Ep 21 - DAO Contributor Series - Mark Redito(Songcamp)
12:48AM Mar 17, +0000
Speakers:
Jess Sloss
Mark Redito
Keywords:
dao
organizations
people
space
community
trust
mark
building
feel
idea
curious
figured
early
create
seed
club
talk
conversation
onus
challenge
Hello friends, and welcome back to club Seed Club's podcast. My name is Jess, your host, and today we continue with our contributor series deep dives into conversations with folks who are early contributors to many of the DAOs you know and love. Today we're joined by Mark Redito who's a core contributor to Songcamp, which I think just kicked off their third camp, camp chaos this week. So if you haven't checked them out, but give them a shout. Mark is an early contributor to web3 that we get into some conversation about what he was doing before he made the leap. We delve into the conversation around trust building and community and what that looks like from Mark's perspective, you'll see Mark is a very thoughtful human being in this matter, talking about resolving conflicts and DAOs versus traditional organizations, and spoke specifically about the social and human aspect of DAOs versus the technological one. Mark shares a bunch of resources, but where he's looking for inspiration, and where his philosophical ideas emerge from, it was a lovely Saturday afternoon conversation remark and I finally got a chance to go deep on some of these things. And I think you'll enjoy it. So let's jump into it.
Mark, welcome to Club.
Thank you, Jess, thank you. I'm so excited for this conversation. Because we've seen each other, we've hung out with each other, but haven't had a chance for a one on one. And so this is such a good space to do that.
Yeah, I think it's funny, because thinking about preparing for this chat. And I'm like, I'm not going to prepare for this chat. Because I think there's just like this abundance of raw material for us to get into. And yeah, I know you from your work, a lot of people have amazing things to say about you, obviously, big fan of Songcamp. And the amazing work that's being done over there. So let's just kick off, how do you introduce yourself these days?
Well, I introduced myself usually with the roles that I play or my interests. And so I would quickly introduce myself as an artist, a technologist and a community builder, and also a gardener. So that's those are sort of like, the containers that I sort of like share with people.
All right, and where are you playing those containers these days? In pursuit of what
my main contribution right now is with Songcamp? I guess in Songcamp, we call ourselves designers. And so my role is that of a community and operations designer. I think that with my background as an artist, I think that these roles carry a certain creative spirit in them, especially in the context of like web three, where there's no playbook yet. And we're all figuring out best practices. I feel like that's such a creative space to sort of like play in.
I love that I was described my interest in business and technology as being a creative pursuit. Yes, I like that. Yeah, you're right. There's a lot of room for creativity in a space that is still trying to figure out what it is. And I think so much like the the early attractiveness for early community members at a place like Songcamp has been sort of that environment, the freedom and openness and lack of certainty in how everything should get done and the type of people that attract there. I'm curious, like, literally zoom out a little bit before you fell into the web three rabbit hole, what were you up to,
I will just touch on the key points that I feel like inform or influence where I am right now. And so a lot of my youth has been spent in DIY circles, underground scenes, punk scenes. And so all my young adult life I've been playing in punk bands been interfacing with different subcultures, hardcore scene underground electronic scene. And around 2013 is when I went full time as an artist, I did all that stuff like album, releases, press cycles, touring, and then was also part of different collectives to around the mid 2000s. That collective has been sort of like informed or shaped a lot of like, how I see community in that these niche spaces, were all sort of like, composed of musicians, experimenters and we would all sort of like hold shows on like, tiny chat I'm not sure if you're familiar with tiny chat. It's like a an old discord or pre discord type messaging platform with video. And you would hold shows there and all the music that's being played. It's like weird, like weird electronic music. And so that's sort of that gave me a peek are really informed like how I see digital communities around 2020 When the pandemic started, I sort of like was in a phase in a season where it's like, Okay, I did the thing. I've done all this creative stuff, what else is out there. And that led me to the web three, that led me to FWB that led me to wearable. And that led me to Songcamp. And so within these spaces, I sort of like contributed a little bit more of my creative spirit. I think from then on, I become like, deeply involved in web three and became embedded in the ecosystem and the community.
