DeLead Lab / ZuLead Lab

ZuLead 2024

A Decentralised Leadership Residency

We propose hosting a transformative 3-week 'Decentralised Leadership Lab' during the European summer.

Our goal would be to bring together 20 experienced leaders from decentralised organisations as curators and mentors and gather 100-200 participants eager to grow their leadership capacity and share in the discussion and advancement of ideas of key leadership topics for web3 such as stewardship, governance, decision-making, privacy and curation.

Location:

• Switzerland (ideal location)
• Other options being explored for 2024 as backup locations

Dates:

• July/August - if Switzerland (due to potential access to cheaper accommodation during school holidays)
• August/September - if back-up option, shoulder season is likely cheaper

Our Why

Leaders are essential infrastructure for DAOs - Griff.eth.

Decentralised organisations need even more leaders than centralised organisations.

As Balaji and Vitalik have stated in the past, decentralised organisations don’t mean an absence of leaders, but an abundance of them. These leaders won’t appear out of thin air but will need to emerge and grow, guided by the learnings and mentorship of others who have come before them.

More than the need for abundance and diversity, we believe tomorrow’s decentralised organisations require a different kind of leader.

The reason a protocol lives or dies, 99.9% of the cases are not how fancy their code is but how nicely people talk to each other - Vitalik @ ZuConnect 2023 (wording may not be exact)

We need leaders to lead from both the mind and the heart.

We’re on a mission to catalyse and incubate leaders of tomorrow. Leaders of tomorrow who care, who embrace, who listen, who truly lead.

Our most central goal with this leadership lab is to distil, amplify and disperse the learnings of leaders in the web3 and DAO space. If we’re successful, we will be spawning a swarm of well-equipped decentralised leaders who can advance the space to new heights.

Short-term Vision:

A three-week event in Switzerland's Engadin Valley, partnering with the local community and InnHub’s existing pop-up location team, we aim to accommodate 50-150 people with outdoor pop-up event locations, hotels, airbnbs, and a small indoor co-working space.

Long-term Vision:

The historical Swiss cooperatives marked the beginning of its political community: villages and municipalities developed out of them. In these cooperatives, people were living direct democracy in its purest form

As the oldest democracy in Europe and one of the most friendly jurisdictions to DAOs, we believe in Switzerland as a long-term partner country for the Zuzalan movement. We would like to build a long-term relationship with the local governments who not only welcome but fully embrace our values of participation and decentralisation.

We have the communicated support and interest in partnering with InnHub, who are building an incredible permanent hub for pop-up communities like ours as a so-called 'third-place'. While InnHub’s main building will not be complete until 2027, they offer incredible connections to the local community and government. The partnership would offer us an incredible long-term hub from which to base future long-term events in the spirit of Zuzalu.

InnHub: A dedicated campus for co-creation, innovation and transformation for human and planetary health. Designed by Sir Norman Foster, set on the river Inn in the breathtaking nature of the Swiss Engadin valley.

Background

The DAOVOZ team was formed in 2022 to organise democratically curated events that bring the web3 space forward (with the core objective to surface emerging voices).

Since then we have organised events in Davos during the World Economic Forum, in Tel Aviv for ETH TLV, and brought our core contributors together for an off-site in Portugal. A key outcome of the off-site was that we wanted to develop better mechanisms for surfacing new leaders and giving them a platform to spread their ideas.

Our telegram community boasts 300+ DAO leaders, and our core team of seven, who have been working together for over a year, includes three active Zuzalu/Zuconnect participants. We also have more than 50% women in the core team, and a high level of diversity in backgrounds, cultures, expertise and perspectives.

Description

This immersive full-time residential program aspires to unite esteemed community leaders in Web3 and DAOs, alongside accomplished traditional organisations that strongly commit to alternative organisational structures aligned with the principles of a decentralised future—embracing transparency, equity, community, and sovereignty. Most importantly, we aim to seed and support the journeys of emerging leaders of future decentralised organisations.

The residency will be curated by 25 DAOminaries chosen for their diverse experiences, leading established DAOs, cooperatives and collectives that follow decentralised models. We have drafted a list of our ideal curators and started reaching out to them (please note that these participants are in no way confirmed yet).

Our objective is to create a dynamic and collaborative unlearning and learning environment, fostering the exchange of insights, strategies, and best practices both inside and outside web3. In doing so, forging the principles of decentralised leadership.

How ZuLead contributes to the Zuzalu vision?

