📚 How to Join a DAO Community

by @Techniciann9ne

How non-developers can make an impact in the DAO space#

Find out where your DAO of choice meets the most. For example, some DAOs are most active on Telegram, some on Discord, and others on Github.

Learn the ins and outs and etiquette of that social media... or just sit back, say hi and hey great a lot, and get to know people and go from there.

If you identify a need, present a solution to people and ask for feedback. Oftentimes your ideas will trigger even better solutions from others who might be more familiar or have more experience with the situation. Always be ready to listen.

Some things you can just do. Sometimes useful data can be collected and shared. Some DAO's really need newsletters, or more newsletters, to keep people updated about projects and deployments and collaborations and such. In cases like this, provide a useful tool to the DAO without making a Big Deal about it. Everyone is busy, and you are appreciated.

Communicate with people in other DAOs and understand how things are done elsewhere. Share thoughts and ideas with the original DAO, strive to create networks.

First of all, if you don’t have basic knowledge of what DAOs are, quickly jump to the following link to gain it - What are DAO’s?

Now now, dear Anon, considering that you have gained knowledge and are interested in joining DAO as a community person, this playbook is written to bring ease to the steps you are to take in the process of joining.

DAO’s are open, decentralized communities of like-minded people who are willing to contribute to an idea and join forces in building a new decentralized and better world for all of us to enjoy. That being said, no one expects you to bring a hard set of skills when joining DAO’s, but in fact, what everyone expects from you is that you are willing to contribute and make new friends while doing so.

For a start, it is enough that you are willing to learn, add value to the community by contributing, and that you love people in general.

So having that said, let’s jump to that number of steps which lies in front of you anon!

You have heard about a DAO and decided that it is the right choice for you.
Find out where your desired DAO resides and is most active, e.g., Telegram, Discord, GitHub, to name a few. Bare in mind that some DAO’s require you to fill out a membership proposal form. The forms can be on the DAO's website.
At this point, you have joined a channel where your DAO operates or granted an invite based on your proposal, thus landed in the community chat.
Greet the community, and don’t be shy to introduce yourself. Tell the community how you found out about it, what inspired you to join. In brief, let the community know what kind of person just joined, and do not hesitate to express yourself.
The new people start their journey in most DAO’s by finding the role channel and assigning themselves the roles related to skills they can carry out. *E.g., considering that you are a community person, seek something that you can relate to, in most cases, that can be a Community moderator (Innkeeper-TaverKeeper), Writer, Shiller.

As a Community mod. - you will be responsible for taking care of the community, welcoming, and helping new people to start their journey. Take care of community well-being and love people in general.
As a Writer, you can write some cool content that will add value to the community, either to keep everyone inside on the same page or to provide something that can be shared over the Social Media channels.
As a Shiller - seek interesting content about the community you are in. You can basically start with sharing, retweeting, and bumping other people’s threads, as your work is to spread word and awareness about your DAO.*

Seek out the materials your DAO has made available for further knowledge expansion.
Check/ask for the meeting calendar and make sure to attend meetings related to your role and community meetings that are very important and will let you connect with the community much faster.
Start checking what’s happening inside the community, look at what's going well, and what might need improvement to benefit the community. Your ideas and feedback are valuable thus most welcomed. If the ideas and feedback can’t be implemented, they might trigger more experienced people in the DAO who will improve it, so don’t hesitate to raise your voice.
Now you are probably wondering what should I do, as no one will tell you what to do, that is just how DAO’s work! All of the work you do and your contribution is based on your intuition. - observe, notice, do, propose, implement, get the incentives. Seek smaller quests/evergreen - those are usually there to help you start in the DAO space. However, as you have gone through the onboarding process, you can just do some things: jump to the welcoming channel and help other people get started, greet them, try to answer their questions, and be welcoming and communicative. See what kind of content is necessary for the DAO. Try writing something useful, whether it is a newsletter or playbook, something you have learned about, summarize it into a text so that others coming after you can learn from it.

Pro tips: Be active, be responsive, communicate and connect with other members of DAO, attend meetings, provide ideas and feedback - don't forget to implement. NEVER STOP LEARNING, because the more we learn, the more we grow.