Curious, there's a lot of discussion talk tools being built around the this idea of DAO onboarding, many folks out there in the world that are have contributed at DAOs, or I think are excited about potentially contributing, I think there's sort of this like, feeling of friction and uncertainty and like this opaqueness that kind of exists. And so I'm really curious about your process from going from somebody who's maybe on the outside, quote, unquote, to somebody who's a core contributor in an organization like Songcamp, what was that process like for you?
So when you mentioned like onboarding, how I've on boarded myself, maybe patients is the word that comes to mind. Because when I initially entered the DAO space, people were thinking about onboarding, right, but the systems are not as clear. And so there's a lot of context building going on. And the way that I see it is that the onus is on me to actually learn terminologies, learn the technology, learn also about the social layer, the social operating system of a DAO, a lot of like how DAOs work takes us ration from the centralized or flat organizations that came before it, like co ops, for example, sociocracy holacracy. And so it was really me when I was onboarding, okay. I've tried to gain first hand experience by joining like FWB by joining like a wearable, and sort of figure out, okay, how do these systems work? How do these orgs work, and I found that each DAO has their own culture and their own way of doing things that might have been informed by the early people who were there. And some came from, like startup background, some came from the corporate backgrounds, some came from like nonprofits. And so it was really a journey of learning. And I think there's a tendency for us as DAO operators and who think about inviting contributors in I mean, there's a lot of value and making it easy, making it accessible, making it understandable. But there's also a part there that the onus is also on the people coming in to actually build context and learn how these things work. And they feel like that also involves humility, as well, that I don't know what's going on. But please take a seat, you know, it's okay. It's okay to be confused. I think most of us are also confused. So it's okay. You know, we're in this together, I think that comes to mind in terms of like onboarding.
Even just how you phrase that I think it's been a fairly consistent themes for the folks we've talked to so far is this sense of personal responsibility in and around it? And I think that is contrary to how many are sort of thinking about that broader question of DAO onboarding. And that it's usually comes from a point of like, reducing friction, making it easier idea that scale somehow wins here, I think this idea of the importance of building context, the necessity of of sort of spending the time to understand the context. Yeah, and sort of recognition that there's so much more human connection and the DAOs are more human than tech, it's not about just signing up and going through a funnel to join a membership site. Like there's a whole lot of other nuance that Yeah, I wonder like, do you think that tools are the solution to making that easier, or if we're gonna make DAO onboarding easier? And I think about like the the next mark, who's gonna come in and join Songcamp, or whatever, like, we have the magic wand, what are we? What are we making magic on? What changes?
You know, your prom reminds me of this tweet that I saw. Shout out Chase Chapman. And she was saying that currently where we're at, we're using the wrong mental models, right? Then she touches on the tech layer and the social layer on the tech layer, which is very useful. We're talking about like permissionless, or interoperability. And then on the social layer, we're talking about sociocracy, like holacracy, or co ops. And so I think that the tech and the community aspect of the social layer of it in my understanding are symbiotic. They each sort of like, complement each other. When people ask me who have backgrounds in like activist groups or nonprofits or co ops, my definition of DAO is like, yes, we could embed these social operating systems using these much more better tools that enhance trust that enhance transparency. All of that are trust building mechanisms. I think, in my current mental model, when we talk about DAOs we're both talking about the social layer and the tech layer smashed into one. Is it something that is also Similar to how you see it just.
Yeah, I think the DAOs are organizations built on different rails and organizations are a mixture of tools, tech and human beings, something that really stood out in my conversation with Chase the other day, we're sort of starting to tease apart that technology versus humanity thing. And I think for the magic of DAOs, to really come true, we need to be able to both lean into, like you're talking about trust building. So the social scalability of the technology of what blockchains provide, and also recognize that I think the further up the stack we get from the infrastructure layer, the more human beings play, and probably should play. And so like thinking through the more human interaction points with these organizations, I think the thing that's most exciting to me, and I feel like the majority of the barriers to that evolution of DAOs right now, they're not tech based that solutions to those barriers will be tech enabled. But it's needs to come from both use cases driven from DAOs. And human beings. And majority of the friction points aren't technology based right now. But I think you sort of have to live in that nuanced world where it's like, yeah, it's both need to move forward. Otherwise, we don't get to where we want to get to.
