How to Deal with the Developer DAO Discord

Note: If you want to stay up-to-date without the Discord chat, you can jump to Async Alternatives right way!

Discord has become the bane of DAOs. Especially when a DAO is still in the early stages, its members use Discord to coordinate and communicate. A few bots with crypto features, and you are good to go!

But new members often struggle with these Discord servers, especially when they got many channels. And the Developer DAO has over a hundred of them, and it's not easy to stay on top of things when you don't really know where to look.

In this article, I will try to make some sense of it all and advise on dealing with the server in a sane way.

Rules

First things first. We have some rules on the discord server.

"We want this to be a fun, pleasant, and harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion. We do not tolerate the harassment of participants in any form. Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately."

You can read more on that in the #rules channel, and this is also the first channel I would advise you to check out. We also have an anonymous harassment reporting form you can use when needed.

Muting Channels

My primary way to deal with Discord is to mute everything, and in the first months on the Developer DAO Discord server, I even hid all muted channels.

Seeing fewer channels calmed me, so I recommend the muting feature as the top way to deal with the channels.

Dealing with FOMO

Fear of missing out, or FOMO, is a massive problem in the crypto space right now. People are making big money by the day, and things move SO fast; you feel that you have to stay on top or miss your lucky break.

When you join a DAO, things become a little clearer because now you have boiled down the vast ecosystem crypto is to a small topic you are interested in. There are art DAOs, investment DAOs, protocol DAOs, and, like the Developer DAO, there are educational DAOs.

You can't look out for all things happening, so focusing on something that really interests you helps to stay current with the news in that space. And nobody knows if "your lucky break" might be here or there. So why not wait for it at a place that is easy for you to understand or at least interests you more than the rest of that ecosystem?

The same goes for the Developer DAO Discord server. Try to focus, don't go through every channel and make sense of it.

So, let's be a little more concrete and check the actual channels!

It would be best to start by muting everything besides the #💬-general channel and then un-mute what could be of interest.

Let's go from the bottom to the top of the list because many of the far-down channels can stay on mute.

The social categories are all about non-Web3 stuff. Do you want to talk about pets, sports, parenting, movies, fitness, or games? That's the place to be.

It's an excellent way to learn more about your fellow DAO members, especially in such a vast global community and in times of social distancing.

If you're new, chances are you want to do something Web3 specific before diving into the more private things, so all of them can stay on mute.

IRL

The IRL category is for small/non-official events in a specific location. If a bunch of people wants to drink a coffee in Berlin, or go to the movies in London, etc.

If you don't care about meeting people In Real Life, you can skip all of them.

Scroll through it and check if a location near you is available and unmute it.

The Guilds

A guild in a DAO is like a department in a company. Each Developer DAO guild got a Discord category with many private and public channels.

The goal of each guild is to help people with the practical skills needed in their category, like writing or coding, but also start and lead projects and initiatives.

While most projects are DAO-wide things, all of them have more or less affinity to each guild. The newsletter, for example, is led by someone who is most active in the writers and biz-dev guild. The $CODE claim site is led by someone mainly active in the dev guild. etc. pp.

You can be a member of all guilds at the same time and lurk everywhere, no work is expected from you.

If any guild sparks your interest, you can un-mute their channels. Each guild has a starting channel for new members that should clear things up.

If you're new to the whole DAO thing and just wanna "look," I'd recommend skipping all the guild channels and moving on to the next category.

But suppose you like to do something practical right away and are interested in moderating, writing, or developing. In that case, I'd recommend the exact opposite: Join a guild and focus on a project and then learn about the rest of the DAO as you go.

To join a guild, go to the #🤝-guild-select in the DAO category at the top of the channel list and use one of the emoji reactions.

You're welcome in every guild, even if you don't do anything. The Discord has many channels, so we hide the guild channels until you join them.

Just join whatever guild you want, look if it's interesting, stay there, leave, no hard feelings if you just "lurk" everywhere.

The Dev Guild

A special case of this DAO is the Developers Guild, obviously since it's the Developer DAO.

Anyway, it's mostly special because it has the most members, and in turn, needs much more structure, which leads to the most channels.

While joining this guild will add another 24 channels to your list it's totally worth it, because most of the DAO's activity happens there.

Especially if you want to learn about Web3. They have an education team and channels for Web2 and Web3 study groups.

The Writers Guild

This is a rather small guild, but that makes it a bit easier manageable.

The main goal is to help people write.

If you want to write blog posts, or scribe (write down meeting notes) for the DAO, you're right here.

Lately projects led by other guilds come here to ask for writers to do writing for their websites or documentation.

The Community Guild

This is all about the social interactions of the DAO. The moderator team is led by the leader of this guild.

They also educate new members about the DAO and further the diversity of the DAO.

The Governance Guild

While a traditional company has a CEO, a DAO has its voting members that decide what the mission and the values are.

