[Sphereon BV] Niels Klomp

[Niels Klomp]

Management exist everywhere, I get that, and good management is better than poor management.
But what about "workers" and getting work done?
In your mind, 1) who is "doing the work" that will bring management's ideas within a road map to life?
2) Who will promote them outside the community? And ...

Thx for the questions Jason. To be honest I am unsure how to answer your questions, or maybe more to the point what the actual questions are you raise. Let me explain why I am unsure. Your questions seem to suggest that management and "workers" are 2 complete separate camps instead of a team. More like the classical manager telling everyone what to do and when to do it otherwise they are getting fired.

I don't believe in that at all. We are dealing with highly educated and smart people. You don't tell engineers and professionals how to actually do their job at every details level. You get into discussion with them to ensure the goals are aligned and readjusted where needed based on feedback. Together forming a better output of the direction. You ensure they are in the know about short, medium and long term goals and you ask them how and what could change if for whatever situation you need to deviate from the path.

Any director that would be in the way of that type of collaboration should be sent home immediately because it means he/she will not serve the majority of stakeholders.

3) Will we still have a system available where ANO's can bring proposals to get funding for their own ideas of how to create value for the protocol?
Thank you for addressing these questions

Yes there will certainly be room for that. Just for the simple fact you want to cater for good/innovative new ideas as well as new parties. I think it would make sense to include standing parties more in that process. I do believe it would have to become more a milestone based approach, instead of just handing over the money and hoping for the best.

Besides a system where there is room for your own proposals and/or new startups/products I would make room to fund the short, medium and long term goals that the protocol itself defines. That is in marketing, development, governance and setting up long term viability of the protocol itself.

 

[Niels Klomp]

Thanks for your application. You probably stated this previously, but I'm having trouble picking up on a few things. So can you concisely clarify a few things for me.

1) in a few concise bullets what is your vision of what you think a director should be?

First of all I am interpreting it as interim director, as that is what I am signing up for. I think I already answered this particular question in my 2nd post.

Although there is plenty of overlap, an interim director makes sure the to address failing parts of an organization/collaboration.
Key areas of a director:

• Maximize chances of succes for the protocol
• Ensure financials are in order for good times, but more importantly so survive bad times, as we know eventual bear cycles will follow again
• Ensure the work done by a diverse set of actors is as aligned as possible
• Ensure the protocol has a clear road ahead. Meaning the vision and strategy is hashed out with plans in place to act on those. You should always be able to (and actually do) ask yourself the question on decisions whether it fits strategy
• Ensure the protocol will be handed over to new leadership in more calm watters. It makes sense that we will prepare for a non-profit to take its place in the protocol, obviously with the standing parties having control over that entity
• Ensure the protocol becomes interesting again to invest in. By token holders but just as importantly by individual developers/integrators/companies using the protocol

2) In a few bullets what is your vision for the grant system and changes you would like to see to it?

3) What Role do you see the director as having in the grant system?

I will combine these two. I also partially addressed this in my response to Jason. I don't want to draw too many conclusions at this point in time, as we really need to follow proper steps first before proposing to change the grant system altogether.

First of all in my current thinking it makes sense to at least have a certain percentage allocated towards grantpool 2.0. Meaning we should still have a system in place where outside entities as well as current entities can propose their ideas and products to see whether it can get funded. That system would have to be more milestone related though. So no more 60K grants with 3 bulletpoints

Then there would be the specifications and proposals that we as a protocol have defined. Meaning we come up with plans and where applicable specs, for developers to implement. The ANOs would be involved in ensuring they feel the plans and importance of these plans are in order for the next few months. The director will be involved in ensuring this process takes place as well as ensuring together with the core committee that the work performed here stays on track as much as possible. This type of work will probably be nor really milestone specific, as it doesn't make sense to offload all risks on things the protocol would like to achieve on developers. The director will ask/propose the budgets for these and will allocate these budgets towards execution.

So ANOs will be responsible in either giving the OK to the protocol defined work, or are involved in defining those if they wish. The director gets the OK for the budget from the protocol as well. Then the director ensures the budget is being used towards that work.

Next to that their would be a grantpool 2.0, that would be milestone based. That is too attract ideas which either are not deemed in line with the core protocol, or for which the requestor simply wants to go down their own route. It make sense to either have the core committee, or a newly formed group overseeing that. Meaning to judge whether milestones are achieved. The director would then allocate the money to the grantee or not.


I have seen I believe Paul mentioning centralization today. I hope that doesn't come from self interest. Yes appointing a director means more centralization in day to day decision making. But that is exactly the part which we have failed at. It certainly doesn't mean the standing parties have nothing to say anymore. They simply aren't involved in day to day questions and decisions if they don't want to. Anyone willing to help out is welcome of course.

 

[Jason Gregoire]

Thank you for the response.

Thx for the questions Jason. To be honest I am unsure how to answer your questions, or maybe more to the point what the actual questions are you raise. Let me explain why I am unsure. Your questions seem to suggest that management and "workers" are 2 complete separate camps instead of a team. More like the classical manager telling everyone what to do and when to do it otherwise they are getting fired.

The question was trying to help me understand at a high level how you foresee work being done.
From my limited understanding, no one really "works" for the director. If this is true, is the idea that you would work with the council to formulate goals under a broad vision, and then encourage others (internal and external teams) to directly work towards achieving these specified goals by creating project bounties from the council's budget that teams can apply for? So in summary something like this: director and council create goals, director forms project bounties to achieve goals, teams apply for bounties, teams complete projects, community goals achieved?

 

[Niels Klomp]

Pretty much, except that the council gives the OK for the director budget, and that the director ensures the allocation gets done, with obvious full transparency to the board. In order to ensure a proper sustainable road ahead, it is to be expected that the director would like to create a legal entity in the form of a non-profit for next leadership. Obviously without removing the eventual power from standing parties. It would also make sense to put some roles (which could be part-time) in that entity.

One of the bigger problems is continuity. Especially in bad times. We have seen a big outflux and that is something to prevent. That can be formed in multiple ways, but that also ties into the amount of resources available to the protocol, which in turn is reliant on the tokenomics, which in turn is reliant on the other plans. Just sketching the outlines here.

 

[WB]

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