With the third cycle of the GMC Awards closing, the GMC Public channel has been buzzing with vibrant and constructive feedback. I’d like to shed some light on the evolution of GMC throughout the past cycle and provide the community with more details on our current status and internal efforts.
Let’s start by discussing the significant modifications and adjustments we implemented between cycle 2 (April) and cycle 3 (July):
Modifications From Last Cycle
- Sesh: A meeting agenda tool was implemented to keep meetings on schedule and allow members to choose what topics to discuss ahead of time. The tool allows individual members to have equal time discussing their ideas and opinions. It allowed us to focus on applications where more feedback and discussion were required.
- Feedback Sheets: Significant improvements were made to the feedback process by overhauling the feedback sheets, ensuring that they now require more detailed input from participants. In the previous cycle, the sheets had a structure that allowed members to skip providing substantial feedback, leading to a focus on mere numbers and amounts rather than meaningful content. To address this, the GMC restructured the sheets to promote comprehensive feedback, resulting in a remarkable increase of 2x~3x in the quantity of feedback received this time.
- New Awards Cycle: One of the main requests from the community after cycle 2 was better communication and back and forth with the applicants. RPIP-26’s new award cycle will not only allow for an open application process at all times, but it also has the negotiation phase in the middle of an award cycle. Unfortunately we are still waiting on RPIP-26’s implementation and could not reap the benefits from this yet.
I’ve probably missed quite a few other changes, but hopefully you get the idea.
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Here is the timeline of events within the GMC for the July award cycle:
Schedule Of July Cycle
- 7/16 - Awards Close
- 7/16 - Calendar invite sent to discuss awards
- 7/16 - Scoring sheet published for GMC (deadline 7/28)
- 7/17 - Feedback sheets published for GMC (deadline 7/28)
- 7/24 - GMC meets to discuss awards
- 7/28 - Deadline for scoring is extended to 7/29
- 7/29 - Scoring and feedback closes
- 7/29 - Final vote opens (deadline 7/31)
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Here are a few of the major talking points from the community on August 2 in the GMC Public channel:
Feedback From GMC Public
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Favoring Retros over Grants - The second cycle the GMC was accused of favoring grants over retrospective awards or pushing applicants towards retrospective awards. In round 3, 11 out of 16 grants were approved, while 5 retrospective awards were approved.
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Consistency and Precedents - Knoshua previously asked about a discrepancy between Rocket Fuel and Jasper’s Twitter Spaces. This cycle the GMC deliberated to award $270 per media episode for all four worthy media applications. (Twitter Spaces Ken, Twitter Spaces Jasper, Rocket Fuel, The Weekly Orbit). Moving forward, we are dedicated to improving our approach by prioritizing consistency and adhering to established precedents. We acknowledge that there was a substantial shift in the roster between cycle 1 and 2, which resulted in a knowledge gap and limited context about past deliberations for some members. To address this, we are committed to making conscious efforts to recognize and acknowledge past decisions while striving for greater continuity in our future processes.
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Lack of Feedback / Communication - I wholeheartedly agree that despite substantial improvements in the feedback process during the last cycle, there is still ample room for further enhancement. With some grants requiring more in-depth discussions, the GMC is actively working to facilitate and encourage those discussions. The GMC is in the process of facilitating those discussions and in some cases, those discussions are already underway.
As you can see from the schedule above, one of the challenges we have encountered is the narrow timeframe between when all scores and decisions are submitted and when the results are announced. This has led to some feedback being constrained to statements like “we need to discuss more with the applicant.” We recognize that this is not an ideal situation and is something we aim to address. Gathering more feedback from committee members can be difficult right after an award ceremony. This is partially attributed to the fact that many members devoted a significant amount of their time, approximately 5 to 10 hours, within their already busy schedules. Our hope is that the new awards schedule will fix this when the discussions are in the middle and not post award announcement.
There were quite a few internal Rocket Pool Team developments underway that were reflected in the outcome of awards. Examples of this would be Rocket Split, and Dissolving A Minipool. The absence of an official announcement regarding the team’s ongoing work led to understandable confusion and queries from the community. Post-award roadblocks or stalls like this are not ideal, that information is delayed, but is is coming. Again, we hope that having the negotiation phase in the middle of the cycle will alleviate issues like this.
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Plans For Next Cycle
- Recorded Meetings - Given the amount of timezones across GMC members, it’s difficult to get all 9 out of 9 members in the same meeting. Detailed meeting minutes are difficult because members have different opinions, and the point of meetings is not consensus but for members to share individual feedback and insight. Consensus in these meetings would be rushed and so members are encouraged to take information from meetings into account for their final deliberations. Moving forward, all meetings will be recorded and available for committee members. Those that cannot attend the meetings can be in the loop on what was discussed via the recordings.
- Fully Transparent Feedback Sheet - This has gone back and forth quite a bit. Some GMC members argued to keep the sheet anonymized but record the submitters. This cycle, the public feedback sheet only had 2 out of 9 submissions. Because of this, the administrator ended up using internal feedback to fill out some of the public sheet. Currently the plan for the next round is to have every aspect of the feedback sheet, from submissions to submitters, be made transparent and accessible to all participants.
- Updated GMC Member Activity Sheet - Yesterday, a sheet was published that details meeting attendance, transaction activity, awards activity, and forum activity. Hopefully this is a valuable insight for the community. (Update: The GMC is reviewing the contents of that sheet before republishing to the community.)
- Live RPIP with status and history of awards - Less important but in development nonetheless, there is a project underway of an RPIP to record past and current awards, and bounties. It is currently under review by RPIP writers. That document can be viewed here - https://github.com/shfryn/RPIPs/blob/living-gmc/RPIPs/rpip-living-gmc.md
- (Potentially Subcommittees) - A recurring idea has been to split up the committee into covering different applications. This would potentially reduce the amount of work required from each committee member. This has not been decided on yet, but it will be discussed in our next retrospective.
- Monthly Award Cycles (RPIP-26) - Open applications, monthly decisions, and monthly negotiation phases.
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In the near future, we will be scheduling a retrospective meeting to address the valuable feedback provided by the community and to identify and improve upon the weaknesses observed during the current cycle.
The dedication and hard work of GMC members is truly commendable. As the GMC looks forward to the revised award cycle, the GMC is realistic about the challenges ahead and understands that it may not resolve all the issues at once. Implementing changes and improvements may indeed be a bumpy road, but the GMC is committed to taking proactive steps to address the problems and feedback that have been presented.
Personally speaking, today has been a powerful reminder of the challenges that come with the GMC Administrator position and being a committee member in general. It’s been a rollercoaster, but witnessing the passion and drive for improvement within the community is incredibly motivating.
While I currently hold the role as the interim GMC Administrator, my commitment to striving for a better GMC and a better Rocket Pool is unwavering. I find it hard to imagine a world where I’m not fighting for these causes, where I’m not actively working to make a positive impact. Thank you all for your feedback and by all means, keep it coming. Cheers.