The governance guild tries to condense the general sentiment of the DAO into concrete proposals that are voted on. It does so by working with guild leaders and regular members alike.

This is probably one of the most experimental guilds of all because DAOs are such a new concept.

The Design Guild

We all know, Web3 can do better in terms of user experience. The main goal of the design guild is to improve on that.

But it also works on more visual things like merch and media NFTs.

If that's your jive, join this guild!

The Marketing and BizDev Guild

Here we make our moniez!

Developer DAO works a bit like an NGO. It gathers sponsors that pay us money for exposure to our press channels.

We have a newsletter, blog, Twitter account, a job board, and even a virtual Web3 conference. All places where thousands of (potential) Web3 professionals view content every day.

So, if you're more of a sales or marketing kind of person, this is the place to be!

Live Events

Here are channels related to Web3 events that (will) happen worldwide. Conferences, hackathons, you name it.

You can ignore them if you aren't interested in such events right now.

Languages

You might be lucky, and a channel in your native language is available. Un-mute it, and you might find some people who explain a bit to you in your native tongue, which might clear things up.

The Chinese channel is especially active!

Technical Discussion

This category might be the most exciting one for new members.

Here you can choose channels related to the crypto tech and ask technical questions about it. You might find some good souls that help you with your issues or point you to some resources to get started. Books and other learning resources are exchanged, but also talk about low-level cryptography.

Sometimes it's simply lovely to discuss technology!

DAO Projects

Here, projects directly related to the DAO have their channels for daily discussions.

If you want to do something for the DAO and a channel name somehow sparks your interest, un-mute it and ask the people if they need help in a project.

Like with the guilds, working on one of these projects and learning the rest of the DAO working along the way can be a good idea.

Discussing or programming something concrete can also help get rid of the FOMO.

Alpha

Everything that isn't adequately categorized.

#💻-jobs-and-gigs if you need money
#🚀-boost-your-content if you want your video/article on our Twitter account (we got >50k followers!)
#⚡-creator-spotlight if you want yourself (or someone you admire) to get tweeted about.
#🔮-probably-nothing if you found something that could interest the DAO
#👯-collaborations is for finding people to work on a project that isn't related to the Developer DAO
#🧠-mental-health to keep you sane in the face of all the FOMO
#🎨-nfts for ... well, anything NFT related really
#🐋-trading to whine about the last dip
#🔥-shill-your-project to promote your latest pyramid scheme

I muted everything, but trading and mental health and only occasionally looked in the other channels.

DAO

Here you find DAO-related channels. Voting for proposals, selecting your guilds, etc.

I recommend unmuting #📊-dao-polls, #📜-gov-proposals, and #📥-gov-snapshot, to stay on top of important changes. But if you new and don't care yet what we vote on, they can stay muted.

Events

The channels here are used for DAO-internal events and their dates. I keep them all muted. If an event happens, you will be actively joining and listening, so no notifications are required.

Also, if you RSVP for an event in the #📅-d_d-events channel, the bot will explicitly notify you independently of muted channels.

General

The main category, it's a bit of a mixed bag like the "other" category. So, let's check what's happening in these channels.

#📣-announcements is for everything necessary that every DAO member should know. You get them even if you muted this channel, so don't bother to un-mute.
#🛬-onboarding helps you to get up-to-speed in the DAO
#👋-introductions for telling people who you are
🌞-gm to spam gm every now and then
#🙋-ask-anything—in-a-thread for all your questions, none of them will be considered dumb, and usually, members from the community guild will monitor it.
#💬-general everything really, if you only un-mute one channel it might as well be this one.
#🖼-show-your-pixel-dev to show your Developer DAO Pixel Dev NFT image
#🤗-kudos If you want to thank a DAO member.
#😂-memes is for spamming your crypto/web3 memes
#🐦-tweets shows the latest tweets of the DAOs Twitter account
#📺-youtube-feed shows the latest uploads to the DAOs YouTube channel.
#📈-nft-sales for the sales of the DAOs genesis NFT
#🚨-report-scams to stay up to date on the grifters in the crypto space. This includes scammers on the Developer DAO Discord and general scammers around the internet.

I only un-muted #💬-general. If you're not interested in bot spam or gm's all over the place and already went through the #🛬-onboarding channel, you don't need the rest.

Summary

I only un-muted 20 channels, and I'm like three months in. When I started to mute channels, I think I ended up with less than 10 and later added them as I got bored or wanted to dive deeper.

Async Alternatives

There is a wiki with any information about the DAO, its guilds, and their projects. You can read it at your own pace.

You don't need to follow every conversation all the time. The community will vote the most important things and talked about on the forum in an asynchronous matter.

Also, we have a newsletter that is released every week to tell you what's up in the guilds in the DAO in general. So you don't even have to attend the bi-weekly town hall meetings if you don't have the time.