Yes, but if your costs are paid by someone else (like in Alisha’s case) they will not be covered by the academic body, right?
Correct, but not always. The academic body also had funds of its own that people could request budget from, usually students. The legal body of this source of funding was the lead laboratory at Caltech (= ENS Foundation)
It’s actually quite funny because academic talks are not as cool as DAO talks. People prepare a lot and stress a lot. It matters a lot to give a good talk. We most often were in situations where people were not so keen on conferences since it occasionally became too stressful for some. You likely know what I mean.
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Not sure what you wanted to say here. I can surely convince some people I represent Tesla. So?
Decentralization means that not one member or a small number of members control the DAO. It doesn’t imply what you said.
You can. But if Tesla finds out, they can sue you. If you are an ENS on-chain voter, that is sufficient for you to represent ENS DAO theoretically without the risk of ENS Foundation suing you. Being a voter makes you part of the Council and members of the Council are legally part of the DAO. This is guaranteed in the Articles of Association of ENS Foundation which is the legal entity representing ENS DAO.
There is a subgroup in the Community WG that currently deals with IRL events. This subgroup will handle ENS DAO conference attendance in the future, as the scope of the subgroup grows. The subgroup is currently led by @Limes. I would definitely encourage everyone to get involved in that subgroup if it is something that interests them and message Limes with thoughts/feedback.
WG budgets are still a bit constrained this Term because we didn’t have a lot of information about subgroups when the budgets were passed. We should be in a much better place going into the Second Term to ensure that these subgroups are adequately funded.
With particular regard to supporting IRL events, when budgets were passed in the First Term it was still a time of massive uncertainty around whether events would take place at all due to the pandemic. A lot has changed in the past few months in terms travel and event rules, which will have a large impact on how the Community WG thinks about the scope and funding request for the ENS IRL subgroup moving into the Second Term.
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I hope this picks up pace. @Limes had mentioned that he was looking into possible IRL events about a month prior to ETHAmsterdam. I commented couple of times asking him if something materialised but only got silence in return. I also asked the Ecosystem WG in the weekly calls threads to discuss the IRL events but it didn’t occur. I am again sorry for the clamour but if things worked as they were supposed to, I wouldn’t need to do any of this.
I don’t think anyone blames you for that. The creation and infancy of the DAO has been frustrating to I think all members of the DAO in its own way.
Speaking for myself I had a very idealized notion of what a DAO was in the beginning, and being part of the creation of a DAO has been a reality check in a number of healthy ways, and I’ve gone through a number of emotional states myself, with one of those states being immense frustration with work being slow in the first months, as you know.
I think that clamouring for work to be done puts us on the right path. We want people to work, and we need to find ways to get work done efficiently and without roadblocks. We can’t know how to do that unless people clamour for it, or so is my reasoning.
That being said, I think for development, that it’s something TNL is best suited for. Not in order to gate anyone else, but simply because as the creators of ENS we’d be foolish to not rely on those who already knows ENS intimately.
If it’s development better suited to its own sub-WG (say very connected to analysis) it might be best if that’s funded after we fund our “main development branch” so to speak?
I trust that once the new executive director, Khori, gets up to speed, that we’ll also see a satisfying acceleration in this space 
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Hey, about the timeline for ETHAmsterdam. We didn’t realistically have enough time to put anything substantial together. That could be a failure on our part, but it wasn’t a priority. It’s worth noting that the budget we allocated (10k) is small. We talked about getting a spot at these events, but sponsoring the event, getting a booth, and trying to comp cost of travel didn’t make sense with the available amount for this term.
To not let it go unused, and to implement something with enough planning, my understanding is that we’re focusing on ETHNewYork. I personally am in favor or using all the funding since there seems to be community demand to connect around events and merch.
Right now we’re looking to host an informal meet-up during ETHNewYork. This may include a small gathering for the ENS DAO. There is already a shirt order in production, stickers, POAPs, and some swag. I am managing this order from multiple vendors and trying to get it all to ETHNewYork in time 
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