Yes, I agree. Like, it's more the tech in the social layer. On the social layer side, dude, I feel like there is a sort of paradigm shift happening, which could be a high barrier sometimes, and acknowledge that a lot of us, you know, a lot of our peers come from structured, hierarchical circles. And of course, if that's what you know, it informs like how we design this space, sometimes part of my day to day is to also sort of like educate people, or at the share what I know, this whole sort of like self management, self organized groups, while some circles operate like that, even before DAOs. But it's not the status quo. I think the barrier that I see, there's no technology. And then there's also like this novel way of working, which is like, most of us aren't familiar with.
Yeah, this is thinking about, like the amount of time spent working in a hierarchical organization versus the amount of time spent in a self managed or non hierarchical organization like across all of humanity is, doesn't show up on that pie chart, really, there's an even more nuanced challenge that comes out of that. And that, we need to recognize that for some things, and in some situations, hierarchy is better. And or maybe better way of saying that is that there are trade offs in all structures. And so being aware of those trade offs is important. Why I'm so vocal about the need for more DAOs. And that that is the solution to all these challenges, I think, is that we just need to have more more people working in more and more ways to both learn and experiment. And also to understand those nuances. Because right now, I think we still end up with fairly ideologically driven decisions or structures that are probably good in the early days to get things done. But I think we're sort of moving to a phase right now where pragmatism, realism progress, business models, all these sort of things become more and more important, and we shouldn't be afraid to make the trade offs, I think, at least in pursuit of more detailed understanding.
1,000% That resonates with me. Right now we're talking about centralized versus decentralized. And what I'm hearing is that for, for some goals, where the goal is efficiency, maybe rapidness, I think that small teams, or small core teams, or centralized sort of like teams could achieve that goal better. And so I'm also with that notion that there might be like in an ecosystem, there might be teams that are much more centralized, there might be teams that are much more decentralized, it really depends on the goal. And I think in my experience, I've seen that when you're building a product, it's possibly a little better and a little much more faster when then when it's centralized. Whereas if we're talking about wider governance, where the decision will affect the whole community, maybe that can be decentralized. Like you said, like, there's like nuances here, I'm careful to say like, oh, decentralized is the only way? No, it's not.
We just have to hold things as being finite in some way or binary, right? It's either going to be this or the other. And I think what's most exciting now about web three, generally, is just that there are so many more potentials. The fact that for decades, the way to build a valuable startup company was to find a technology advantage, push that technology advantage, maybe build community around it, profit. And now today, we can start off with this idea of community ownership or collaboration or community is like the starting point, the inspiration, the ownership point. It's not to say that one of those is better than the other necessarily is just to say, like, we now have choice. And least this new path is actually most interesting to me right now. It's new, it's undiscovered, it's sort of a lot of question marks and opportunities around it. But I think just looking at the world today is just having many many more nuanced options for going and playing creativity to the design of organizations and businesses. That's the exciting part. And so like I said, in this privileged place where I used to work with 20 amazing projects on a fairly regular basis, and I'd find myself sitting there, almost in this tension where people Put a question or a challenge, or a solution to a challenge. And I'm like, that's really not how I would solve that challenge. But that's a really cool experiment. And this is truly my experience working with Matthew at Songcamp. Right, which is like, big brain a joke all the time about how much he frustrates me, because it comes to the table with a guy got figured out, and he lays out everything on the table. And I'm like, Okay, I would not do it that way. I totally get where you're coming from though. I love that experiment. We got to go do it. Let's go do it. And then two weeks later, he's like, Okay, well, I got it all figured out. I'm like, wait, but I thought we had it figured out before. It's like, Yeah, but so there's just sort of this like, I think, I'm sure experiences. But it is, like the only I just love it. Because it's like, yeah, like, I don't know. I don't know, that seems like a, it's a logical experiment. And we just get to get to be a part of perpetuating many, many, many more of these experiments. And I think we just don't have enough of those experiments out there. So let's go do it. I think that's why we have so many artists and creatives sort of playing in this space right now is because they see raw materials, and they're like, Well, yeah, I'm gonna go make something with that. Like, why the hell would I?
