Steward nomination: Public Goods working group

🏛️ Public Goods PG Discussion
7

Hello everyone :slight_smile:

I’m stoked to share that I’m a nominee for a steward of the Public Goods Working Group. As a newbie to web3, I’m still learning how to move through the different platforms. The Public Goods Working Group (PG WG) aligns best with my passion and skills. As an $ENS holder, I agree 100% with brantly.eth’s tweet, “you were not airdropped free money, you were airdropped responsibility.”

While I understand tech and its impact on society, I don’t write code. In the past, I served on grant-making committees that funded multiple non-profits organizations. Currently, I’m focused on organizational cultures, and the mental health and wealth of underestimated entrepreneurs and professionals.

As a steward of the PG WG, part of the work is to align with the main Working Groups Proposal: “Public Goods: amplifying ENS as a public good and funding public goods within the ENS ecosystem, and more broadly within web3”.

I intend to facilitate alignment and forward progress, help contributors in their zone of genius, and make sure we have diverse groups of contributors and projects that we fund.

My curiosity and empathy drive me to make a conscious effort to learn from people in the tech/web3 bubble and outside the tech bubble. I’m bringing my perspective while keeping in mind people like my cousin and brother who aren’t involved in any way with web3, blockchain, or crypto. Billions of people like them will be impacted by the ripples we create through the projects we fund.

Some of the questions that I’ve been thinking through are:

  • What are the cultural contexts and expectations of public goods in web3 compared to non-web3?
  • How can we increase diversity and inclusion in the ENS community and help define public goods for web3?
  • With ENS being more than just a domain name, what do public goods look like to make an exponential impact?
  • What are the ripple effects of the public goods projects we fund?
  • How can we uncover the real needs of humanity in terms of public goods?
  • What’s the state of the mental health of people working on public goods projects we fund? Burnout, anxiety, depression, and much more are impacting people at an increasing rate.
  • How can we evolve or redefine the meaning of public goods while not replicating the current challenges of funding public goods?
  • How can we ensure funding of projects is a catalyst for the viability of a project instead of a one-off funding event for the project?

I believe communities are part of the human experience. The community determines what public goods are. The challenge for web3 is that humanity isn’t fully represented in the web3 communities. As a result, the definition and funding of public goods projects may not fully reflect the diversity of society.

This Public Goods Working Group is an experiment in progress that includes success, ambiguity, and mistakes. In the current and historical sense, public goods haven’t been as inclusive as they could be. I intend to help ensure that the PG WG doesn’t fall into the same patterns of funding the popular projects that owe their popularity to marketing hype.

We have the opportunity to create a world (not a utopia) that’s inclusive as a foundation rather than an afterthought.

Fun facts: I dig traveling, finishing marathons, cooking, time with friends, throwing the discus, and learning about other cultures.

4 Likes