SOS discord - a great experiment in decentralised governance

It's five days ago since @pennsif asked me to become a moderator of the discord on SOS-forums https://discord.gg/8x46PH It's been five days of learning and five days of meeting very interesting and engaged people, something like Steemfest3++.

So, today I think, it's a good time for a first wrap-up. So to say, looking at the foundation pit being set up for a shiny STEEM-building in 2019. Altogether there are ten topic-related working groups and four dealing with the process itself. Instead of going through all of them in detail, I'll try to give an overview in three categories: Strategy - user - technology

Strategy

Two general directions of development seem to have cristallized out:

Decentralisation The whole process should be in line with the decentralised character of the blockchain itself. Thus, it will be a self-organized process of the community without a CEO or a CEO-like group of people defining the lines of thought and action. Instead of representatives, there will probably be rapporteurs or people taking over other assisting tasks - without them having any kind of decision power.

Economical sustainablility Don't take out more than you put into the Steem economy! This has been pointed out in various working groups. For example, every business model should look into possibilitites of offering people things, they can only buy with STEEM, making it desirable to buy or save STEEM.

If these strategical positions are to be confimed over the next weeks, they could become something like guidelines for all working groups. Just like rule no 1 of the code of conduct: This is not a link dropping server. Please only include links related to the discussion at hand. For efficiency of working there will be zero tolerance on this. Links only pertinent to discussion at hand

User

The flow of thought goes along the lines marketing --> onboarding --> retention.

Marketing
Three completely different target groups are subject to discussion: crypto-investors, interest groups and DApp users - naturally with some overlays in between them.

For crypto-investors exchanges lead the way into buying Steem. DApp users follow the value-proposition of the DApps - be it fun, sports or what ever. And finally interest groups may use Steem as place for idea and economical exchange. The Canna-group was the first one to pop up.
This short list already illustrates, that there will not be THE marketing plan suiting every target group, since in one case you do marketing for STEEM, in another case for a DApp and not it's database. Probably identifying the low-hanging fruit could be a first step to come to a call-to-action.

On-boarding and retention
Nevertheless, for all groups on-boarding and retention are the crucial next steps with a vivid discussion going on concerning

technical and economical solutions for free onboarding and
incentives to stay on the platform
A variety of good solutions are being presented. Please refer to the discord for more details.https://discord.gg/8x46PH

Technology

All of this won't work without a great technology. Main directions of (potential) development and discussion are ROCKS DB - enabling everybody to maintain a node, IPFS and token generation (SMTlite, ENGINE...).
Since I'm not a dev, I'll resist going into more details here. Others can do a rapport on this much better. Please refer to the discord.

This is by far not a complete overview, but an attempt to give a personal overview on where this decentralised experiment is heading. Giving it two more weeks and I am sure the already beginning discussion on projects and their funding will have led to first results.

Personally I'm really looking forward to this process to proove, that decentralised governance is a great way for communities to develop fast and with high efficacy.

Please comment, if I've forgotton anything really important. @pennsif @imacryptorick @starkerz @shanibeer @shredz7 @shadowspub @makinstuff @bigtom13 @wholeself-in @misha_u @ura-soul @paulag @jonyoudyer @bluefinstudios @richarde @sagescrub @anthonyadavisii @rhondak