1,000% 1,000%. And I think what you're speaking to is my day to day talking with Matthew every day. It's like, okay, here's the plan. And then the next day, it's like, oh, actually, here's the plan. And then the next day is like, here's the plan. For me. And maybe this speaks to like our and you as well, just, you know, I know that you also have like a music background. I think it has sort of like it comes from or stems from that creative spirit, right? Where it's like, like you said, we have these raw materials, and we could actually shape them into however we want. And so part of that is experimenting, part of that is iterating on it, part of it is is looking ahead, Okay, what else is novel? What is interesting, what could be a stepping stone into something that could be fresher, innovative. And so that's our approach, like across the whole Songcamp ecosystem, from our camps to like product design. It's like, okay, cool. What if we do this? Or how about this, and I know that it's almost like self selecting, because not everyone operates in that way. And it could be very uncertain, very confusing, too. But I feel like artists, creative people embody that naturally.
To me, it's that innovative experience. And that is where values can be created in these organizations. once something's figured out, I think it's an easy template to apply, and it becomes less interesting. I think DAOs are more the evolution of a startup than it is a membership site, or a newsletter or a Facebook group, it is through the collaboration and creativity and innovation, that value will be created there. And the deeper you are in the space, the more that innovation is challenged by the rapid innovation and iteration that's happening around you. And I think it probably is very much like music, right? Where there is just this abundance of creativity that you are also creating within. And I think there's sort of like a lot more nuanced innovation that happens within that highly self referencing world. There's a lot of similarities between some a lot of creative pursuits and DAOs. And so we're spending a lot of time thinking about like, what is a great project for Seed Club? I think about teams that are able to really take what is the new or interesting embed that are co opted or embrace it or collaborate with it or use it as sort of like an inspiration point. Yeah, when I think that there's so much more iteration to come from all these organizations just trying to create a culture and a tech stack and a team that can kind of embrace and live within that world. And I'm actually curious, I know, Songcamp have sort of been in this state of this as a figuring it out, right? Like there's been this evolution, it started with such a, an innocent idea concept and kind of just attracted a lot of attention and excitement and is sort of going on, but as somebody who's an early contributor to one of these DAOs, you sort of are forced to be very effective, or at least, okay, with operating in uncertainty and lack of clarity. And I'm curious if you can give us some insight into how you have managed to be effective and ever evolving nonstatic organization.
What comes to mind, for me, is a sense of humility, humility, in the sense that it's okay to not have everything figured out. It's okay, that that some people are much more smarter than you and that you can learn from them. That's a huge thing for me. And that's also something that I continuously sort of, like challenging myself, like, how can I dissolve my ego? How can I actually hold this idea? Such that I can sort of like, listen to it, understand it, and assimilate it, and then possibly add my own thoughts? I think a lot of our day to day, or at least my day to day is like that, okay, hearing other people, okay, here is our problem, or here is what we want to do. What else could we do like what sort of approaches can be pursue? And that involves a lot of like, challenging my own ego and challenging like my own sort of ideas. I think this is the way to do it. But then also like having that openness to sort of like, actually, say, for example, will, who was part of our communities like, will actually have a better idea, which is much more elegant, much more simpler? Why don't we do that? That's something that I've learned to really just like, listen first and understand what's being said, before you actually give your thoughts on it. Adaptability is another core value that I've learned being part of collective and distributed networks. Because if things are unknown, if things are uncertain, how can you sort of like have a mindset of sensing and feeling and looking ahead? Because it's unknown? And all you can do is really to adapt and be flexible? Which is something that I've learned from gardening? You have a garden to write? Jess.
I do. Actually. I was a gardener professionally for a while as well.
Wow. That's amazing. I think that's a connection point with us and my gardener, but not professionally. I'm a hobbyist. For example, if you're sort of like planning for for the upcoming season, oh, here are the vegetables here, the plants I'm going to grow, you toiled the beds, you put in fertilizer, putting compost in there, and you're sort of like, okay, cool. And then you find out that, yeah, some plants thrive, some plants don't. And that's okay, the next season, you now know what to do, maybe plant earlier or plant later, there's all these levers that you can implement, that involves a lot of like sensing, and knowing, and knowing the seasons, knowing everything. One has to be adaptable and flexible. And I really love that Seed Club is using one of those like gardening metaphors, because like to me, Ah, yes, that's right. It totally makes sense to me.
