary period.

You’re being asked to vote on whether or not the CoE should vote on the conceptual idea of a Facilitator position, knowing the scope could change before final duties are agreed on. Please add as many comments as possible to help improve this draft.

I’d also encourage current CoE to comment and vote on this proposal as it will directly affect them.

Should the CoE fund the hiring of a Facilitator/Chief of Staff?

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

Closed: Failed on community vote.
Thank you for your input and participation on this proposal.

1 Like

Looks like a great proposal to me. I really do think if we have someone in a position like this, it can really make things flow with ease and we can get more proposals through the pipeline. Everyone has their normal lives including the members of the CoE. To have someone that is dedicated to the CoE and can commit to the hours needed to work this job, I really think that we can have a net positive impact on what is put out in the future. As for the salary, several of the passed proposals tried to have a set NMR value in place but with the fluctuating nature of NMR the CoE decided(let me know if im wrong at all) that a set hourly rate of $50 in NMR equivalent would paid out at the time of multisig wallet approvals and all of the proposals have net hours worked for the calculations. If we calculated in the range of 4-8 hours a week that would also factor in attendance of the scheduled meetings and all the other work included on this proposal, 208hr to 416(lets just say 200-400hrs) a year would equate to a current equivalent of 238-475 NMR in today’s NMR Price. The only issue I see with an incentive bonus is it would have to be something measured easily like how large companies do KPI’s and can be open to interpretation. Maybe just shooting for something around halfway and cutting out the incentive thing could be a better solution? Lets say something like 300hrs a year and no incentive bonus which equates to just a total payout a year to around 350 NMR in todays valve? Maybe instead of incentive the CoE can do a vote to remove if they feel the person is not putting in enough work?

If the CoE agrees to this I am guessing you all will want to set up some sort of a self nomination and polling post? Is it a CoE decision that are we going to allow CoE members to nominate and take on this roll or is this going to be something that only a community member can nominate themself for? Would love to hear from all the CoE members their thoughts on this. As ive stated before in rocketchats and forums, I would not mind at all if a CoE member or a community member took on this role. Great job on this @objectscience!

Voted no, with 7 CoE members I think the CoE can better organize and communicate rather than keep adding members,I would just make a commitment of having a weekly ( might end up being biweekly ) standup with a few minutes to field questions from users, the CoE can rotate a moderator and scribe if need be.

The tangential grifting knows no bounds…

I see that this role is very important and provides value to the community.
What I don’t see is, why one of the CoE members can’t fulfill this position?

If the 7 members can’t setup a good communication flow, is adding one more going to help?

The whole CoE concept is a work-in-progress.
Maybe we should reelect a new CoE, with the clear expectations of 4-8 hours of weekly work and some salary as a compensation.
I understand that this additional work doesn’t fit into everyone’s life. But being a member of CoE comes with responsibility and work.

Now it’s clear, maybe it wasn’t when the first election happened.

This is why I’m thinking the best bet is to just select one of the CoE to do it. No adding of people when someone from the crew of 7 that has the extra time and wants to put in the work can do this job and get compensated for the extra work. It’s not a leadership role or anything. I think as for re-election it would only make sense if someone from the CoE does take on the role but the overall CoE group still fails to make sufficient progress in proposal adoption and community engagement. I think once we get this locked down the proposals and the communication will follow and we won’t keep hitting these little roadblocks. I for sure as the newsletter writer for the CoE will keep in close contact with whoever jumps in on this and keep all information as current as possible!

This is actually a really good point. In the very early stages of this, I suggested a temporary CoE that would knock out the initial structure and then hold an election for the first official CoE. This would allow people running to know precisely what was required, if there was a monetary incentive to do so, etc. A lot has been decided since the first group was elected and it’s not unthinkable there are a few who are thinking “this isn’t what I expected”. I don’t think there is anything wrong with opening the door for members to step down and holding replacement elections.

I also agree with others that this position, either officially or through a delegation of duties can be handled by a seven-member group. I think the key is, it has to be well defined so existing and future members know precisely what is expected of them.

In the current state we’re asking a lot of folks who had no idea of what was coming.

Think of the offset your volunteer hours will provide. The grifters will barely survive it. When can we expect your help with legal?

I am not a lawyer, but my neighbor is (he’s an IP/Patent lawyer). I ran this situation by him and he suggested a securities lawyer (which his firm has) and provided an estimate of 10 hours @ $500 an hour (could be more, could be less). This was considerably less than the ignorant comments made by some that the legal consultation would exhaust the entire CoE treasury. Again, this inquiry was to determine the token status as a security based on levels of the Numerai treasury since a very large concern exists to this tournament end state.

In order to generate a legal blueprint to follow, a clearly defined mission needs to exist. I do not see this posted anywhere, perhaps I am missing it? Legal separation from the mothership seems to be necessary in order to even discuss certain things sponsored by the CoE (? again the earlier referenced legal diligence on token status as a security would remedy this).