• A key aspect of building and growing pop-up cities is fair and effective participant curation.This approach aligns with Zuzalu's vision of a city that adapts and evolves based on the collective intelligence of its residents.
• Decentralized leadership and community leaders will become the key to Zuzalu’s growth. ZuLead will help refine and evolve leadership structures within Zuzalu.
• Another important aspect we will explore is the use of a DAO-like structure to govern our pop-up city and membership.
• The cross-pollination extending beyond the realm of web3 enhances Zuzalu's visibility, recognition, legitimacy and potential impact, reaching beyond the confines of the web3 space.

We see these topics as important to explore on the philosophical and technical level, and these are both areas we aim to move forward during our residency, answering the following questions:

How do we curate a great experience for pop-up city participants while maximising diversity, equity & inclusion?

- Which mechanisms and tools could we build to support this process?
- Which requirements does the community have for such tools?
- How do we better surface emerging leaders and initiatives and allocate limited grant resources effectively?
    - What are the limitations of current systems?
    - What are our communities' blind spots in this regard? 
- Which mechanisms and tools could we build to support this process?

How can a DAO be used to effectively govern a pop-up city/network state movement?

- What does citizenship and residence mean in these contexts?
- What could the requirements for inclusion and exclusion be?
- Which legal models could be applied now and in the future?
- How can UBI Models contribute to making participation in pop-up cities more equitable?
- How can we leverage existing legal structures (such as the Swiss Cooperative) to acquire real estate and establish more permanent communities?

In doing so, we aim to experiment and create learnings which can be applied to the wider movement, as well as create a sustainable, democratic and transparent governance for our future events.

Target Participants

Most importantly: Kind, open, thoughtful, long-term oriented humans

• Existing web3 leaders from DAOs, collectives and cooperatives that share decentralised values
• Emerging leaders who seek to build communities or movements in a sustainable, decentralised way
• Web3 curious leaders from non-profit / community-oriented / stewardship organisations
• Government officials with an interest in the potential of pop-up cities and network states for augmenting their own communities

Potential Topics

• Governance & DAOs
• Curation, Decision-making & AI
• Community Stewardship
• Transparency & Identity
• Sovereignty & Privacy
• Network states: why, what, how
• Exploring UBI Models (WIR)
• Leadership education
• Sustainable Work Environments
• Health & Wellbeing
• Event format

Format and Structure

Semi-structured leadership residence over around 3 weeks, with key topics curated by 25 DAOminaries (thought leaders in decentralised, community-driven organisations).

A minimum recommended stay would be 10 days, for participants to get the most value. Ideally they woul stay for the full 3-week residence. We believe this is will help build lasting relationships and provide maximum exchange and personal growth.

Target participant group between 50-150 people living in a shared lodging, hotel or villas within walking distance of each other. 2-3 content sessions per day, with plenty of unstructured time that participants can use to host their own activities, or relax, vibe and learn from each other.

A Typical ZuLead Day

Early-morning: Free/open for wellness programs such as running, cold-plunges, swimming or yoga together

Morning: Our ambition would be to host a shared breakfast / bring everyone together at a local venue every morning from around 9-10:30 am as was done during Zuzalu.

Midday - Early Afternoon: Content sessions / workshops for around 3 hours.

Later afternoon: Community activities e.g. spontaneous unconference content, themed gatherings, less-structured discussions/conversations

Evening: social, network, fire-side chat, music, sound-healing, art, moon party and wellness

Event Scenarios (funding dependent)

Best-case:

• 3-week curated event hosted in Switzerland for 150-200 full-time participants
• Q1 Fundraising Target: 15-20 ETH
• Option for participants to stay longer

Medium case:

• 2-week curated event in Switzerland or Ibiza (as a back-up option) for 50-100 participants
• Q1 Fundraising Target: 8 ETH
• Option for participants to stay longer

Minimum case:

• If fundraising not sufficient for an in-person event:
  • 3 days of curated presentations and discussions on DAO leadership recorded and made available online as a public good
  • ZuLead online subgroup with curated online events that emphasise democratic, participative curation principles

Impact

The long-term impact of the 'Decentralised Leadership Lab' extends beyond the event itself.

Firstly, we don't see this as a one-off. We have a vision to keep running this event into the future, and will partner with InnHub.ch when it is completed, to bring regular leadership residences to life. We're not just stopping at the event; we aim to build a long-lasting connection with the local valley, businesses, residents and government.

We chose these two possible locations based on their local government's explicit interests in embracing new forms of leadership.

• Switzerland's La Punt in the Engadin Valley is working with the founders of InnHub to turn La Punt into a home for forward-thinking innovators
• Ibiza's local government too has embraced new ideas, creating an Ibiza token, and including local residents, businesses and artists.