There's an ongoing challenge within Seed Club about how much should we be leaning into the garden metaphors, there are many that can be made, it shouldn't be surprised that we're seeing things like seasons be tools used by DAOs, to define and iterate and compress that learning experience that truly happens over many, many months or years and in the garden context directly, and I guess will probably happen in the same way for DAOs. But trying to tackle that, as far as like a core organizational tenant, I think makes a ton of sense. They're sort of like, you know, so much of decision making organization authority to degree within DAOs is based on social relationships that exist in there. And so I think there's this idea of flat hierarchy or hierarchy lists organizations, and I just don't think that's the reality that we're seeing anywhere within within DAOs, whether that's articulated through an oral structure, or it is sort of emergent through certain people's abilities that are their time, they're able to put in the information they might have, etc. These sort of structures exist. And but there is sort of like this ideological drive and belief that fighting against that inherited belief around hierarchy, I think it's pretty consistent in in most of the organizations I work in. And so the most important piece, and what I'm kind of leading up to here is this trust in others in the organization as almost like a metric for how effective a team is going to be. And I'm curious, from my understanding, sort of hold this role within Songcamp, either officially or unofficially, of trust builder, community building, in my mind is very much about building trust. And even just in a number of your answers here at highlights that I'm curious how you think about stewarding trust within an organization that for context, Songcamp goes, there's the sort of big inflection points where the community kind of shrinks back down to die hardcore believers. And obviously, you do a camp and there's like, a whole bunch of new blood that comes in. So I'm curious on how you build trust.
I think trust is built primarily through interactions with people. And that could be one on one interactions that could be like group interactions that are repeated over time. It's like the same approach as friendship, the more that we talk to each other, the more that we become vulnerable to each other, the more that we sort of depend on each other that could also be applied into larger groups. How can we have repeated interactions with each other? How can we exhibit pro social behaviors with each other? How do we care about each other? How can we be transparent with each other? Also, like how can our information flow frictionlessly from different teams, and that becomes a challenge as organizations and DAO sort of like scale and evolve? I think what comes to mind is, I guess, the model of like circles, pods. And I think a lot of our space has been talking about that, you know, mini DAOs sub DAOs, etc. Connected to trust, like, Well, how do we because information is trust. Also, how can the information flow from each circle? Having this sort of infinity loop? I guess those are the things that come to mind in terms of like trust building, I would love to hear on your end, like what is trust building to you?
I love this question like, how would I answer that question? I love where you went with it. I don't think I would have answered information. And yet I think that is such an important piece. And if you think about the biggest friction to trust or to progress or collaboration, information asymmetry, I think is is the big challenge. One where what I think will always exist that we also have to fight against it. And that fight is worthwhile, even though it will always sort of be a losing effort, ultimately. Because yeah, you're right, I just think back to moments where other there's some conflict or disagreement, and just the incredible power of conversation and discussion and sort of leaning in and trying to understand where other people are coming from, and just how effective that can be, and sort of diffusing or solving those problems. And I sort of zoom that out a bit and think about the structural situations that we're creating within DAOs, the point of friction or conflict almost inevitably, is going to be where a lack of communication or a lack of trust, and underneath that I think it's a lack of communication, the idea of how the reduce information asymmetry is a tool of building trust, I think is fascinating. And even on a higher level, right? Like, there's sort of trust building that needs to get done within these organizations. But there's also like an external brand, let's just call that trust as well, right? Where my hope is, somebody sees Songcamp, or Seed Club, and they go, That's DAO. I've heard about him before I trust those guys, I'm gonna give them the benefit of the DAO, or I want to buy their tokens, or I want to be a part of this thing. And again, that's about clear communication and endless trade off that happened in all those, which I think is super interesting.
1,000% Man, I mean, you touching on like communication, touching on like, how do we resolve conflicts, right? And it gets a lot of my organizational thinking comes from like teal organizations, self manage groups, and they value communication a lot. I was reading a chapter from reinventing organizations, and they were talking about the conflict resolution, and how do we resolve conflicts, and their design is so simple and elegant. And the core of it is really communication. And there's like different steps one would be like, if you have an issue with someone, you talk to them directly, and you resolve that issue between yourselves. And then from there, if that is not resolved, it then escalates into like a mediator, third party mediator, and then a panel mediation, and then finally, an arbitrator. And so all of these steps in this design is like you talk to the person first, talk to them directly, and resolve the issue first, and not involve everyone into this like, issue, which I feel like that's something that I guess if you're someone who comes from the corporate world, you go to HR directly, I have a problem, this person, this person is not working. But in self organized groups. It's like no, you talk to that person directly. The onus is on you to talk to them, which is interesting, I feel like to some of us may not be natural.
