Reduce the set of Head Ambassadors and start an effective Ambassador Program

Governance
22

On a side note, I also want to express my disappointment with the role that Tommi (aka Alice und Bob @alice_und_bob ) played here. As most of you will know, he heads up opengov.watch, for which he has received funding from The Web3 Foundation to act as an independent “Governance Coordinator”. Decentralized Futures: Introducing OpenGov.Watch | by Web3 Foundation Team | Web3 Foundation | Medium . The goals here, according to the W3F post are to "help Polkadot Governance participants find a shared strategy to confront Polkadot’s growth challenges and build executive structures that implement the strategy. "

It is unfortunate to see that Tommi has decided to abandon the hitherto independent position of a “Governance Coordinator” and instead wade knee-deep into factional politics by co-authoring and endorsing a list that purges half of his fellow HAs.

If Tommi had been serious about improving the program by making it leaner and more efficient, he could have proposed something like @ChrawnnaCorp in his latest X post (https://x.com/GldnCalf/status/1840412108506243575). This would reset the entire list, set up some new rules and funding, and then allow people to re-apply. But instead he decided to use his large following in the community to endorse this list of “remainers”, which “coincidentally” also includes himself. This way, Tommi has made it clear that he wants to be a power-broker rather than an independent “OpenGov.watch coordinator”.

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24

Hmm, quite disagree on that ^^
First of all, its not healthy at all (for no one) to attack individuals here. Regarding Tommi, he is at least one of the folks trying to get things into a better direction, the way its done could be improved maybe, tho i dont think its fair to judge Tommi here… judge actions, not people.
I actually deeply respect Tommi, kowing that he has its personal reputation at stake (like other HAs) while trying to coordinate things for the better.

When we start to attack individuals, the culture and tone gets set into a mainly counterproductive way, leaving very little space and motivation for anyone to actually do anything.

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I am judging his action, not the person. In particularly the action of trying to purge half of his follow HAs without due process. As you say, I also used to respect Tommi a lot, but with this particular action, I believe he’s making a mistake. My main point here also also not an attack against him but an observation: He has left his role as an independent “governance coordinator” and by dividing the collective into two, instead entered factional politics.

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[quote=“Max, post:22, topic:10177”]
This way, Tommi has made it clear that he wants to be a power-broker rather than an independent “OpenGov.watch coordinator”.
[/quote] that doesnt looks much like not attacking the person as whole XD

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27

Well, I still stand by the comment. Power-broking is literally what Tommi is trying to do here. He (and his co-conspirators) created a list of who’s in and how’s out. This list was compiled in a completely intransparent way. My comment is not an attack, it’s a factual statement.

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but if the HAs behind the “coup” bothered to first communicate their #1186 plan with the other HAs then they would have received this feedback from Max and likely comprehended this issue associated with it and OpenGov wouldn’t have yet another inappropriate proposal to waste time killing.

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Maybe it’s not a mistake, maybe it’s just an action caused by association. For example, if you were a member of CoupDAO and you were involved in actions like a “coup”, then I wonder if that would be an example of nominative determinism, where nominative determinism is the hypothesis that people tend to gravitate towards areas of work that fit their names.

Proposed solution: Root cause analysis such as investigating whether collectives are appropriately named to mitigate the risk of malicious work occurring due to nominative determinism

30

While I can understand the frustration around this topic and also share that it should have been done better, these discussions about “power grabbing” etc are just not true. No one is power grabbing anything here, this still needs to be approved by OpenGov. They don’t just get the “power”(whatever this is here). If someone doesn’t agree with the list, they should vote no. This solution is as simple as it is and not any way complicated or whatever. Or calling it a coup. We should really all go back a little bit and bring this to a reasonable discussion.

As I said earlier, nay this proposal and then there should be a new proposal that nukes the entire program. All this can be said without pointing fingers or trying to accuse people of doing X or Y.

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31

It would be fairer if they had written: if this proposal is approved we will remove the 10 people listed, if the proposal does not pass we will relinquish our role as head ambassadors. Written as it is now it is very convenient only for them because in any case nothing would change.

32

I’ll share my last words on this topic for the time being: I can see literally nobody is aligned on the core principle of what should be ambassadors.
The initial proposal of the program currently in place was probably the worst way to set things: a single person proposing his “vision” and voted alone (this proposal has probably the lowest turnout in the history of the root track), not any sense of community into it. This is the reason why the only solution is a complete nuke and redefine of the program to give it the legitimacy it deserves.

Rely on experience
There was a long time ambassador program ran by the W3F, of course it was far from perfect but did the “new” one even toke care to look at what was wrong and what to inherit from it?
Definitely not, the “new” program was born out of hate from the previous one.
Relying on experience of those who were there first, and were dedicating their time for years without even being paid, out of love and togetherness feeling, is inevitable.

Define ambassadorship
The “new” program promotes business development, how on earth does bizdev have anything related to ambassadorship? Ambassadors are individual representing an entity, limiting ourselves to bizdev skills makes us waste 90% of the talented people who would do excellent ambassadors.
You want bizdev? Do a bizdev program, they’ll work with ambassadors!

Have guardian leadership
Decentralization of technical infrastructure can’t even remotely be applied to management of a team of humans representing a positive image of an ecosystem. The more people there are, the less chances we have to reach full consensus, we’re not dealing with basic referendum where people have to vote aye or nay here.
Relying on token holders weighted votes to elect ambassadors one by one can only lead to corruption, vote trading, bribing and other toxic practices we have seen emerging with Opengov.
Management needs positive leadership who takes decisions when there is no consensus, consensual people like Bill Laboon or Shawn Tabrizi would be great candidates for it, I’m sure there are many more.
But most of all: don’t give any credit to a leadership ran by hate and putting people against each others such as giottodf ones, that’s the perfect recipe for a program doomed to fail.

Reward activity, don’t sign blank checks
Having a regular high salary makes sense for some activities, not for ambassadorship.
Some ambassador may work full time on the program, this deserves a full time salary, and others will bring contributions on a time allowing based. It doesn’t mean last ones shouldn’t be ambassadors, the more flexibility we bring to the program, the more diversity of people we will have to ensure its success.

Good luck with that, I’ll happily bring my contributions if I see a positive outcome of this situation.
Otherwise, count on me to keep exposing deleterious actions.

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33

:100:

We still don’t have clear views about the definition of the HAs program since months.

As long as we don’t agree on terms, this is all vanity to vote on anything…

34

Some good progress in the Ambassador Program:

This week, the Head Ambassadors have come together to discuss a way forward. I would say there is decent agreement that the current framework for the Ambassador program is not working. There are substantial issues with Ref 487 that created an environment of slow progress and competitiveness. A radical change is necessary! The group has started to flesh out the 100-day plan to bring the program up to speed and develop the necessary changes.

The program needs structural changes. The ideal reform proposal has not been posted yet and that’s what we are working on right now.

I suggest to follow up conversations in this thread:

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35

Thats The Key !
The present program is a Joke for me.

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@alice_und_bob would you like me to close this thread to prevent further comments and have people go into the new thread?

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37

that would be helpful I think, yes

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