We also believe even just our initial Zulead event will have an impact on how leaders in Web3 work, accelerating the spead of knowledge transfer. Since we're bringing leaders outside web3 into the fold, we might even change how sustainable organisations beyond Web3 operate. Together, we want to try out different and more inclusive ways of leading. This initiative's effects are expected to spread, making a positive impact in communities and industries around the world.

Some suggested impact KPIs:

Short-term

• Leaders trained directly in residences
• Participant weeks (number of participants x number of weeks stayed)
• Participant NPS (net promoter score)
• Participant diversity (mix of new, emerging and experienced leaders)
• Public discussion and engagement on DAOVOZ governance design
• Requirements definition / specifications laid out for effective curation / capital allocation mechanisms

Medium / Long-term

• Leaders trained via open-source audiovisual content

• Youtube / other platform views / subscribers

• Net new leadership (how many active new leaders can we reasonably attribute to our work)

  • New DAO / org creation after participating in DAOVOZ events
  • Number of members and volume of impact generated by leaders whose orgs spawned after participating in DAOVOZ

• Learnings from governance experiments which have been open-sourced

• Curation tools and mechanisms designed and/or built for zuzalu and similar communities

Current Core Contributors:

• Una (Hongyang) Wang (Zuconnect Istanbul)
• Isla Munro-Hochmayr (Zuzalu Montenegro 2 weeks + Zuconnect Istanbul)
• Marko Hrelja (Zuzalu Montenegro 3 weeks)
• Victoria Citterio-Soelle
• Tien Ma
• Will Barleycorn
• Daniel Dohne

Zu-event Alliances (tentative)

• 4Seas
• Zu-berlin
• Regen village

Partners / collabs (in first discussion stage - not all confirmed)

• DAO Suisse
• FTW DAO
• Dezentrum
• Intmax
• Chinwags
• DAOcember
• WIW3 - Switzerland
• Impact hub
• The Value Web
• your2040
• Crypto commons hub
• Purpose
• Open civic
• Leadership summit @ Chiangmai
• Tripsha
• Blockscience
• BlockchainGov
• Metagov
• otherInternet

Finances

Participation cost expectations:

• Resident event ticket: 2-300 EUR / week (location and cost dependent)
• Resident accommodation: 400-450 EUR / week (50-70 per person / per night)

Expected total cost to participate for 3 weeks:

• Around €2000-2500

Scholarships:

• Our goal would be to provide a minimum of 10 - 20 full/partial scholarships to emerging leaders
• We would prioritise selection based on country of origin, participant's strengths and their personal situation

Zuzalu quadratic round funding would primarily be used to fund:

• Part-time organising team's salary (up to four people working part-time, then full-time during the event)
• Payment of up-front deposits required to reserve event space / accommodation
• Scholarships (the more the better, we think providing scholarships and bringing diverse groups to our event is of critical importance)
• Rental of AV equipment, event infrastructure, support services and catering support

Ticket prices would aim to cover:

• Remaining team and infrastructure costs not covered by quadratic funding
• Catering for participants (our hope would be to provide breakfast and dinner at minimum)
• Any leftover funds would be kept to be used towards future DAOVOZ / ZuLead events
• Subsidising shared accommodation costs, if possible to reduce weekly costs

Alternative funding sources:

• We are open to sponsorship from aligned businesses and organisations but have a specific rule against giving speaking spots to sponsors, as we aim to be independent in our content and speaker curation
• We are looking into offering a permanent DAOVOZ membership as a higher priced ticket option which would provide access to future events and to the governance of the organisation in exchange for supporting scholarships and supoorting our funding sustainability, but we want to review this policy in detail first to be sure not to bias our membership / governance too heavily towards those who are able to afford to support us financially
• We're curious to explore and experiment with how our community could develop revenue sources that support long-term sustainability and eventually a UBI for citizens, such as acquiring real estate and profit-generating businesses, with profits being returned to the 'national treasury' to further our goals

Up until now, the DAOVOZ collective has operated under the For The Win Association, a Swiss-based legal entity (FTW DAO).

We will remain under this entity until such time as an alternative entity, such as a Foundation can be formed for to protect the liability exposure of members and administrators. Our only previous funding besides small operational and financial support from FTW DAO (in the realm of around EUR 5000), was around EUR 2000 from a previous Gitcoin round. We aim for future activities to become fully independent of FTW DAO, as soon as thi is financially viable.

Important:

Please review our full presentation for up to date insight into our plans and ideas