Yeah, I think it's natural. For many folks, the idea even just saying conflict is something that can make people want to just turn away. And I gotta say, I'm not the biggest fan of conflict personally. But I do think like, as an early contributor, you're obviously a leader in Songcamp, whether you like it or not, there is the sense of responsibility for living demonstrating being an example of how to operate in these organizations. And, and there's sort of this dual wielding challenge of both a trying to figure it out, and then B being a good example. Are you conscious of that type of action? Are you consciously trying to be a good example in the leadership role that you have in Songcamp? Or is that more of an unconscious thing?
I guess, I don't take this role lightly. In fact, I actually hold it sacred. If people are depending on me for something, then I have to do it the best that I can, in the most honest way that I can I carry these responsibilities and take them really seriously. A part of me is also sort of like caring for the self. Because if you're caring for community and a picture, you might also feel this way. It's not easy to hold the community. It's not easy to think about them, like almost every day, and how do we hold space for people? How do we hold space for them to be creative, it takes a lot of emotional energy, and cognitive energy. And so before one gives, I think you also have to give to yourself and to me, I make it a point to really care for myself. If it's off work hours, it's off work hours, I'm not responding to any of your messages, visit weekend, I am not online at all. And the way that I see it is like, because I give my soul to it. I give my whole soul to the community. And so if I don't have stuff, or I don't have like space for myself, how can I give fully? That's how I see sort of like leadership in terms of this space. I feel like a lot of our peers sometimes forget that forget to take care of themselves, because it's just like, oh, man, everyone's depending on me. Oh, I need to respond to this. Oh, there's an issue here. You know, and there's value to that and you know, in rapid response, but I hope that they don't forget that they're also human to with their own needs.
Yeah, I feel like you're the Seed Club team talking to me right now. Awesome, off a fresh two week, probably the first two weeks that I've had meaningful downtime and the last two years and that was due to getting COVID Guess what! your timing is up! But yeah, I think that's that's like, my big lesson out of that is just like if you have a great team, which I think respectively we both do, right? There's incredible human beings that are working for in and around both of the organizations that were involved in, guess what talented people can not only ensure that the train stays on the track, but actually better at many things than I am. To me that's like that, you know, we talk about trust building. And we talk about sort of like the role of leadership in these organizations. And that's really where my mind goes is is in creating space space was given to me to be early in this thing. And now I have the opportunity to give that space to others. And they have the opportunity to create that space for others. And so, you know, this idea of that we call our team leads stewards, specifically, because their goal isn't to make the decisions or goal isn't to get the things done, that our job is to create the environment in which those decisions get made. And those things get done and the information gets shared. And we're able to kind of come together as this ever growing collective of collectives that are aimed towards the same thing. And so whether I'm on purpose, which I think I have done, but also accidentally due to being sick, you sort of create the space and people step up into that space. And I think, that moment of feeling to me that when I work with our early project teams, that is a inflection point that I'm just so excited to be on a path with them when they get to to achieve where you, I was described as like logging into discord and seeing a chat like a 30 person live chat happening that you had no idea was either happening, or what was going on. And I was like, Okay, well, I just kind of want to listen to what's going on here. But also kind of don't, because I'd want to give them spit. And it's just like that moment of this thing, taking taking its own thing. Earlier this week, we did a strategy type session, and at this moment of just looking around the table digitally, and just seeing like, these incredible human beings that I respect, so much for their talent in the way that they are pouring their hearts and souls into the creation of this thing that was nothing more than a nascent idea and a telegram group, like a year and a half ago into it's just fucking mind blowing. There was just this moment of like, emotionality kind of came over me because, like what's, and then you think about like, this is happening, time and time and time again, right? And it's this like, to me that's like the, if I could just bottle up the why why build community first, why? Why ownership matters? Why DAOs? That's the what is there's this, like, we're all in it. We all have a stake in it, we see an opportunity, we're taking advantage of this gift that is sort of bestowed itself upon us for whatever reason. And there's this mutual respect and appreciation that, yeah, it's just so incredible.