I ran, I wasn’t voted in. I would have had no problem allocating some time to follow through with these things. It seems unconscionable that these menial actions cannot be allocated among 7 individuals without compensation in order to provide a mechanism which ultimately benefits their substantial NMR holdings.

4 Likes

I think honestly this should be calculated at a lower hourly rate than development. I think the $35 to 40 an hour is more in line with the position. Taking the top, estimating 8 hours a week, allowing two weeks off, we’d be targeting around 400 hours a year give or take. At 40 an hour, you’re at $16k a year. I do agree with others here. given the volatility of NMR, it should be calculated in a fiat rate vs a token rate. At current prices that will be around 380 NMR. This of course will change based on hours billed per week. Some weeks could be less and everything will be subject to performance reviews by the CoET.

These of course are just early ideas on a pay structure if the position is voted in. There are good points for and against it and this again may not be an appropriate final form for the salary. We’re just hashing it out, all input is welcome here.

There is a lot of really good information here to kick this off from. Let me dig through some research so we can hit the high points of your concerns and get them presented to both the CoE and community. I agree there needs to be some formal idea of what the short term and long term vision of the DAO is going to be. I can’t imagine legal help of $5k being a stumbling block here and I’d almost suspect that much would get dumped into the tax side etc. Unavoidable expenses if you want to keep regulators and tax authorities happy.

The trick here is to not get so bogged down in the red tape of the thing that no actual production takes place. Those wheels need to keep moving as well.

Appreciate all that input, will prob ping you privately with questions etc.

I think members of the CoE should make specific proposals (e.g. hire someone to research tax / securities issues) rather than appointing a new role with vague responsibilities – or complete the work, or some milestone, before making a proposal with the knowledge that they’ll almost certainly be retroactively paid if they want to, similar to the recent Power BI dashboard or OpenSignals

1 Like

@_liamhz I hope it is clear to everyone here and at numerai that I don’t want to get paid (retroactively) for the work I put into the Power Bi reporting up until now. That one was like a thank you to the community and numerai for the tournament :slight_smile:

6 Likes

Yah the tax situation thing seems like it should be it’s own animal to deal with. All the other responsibilities in this proposal do seem to be in line though with what a facilitator would do.

That’s awesome work you did for the community. If at any point you want to expand at all through a proposal I’m sure the CoE would fund the work!

1 Like

The self-nomination and polling post makes sense to me, similar to what was done with the original CoE process. I also think anyone should be able to throw their hat in the ring, including current CoE members. That’s just my opinion though, we’ll keep track of all the input and pass it on to the CoE after this stage closes. Then the position, if it passes in this initial form, can be firmed up. Once the final details are in place, they can be dropped in front of the community and folks can decide to run for the position based on a solid description from the CoE.

2 Likes

Adding @uuazed original rocket-chat comment here. I’d like to have these centralized so all opinions are available for review.

"I am not fully convinced by this facilitator idea. Sounds like turning this into a one man show, with the rest only doing the final voting. So, here is another one:

  1. every proposal gets a CoE member (or two) assigned that “owns” this proposal. The role of this proposal owner is to a) help the proposer to get the proposal into shape b) collect feedback from the rest of the CoE c) update the proposal status d) initiate voting (soft or hard)
  2. Proposals have a state (for example, new - under review - community vote - approved - in progress - rejected - done). The state of each proposal is updated by the proposal owner and clearly visible somewhere (and the forum might not be the best place for that)
    This way we divide the work among all the CoE members and it’s clear who is the contact point for each proposal."

This could be the right way. Every CoE member should be a facilitator of assigned proposals.
This role description is actualy a fits the role of a CoE member as well.

I might not have been expected at the beginning, but the whole concept is a work-in-progress.

So I think we’ve actually accomplished some good stuff with this. @uuazed has offered up a structure that makes sense for them to work from and also pinged us with the project management tool they can use to track proposals etc. I feel like that answers a lot of the concerns we had with communication and things potentially slipping through the cracks. The job now is for us, the community to get cracking on proposals that they can review and act on. The facilitator proposal may have been a huge fail, but I think it sparked the right response.

1 Like

It looks like the salaried facilitator proposal is very unpopular: social consensus in action! To that end, @uuazed set up a kanban board on github so the CoE can start trialing out this way of organizing things. As with everything else, this should be completely open/transparent to the public. Someone from the CoE will voluntarily take “lead” on a proposal to make sure it gets dealt with and passes through various decision “gates” in a timely fashion.

Still a few things to sort out. What if an elder never picks up a proposal to lead? What should the final “gates” be and for how long should a proposal sit in each gate before a decision needs to be made to move the proposal closer to approval or archival? I’m sure some might think of this as adding bureaucracy, but I see it as adding much needed process.

This proposal is a good test. I’ve decided to take lead and put my name as the CoE member assigned to the proposal on the kanban board. Given that this has gone through voting and has clearly failed, I will move it for archival shortly.

3 Likes