Gatherer's Guild Proposal draft

Hey folks, I created this proposal draft and I would like some feedback on its different aspects.

I don’t have a budget section yet as I would like to add some more collaborators and get feedback before finalizing it. I would plan to compensate myself with Cabin and maybe some eth upon completion of some of the proposed goals, as an incentive.

Summary

This proposal re-establishes a Gatherer’s Guild within Cabin. It is focused on two key deliverables: facilitating regular online community engagement and curating an information treasury / “A Pattern Language for Gatherings” - inspired by Christopher Alexander’s seminal work on architectural patterns, but applied to community design.

We will re-establish Gatherer’s guild by personally reaching out to Cabin members who have disengaged from the DAO. Then Gatherers will create digital connection points as a community of practice. Along the way we will curate high-quality information about the most effective ways to Gather.

This lays the foundation for the revival of engagement and a truly decentralized culture of belonging.

By empowering community members to step up into a community of practice around gathering, we can:

  • Strengthen the Cabin brand through organic, community-led growth
  • Create more opportunities for connection, belonging, and engagement.
  • Return to Cabin’s original, compelling Lore base.

Goals

1. Gather the Gatherers

  • Reach out to prominent members of the DAO who have stopped engaging.
  • Recruit past Build Week and Cabin Week participants.
  • Emphasize the compelling parts of Cabin’s culture.
  • Create specific requests tailored to each person’s strengths.

Success metrics:

  • At least 50 contacts

2. Create digital connection points with a facilitation community of practice.

  • gatherer’s guild participants take turns facilitating a weekly call in their own style.
  • Get access to a private chat or forum for sharing about growth edges, getting support, celebrating one another.
  • beta-test an apprenticeship program
  • Create a centralized list of Gatherers’ non-cabin centric events, online and IRL, to promote in the Cabin newsletter and on the app.

Success Metrics:

  • Bi-weekly community calls are occurring by the end of February
  • Core group of 5-8 active Gatherers
  • A few apprenticeship relationships are established

3. The Information Treasury

  • Create a playbook for successful gatherings, with templates for different types of events derived from successful patterns.
  • Establish pattern documentation tools and norms
  • Templates for scheduling, budgeting, and programming
  • Eventually, token-gate information for members of the guild

Success Metrics

  • Documentation of 20+ distinct gathering patterns in first quarter
  • Creation of 5 reusable event templates
  • Establishment of clear pattern documentation format
  • Active contribution from 25% of guild members

4. Technical integrations

From its inception as a DAO, Cabin has been a part of a movement towards blockchain innovation of systems of value. We need to return to testing out cutting-edge technology for doing so, starting with our obvious allies Coordinape and Hats. In this first quarter we will explore integrating Hats trees and Coordinape GIVE into the Cabin app, with the goal of creating community-based compensation models, reputation systems, and community treasuries.

  • Explore Hats Protocol for role-based permissions and recognition
  • Consider Coordinape for peer-to-peer value attribution
  • Focus on lightweight implementation after community engagement is established
  • create options for microtransactions in the Cabin app (stripe integration?) that can flow value to Cabin DAO and to individual creators.

Success metrics

  • Successful test implementation of Hat and/or Coordinape
  • One microtransaction option integrated in app
  • Revenue flow established to both DAO and creators

5. Spin Threads of Lore

Cabin’s unique emphasis on lore-building has been lost in the sauce. The revival of guilds should come along with revived Hatting ceremonies, ideally involving the guild heads who have already been Hatted. We can make a spectacle of this which creates fun and engaging content .

  • Document the evolution of Gatherer’s guild with video clips
  • create content re-weaving Cabin’s story

Success Metrics:

  • Minimum of 5 high-quality gathering documentation pieces
  • 1000+ views per piece
  • Positive engagement metrics on social platforms
7 Likes

Love this and would love to see it incubated in the Ideation Pod if you want to (pending the Pod’s approval, of course).

There are so many interesting ideas and directions here, my eyes started wandering a bit. Would it be possible to create a sort of a roadmap for what you’d like to focus on in the first month, what’s next, and so on (I saw already about the first quarter)?

4 Likes

Looks good. Anything that will build community again.

2 Likes

Yes, I’m open to doing this through the ideation pod. I would prefer approval from the DAO. But engagement so far has been low and I would need a sponsor to proceed, which I do not have. And I would appreciate the support from you, Kat, and Sav.

2 Likes

I’d lock in for this!

I also think there’s a great opportunity to bring more DEI into Cabin here.
Some thoughts on how we could weave that into the goals:

  1. Gather the Gatherers
    • Focus on reaching out to underrepresented groups in the community to ensure we’re bringing in a variety of voices and experiences.

  2. Digital Connection Points
    • When beta-testing an apprenticeship program, we could make an effort to train gatherers in inclusive facilitation techniques to make calls and interactions welcoming for everyone.
    • We could also add regular feedback surveys to see how comfortable people from different backgrounds feel and adjust as needed.

  3. The Information Treasury
    • When building templates and gathering patterns, we could actively involve people from diverse backgrounds so the playbook reflects and celebrates a wide range of experiences and cultural traditions.

  4. Spinning Threads of Lore
    • We could capture perspectives from different voices to create a richer, less one-dimmensional narrative

maybe we could even have someone take on a Diversity Advocate role to guide and champion these efforts.

@Matai might have some more valuable insights on DEI matters, as well.

4 Likes

Thank you for writing this proposal @eileen! I appreciate you putting in the time and effort to think through how you can proactively contribute to achieving the goals you want to see at Cabin.

  1. I agree with @Dahveed’s feedback that there are a lot of different ideas in here and it’s a bit hard to understand how they all tie together and contribute to us building our network city of neighborhoods. I’d encourage you to focus in on one idea that you think has the most potential for positive impact, and I agree that the Ideation Pod could be a great way to test that out.

  2. It’s helpful that you’ve outlined different goals and success metrics. I think that metrics like hats/coordinape integrations, micro-transaction integrations, outreach contacts, and community calls could be helpful contributions to building our network city, but I see them as tactics, not success metrics in-and-of themselves. I would want to understand: how does integrating Hats or Coordinape, for example, help us grow our network of neighborhoods or deepen connections within and between neighborhoods? Can we measure those things directly? If so, can we set goals using those metrics?

  3. I’d also want to understand why these things haven’t worked in the past and why we think this time is different. We’ve tried Hats and Coordinape integrations at Cabin before, and haven’t seen much success in using them for the use-cases we tried. We’ve tried hosting open-ended community calls, and have generally found that calls with more specific purpose lead to better outcomes. We’ve tried building a pattern language wiki and didn’t see much interest or adoption in terms of people actually using it. What are you proposing that is different, and why do we think the outcome will be different this time?

To summarize: I think there are some good ideas and raw potential in this proposal, but I’d love to see it more focused and more clear on how the actions you’d like to take help us grow and strengthen the network city.

Thank you @jon, @Kat, @davheed, and everyone else who has given me feedback here and privately. I’ll work on an updated proposal to post in the next few weeks and will be meeting with Grin next week to talk about how this intersects with the RPG.

4 Likes