Hello everyone,
My name is Julia Velloso and I am the Planning Steward for the People Circle working group. Looking ahead to the coming 12 weeks that round out 2022 – our Season 11, I would like to share highlights of our plans.
If you are unfamiliar with our Season Planning process, take a look at @bhavishya 's forum post introducing the Season Planning Process.
This post is an invitation to be closer to our work, and we invite you to share your ideas and suggestions below.
Working Group Purpose
We enable great places to work and connect in the Celo ecosystem.
A view of the the last season
- Our Talent Collective – our program to source and hire great talent for projects building on Celo started gaining traction, with our first 5 hires starting new roles in the ecosystem, and another handful in the final stages of being filled. Hiring slowed down significantly as we entered the bear market, so we pivoted to creating an open-source playbook on building your own talent engine and thoughtful hiring processes.
- Our Office Communities – we revamped our San Francisco space with our community in mind, now hosting coworking and events for the Celo ecosystem and the broader crypto community. We pivoted our bigger plans to something more appropriate in a bear market, recognizing that community is now more important than ever. We did a quick upgrade to our NYC Soho space in advance of Messari Mainnet. We hosted events in our Berlin space during Berlin Blockchain Week.
- How we work together at the Celo Foundation – we spent time discussing teal principles and how to apply them in our fast-paced environment (still a WIP). We conducted an Unfolding Process (a teal practice) to pinpoint areas of strength and challenge. We gathered feedback in our semi-annual Partner Pulse, where peers offer insight to our strengths and one thing we might focus on to grow (since we’re all a WIP). We offered ways to connect and learn: coffee connect hour, meditation, financial planning with an abundance mindset, self-development tools to hone our purpose and path; and instituted a quarterly Unplugged Day where we all disconnect to recharge. We improved our monthly All Hands and AMAs to generate more conversation and participation, and launched a bi-weekly newsletter to highlight the goings-on within the organization.
- How we weather the storm of a bear market – in an industry checkered with lay-offs, we took a careful look at our lean team, our budget, our runway, and some creative options that we, true to a transparency-leaning teal org, discussed with the team. Many people opted into taking a portion of their pay in cUSD, some opted into an unpaid sabbatical, and some continued on a natural trajectory to shift into ecosystem projects. (Read more about that in Rene’s post.)
Goals for the upcoming Season 11
- Our Talent Collective – increasing our momentum to bring mission-driven, values-aligned talent into the Celo ecosystem, and offering thought partnership and tools to build your own great talent engine and candidate experience. (Goal: Post 50+ openings across 15+ ecosystem partners by early Dec.) https://celo.pallet.com/ Feel free to reach out to @Luca .
- Our Office Communities – we’re excited to keep growing our local communities in and around our office spaces in SF, NYC, and Berlin. Stay tuned for pop-up events and talks – get in touch with us if you’d like to host an event, suggest an offering, or work in our space! Do that here (Goal: Operationalize our in-office experience; host 18+ events across our 3 offices.)
- How we work together at the Celo Foundation – rolling out a handful of programs to support a meaningful career journey here, including coaching, mentorship, nonviolent communication, building a growth & development plan, plus a host of tools in our learning platform, including a toolkit for working in a teal org. (Goals: Execute 7 learning & development programs, along with expanding our practices for connection, and all the regular HR things needed to support the team.)
Your feedback
What sounds exciting or interesting or helpful to you here? Do you have ideas for us to build community and events in our local offices? Would you like to help host events in any of our 3 offices? Would you like to talk about building your team or creating great culture within your team? We’d love to hear from you—and hope to see you soon IRL in one of our spaces.
Warmly,
All of us on the People Circle – Julia, Luca, Grace, Elise, Ashley