April Progress Update
New client onboarding, contributor onboarding, and IRL meetups!
Hello everyone!
I apologize for the delay of this newsletter, I got sick while traveling through Vietnam and Japan, which set me back by a week. I’m feeling better now, but need to catch up with my growing to-do list.
Please also scroll down if you don’t care about numbers, since we can meet and work together IRL. Below I also share a few books I read while traveling and would highly recommend looking into.
I hope you are all healthy and doing well, I will see you all soon!
Treasury Balance: ~ $5,567
555 USDC
0.08 BTC (~$4,836.28)
0.06 ETH (~$176)
Revenue: $2,780
(Branding workshops for Polywrap)
Profits: $555
Internal payments: $5,100
(Deep Teams)
Operational costs: $890.98
Project and Client Relationship Updates
Due to a conflict on one of our recent projects we have lost approx. $9,000.00 due to non-payment of the final invoice. After an extensive retrospective and discussions with the team, we decided to make several significant adjustments to our process:
New projects should be scoped in a paid, workshop-based session with the client. Instead of spending time creating a proposal before starting work, we design it together with the client. On a recent branding project, we facilitated branding workshops with a consecutive proposal scoping, together with the client (example below).
The payment for the initial workshops includes work on scoping the project and creating a detailed proposal. This means that the project manager is compensated for paying close attention to get all the details right.
First determining and aligning on the details, then calculating cost. Slowing down when defining the cost keeps our potential clients from “shopping around” for the best price and paying closer attention to the scope and quality.
The entire design process is split into separate shorter, more observable milestones. Each milestone has a unique deliverable and after the completion, each party can stop the project. It also makes each milestone more observable. Here is an example.
We are experimenting with an escrow service with LexDAO as an arbiter. This will mean that payments can not be withheld and will be released only when both parties agree. In case of disagreement, a paid (5% of invoice total) dispute resolution process involving LexDAO would start.
Project management (setting up project, timeline, team, calculating cost) will be handled by a separate person. We decided to separate the PM from the Creative Director responsibilities. The latter will focus only on the creative aspects of the project to avoid multi-tasking and splitting attention between creative challenges and administrative tasks. We will update the documentation after completing the project.
Creative Director double-checks the accuracy and details of all deliverables. To ensure consistency of the quality, team members’ work gets briefly reviewed by the creative director before submitting to the client.
Thanks to everyone from the team, as well as Tae and Sov for their advice on client relationships and onboarding!
New Deep Work Onboarding in Progress
We realized that the main challenge of onboarding new contributors into Deep Work is not knowing how to contribute but applying the knowledge to start weaving a more robust social network.
To solve this problem, we are exploring an interactive onboarding process for new contributors, consisting of the following components. All work in progress:
An onboarding document outlining our cultural values and norms, and a CTA
A set of practices to try out, to put the values in practice and connecting to existing members
Volunteering projects and organizations, like Build_republic
A more extensive “Litepaper“, with Deep Work’s constitution with supportive research and evidence.
We deliberately avoid issuing extrinsic rewards (like points and tokens) for completing exercises, as our goal for now is to create a space where we are intrinsically motivated to be our best selves. We’re working on it in the #education channel.
IRL Meetup Opportunities!
DevCon 2024 - Bangkok
Let us know if you would like to join DevCon this year. There are some opportunities to host design-related workshops, as well as side events. I will post some ideas in this channel.
Co-living & Co-deepworking Retreat
We are exploring the idea of hosting a retreat to stay together, get to know each other better and collaborate. You can follow the conversation in this channel, feel free to leave a reaction to Justina’s post if you’d like to join.
Some Smaller Updates
I’m currently advising friends and founders on organizational design. Facilitating a session to create an org chart (based on this framework) and helping them resolve their individual problems seems very helpful so far.
I have been invited to Costa Rica Metacamp IV and will host a workshop on organizational design there. As prep, I might facilitate an online-workshop for everyone who is interested in organizational design and bringing structure to achieving goals in an age of complexity and uncertainty.
Our organization might need clearer boundaries to protect our brand from bad actors. Currently, anyone can claim to be from Deep Work and especially when we are referring freelancers, the brand can be misinterpreted by clients.
For BD, I am focused on establishing more partnerships with funds and marketing agencies. This should reinforce our existing recommendation-based inbound channels.
Reading material I recommend
Positive Computing by Rafael A. Calvo and Dorian Peters
Discusses pro-social and human-focused design and development of technology. A lot of research on what increases human well-being, common pitfalls in tech, and how to design for well-being and health.
Working in Public by Nadia Eghbal
Talks about how open-source software has been built and the main issues with open source software development. Mentions different types of contributions and the challenge of long-term maintenance of open-source technical infrastructure.
Roads and Bridges by Nadia Eghbal
A shorter comparison of digital and physical infrastructure, with suggestions for long-term sustainable business models.
Postcapitalism: A Guide To Our Future by Paul Mason
Outlines why capitalism has led to many social problems and why it’s collapsing. Offers techonology-agnostic suggestions for a transition into a less market-based and more globalized peer-production society.
Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke
Why we engage in addictive behaviors and offers tools and practices to circumvent them. It also touches on why our workplaces are designed for addiction and how truthtelling makes us happier.
Finally, I recently read a paper called “Friction-in-design” by Brett Frischmann (who will host a seminar at MetaGov on May 15h) and Susan Benesch. The paper dives more deeply into the introduction of specific types of friction to ensure safer digital infrastrucutre, similar to speedbumps slowing down traffic on a street.
Thank you for reaching out to me when you have questions and helping out with all kinds of things. Enjoy your day, it’s a pleasure to work with you all!