1,000% It's like when you touched on that experience of yours, like seeing your team actually gathering together and actually making their own decisions. It's such a beautiful thing that I shared that too, that I see all these conversations going on in their server, these meetings. And the question for me is like, do I need to be there? I don't need to be there. I don't need to be there. And they feel like it's, it also challenges the egos like, oh, you know, I'm needed. I am here. But then in reality, it's like, I don't need to be there. They could take care of it. And I think that involves like humility and trust, like, yeah, they got it, they got it, which also makes me think about product design and community design. Whenever I design something within Songcamp, I leave holes enough, I just create the skeleton, and then you guys fill it out, which sort of like mimics my music process, when I'm working with the vocalist leave the instrumental as open enough as possible so they could fill in the pockets.
So my management advice in a similar vein is sometimes it's important to just not show up. Maybe that's not the best advice. I like the idea of designing for gaps or spaces. Like that's a lot more proactive and not showing up but but might not showing up advises well earned in that one day, I just didn't show up on purpose. I just didn't show up and guess what better outcome happened than if I was there. And I know there's sort of this like mixture of as an entrepreneur, so important, I think to have a sense of responsibility and like I'm going to make this work yet. It can also almost be sort of myopic, right? And that I am the only person who can make this work. My ideal DAO founding team has a whole bunch of people who are like, I got to make this work. But they don't share that idea that I'm the only one that can make this work.
Absolutely. That's something that I share. Also, I want to make this work. I have a plan, guys, like you said, you know, it might be myopic, it might be narrow. I feel like there's a lot of value in seeing like other perspectives to like, the idea becomes much more well rounded rather than this like singular thing. Also, it depends, you know, what sort of goal are we sort of like trying to do like if it's a product with a specific sort of outcome, then maybe that's a different approach.
Improv is how we build DAOs because You're right, like the product team within Seed Club needs to have a strong opinion. And it's probably not going to benefit from 42 people joining in there. Same thing with like working with early stage projects, throwing 1000 human beings at early stage projects is not remotely useful, right? But throwing the right three people is incredibly useful. And so, so much of the that's sort of figuring out and the complexity of it all is that we need to have both of those types of things operating in a similar environment, and being cohesive. And I think that's sort of where the the superpower comes from. Because I think about those DAOs that are building much more product team centric, and yet we get to work with a number of them. There's some great ones out there, they're creating great products, would those products be more powerful if community felt like they had a meaningful ownership or saying it? Probably the big question, in my mind is just like, when and how. And I think that's kind of where we're, we're sort of doing that dance right now, where there's two distinct, like, we're gonna build community first community decisions, collective, etc. And then there's like, No, we're gonna have a strong opinion, we're going to make a lot of progress. And at some point, those things are going to cross over into sort of the opposite sides of, you know, one building community first and one building product first. And I think the integration point is really where most of the value gets unlocked. But I don't know when or how that should be done. And, like, there's a lot of experiments and not pursued right now, which is exciting.
It's interesting, because it reminds me of FWB when you said that organizations or groups need to have an opinion. And I could sense that there are groups in there within the DAO within FWB that have clear opinions like this is what it should be, say, for example, editorial, here's how it should look like. And here's the voice that we're using. And I feel like that's the opinion. And here are the topics are things that we're going to talk about. And that's really valuable even with art to like curation is important in music as well. curation is important. Does it actually have a narrative that is aligned to say, the collective say, for example, if you're a label that is known for say, weird electronic music, then it has to have an opinion you like when you create a playlist? It's not always just like, random stuff. It needs to be something that's like cohesive and tells a story. That's what comes to mind when we talk about that.
What am I mean sayings that is parroted back to me often is I have an opinion, because I apparently have a lot of opinions. And I think, yeah, this last week, in Seed Club has been really about appreciating strong opinions. Like how valuable strong opinions are, if they're held in a space of respect and collaboration, then really thinking about the importance and the methodology around encouraging those strong opinions more broadly, demonstrating that a little bit because I think, like, I know, people have strong opinions, how do we make sure that we get them out because they're not useful? In our individual heads, that's where structure and methodologies really need to start to come to play, I think to to create the spaces for that to happen. And so, again, coming back to like, where's like the unlock happened in the space? I think it is. You mentioned self management quite a bit, I think there's just an immense amount of learning and experience that still needs to be adopted by some of our early organizations in the DAO space that really lean into the the social and human aspect of this stuff. And then build DAO tools around it.
You know, what comes to mind is like a governance practice called the consent based governance, which I think is being applied by a lot of like socio kradic organizations. And the main core of consent based governance is not asking for consensus, it is asking, if I present an idea to you I present a proposal, I am looking for objections to identifying where the objections are articulating it, naming it, and then the onus is on the objector to actually make this proposal better. It gives a lot of like responsibility to whoever is critiquing. Yes, you can have a strong opinion. Yes, you can critique it. Yes, you can object to it. But how can this be better? I think the main goal for consent based governance is that is to save to try guys, of course, you know, not every DAO decision needs to be like that. But I feel like for for something that involves that rapid deployment, that could be something that we can use in our space.
I'm curious, like, you are somebody who engages with the philosophy ideology, the the thoughtfulness, I guess, in the space, I'm curious, what are some resources? Or where are you looking for inspiration these days?
I do read a lot of books. And most of the books that I've been reading right now are in org design. And so reinventing organizations is one I first heard about that book over at EmCon, which I think we you also spoke there. My mind was blown. It's like I need to get this book, I need to get this book. And so that's whole book. I feel like it's almost like a Bible to me, or at least a jumping off point to see like what other sort of like novel ways of being together and being in community together of working together that has become like a source of inspiration for me. What else have I been sort of like reading and consuming right now. I've gotten this book, it's called radio silence. And it outlines or tells the history of the American hardcore scene from 1980s to the early 2000s. And that was a big, I mean, I was part of that subculture. And I feel like I still am, you know, by at heart, I'm still a punk. But just hearing that story of how these bands organized together, how they pull their resources together, and to actually create a culture around them. It's so fascinating to me. So that's another point of inspiration.
I love that because I think I have these moments every once in a while, which sort of started laughing at the game that we're playing here, because you know, there's so much be able to see like a trend before it happens, see all the things that go into it, and then all of a sudden, seeing it hit big is such a crazy experience. I think NFTs were a very clear sort of packaging of that for me. And and then you can sort of start to see those early stages starting to take shape again right now, and not as if they're predictors necessarily, but you can start to see like the initial energy or materials that could go into that, right and everybody playing the game playing the role playing sort of this explorer slash promoter slash speculators slash launch and investors slash creator. I think that's fascinating. And I can imagine that book captures that sort of experience. Well, I've heard a number of people sort of refer to the punk scene and as a sort of like a, an inspiration, or at least like a gateway into the space. And I've always enjoyed my conversations with those folks. So yeah, Mark, man, appreciate you spending just a bit over an hour of your day with me here and with us. With us. There's so many other people, this intimate one on one conversation that gets to be shared with 1000s. How exciting is that? Really appreciate all the work that you put into the space and the way that you do it. And for sharing your time with us here today. Where can we direct people? Where should they be finding you on the internet or things that you care about?
Well, first, just thank you for having me here. I really appreciate the space. And I'm really, I was very excited to actually like, talk to you one on one. And I'm grateful that we have this conversation. And then I'm hoping for many more. I want to shout out Nicole from Seed Club, Samsonite. I feel like we share you know, within Seed Club in Songcamp. We share like members. And so this feels like family. And so I want to give them a shout out. Where can people find me on Twitter, @markredito
and then my website markredito
.com. I have like a digital garden in my website where I sort of just explore fragments of ideas, pieces of music, etc, etc.
And of course, you have a Wikipedia page, which everybody should go check out and make ridiculous edits to realize that I'm like, Mark's got a Wikipedia page. Everyone is like there's is this guy, your Instagram image? I'm just I'm dying here. So yes, go give just Google the Mark Mark Redito
on the Googles. And while it will have at least minutes of entertainment, maybe hours. Mark, appreciate again, man and look forward to seeing you on the internet.
Thank you, Jess.
Folks, before we go, we made a little thing it's called the Seed Club job board feel like that under sells that a little bit. This is a touch point for us to make all sorts of work and collaboration experiences from within the Seed Club ecosystem available to you to your reader network.seedclub.xyz that's network.seedclub.xyz, you should go check it out right now. If you're a part of the Seed Club network. Let's get some jobs up on this job board. If you're looking for a way to contribute to some of the most exciting social DAOs out there, network.seedclub.xyz go check it out.