How to host an incredible orientation ritual for your DAO

Step-by-step guide to create a fun, memorable and connected Zoom orientation to bring your community together

I had a Twitter friend tell me they were surprised Zoom only took up 13 hours of their average work week. They’d checked the stats and expected it to be much more.

The pandemic has made Zoom meetings a staple in our work and social lives. So you may wonder why I’m writing an entire article about the Crypto, Culture and Society DAO’s semester II orientation call. Isn’t it just another Zoom after all?

Vibes are important. To really emphasise that, there is a bit of prep one can do ahead of a Zoom call, especially when hundreds of people might turn up. The CCS community team spent hours preparing for this orientation call. We wanted learners to feel the vibes we wanted them to feel. And we wanted the tech and logistics to be out of the way as much as possible. 

At this point you might be wondering what ‘vibes’ are or what type of vibe I mean specifically. Vibes means ‘feeling’. The vibe we hope to create is one where learners feel they are in a safe holding container. Whoever they are or whatever they want to explore within the remit of crypto, culture and society can be explored with others here. Learners can bring their questions, curiosities, confusions, desires and hopes here. Learners are invited to be human and vulnerable in an intellectually challenging space. 

The orientation call was 60 minutes. In preparation, we agreed on the goal of the call, created the slide deck and split out the slides into different speakers. 

Orientation Call Goal

Most of the information learners needed was drip fed to them over email. We also created a handbook and a channel in Discord for those who needed help. As such, the emphasis of this call was not to brain dump more information. We wanted to set the tone by creating an intimate environment, one that held them as they stepped into it. We kept this goal in the back of our minds. 

Slide Deck

The deck had 14 slides, covered at a rate of around one slide every two minutes, leaving 30 minutes to the main act. The first five slides covered mission, values and core team.

We wanted to remind people why we were gathered, the values we held, and that there are humans behind this DAO. 

We then talked about the focus of semester II, covering study abroad partners, semester II workshops and electives as well as how to navigate the digital campus.

 The majority of the call was actually spent in break out rooms. We wanted people to get face time with each other! The call wasn’t about us! It wasn’t about what we had to tell them about what they are going to experience, we thought why not let them just experience it?

We did a hot seat ice breaker for people to quickly get to know other learners. Each learner sat in the hot seat for five minutes and shared the spice level they were willing to take from everyone else. Everyone else then asked questions from that spice level or the one below, to get to know them. 

Planning for different scenarios

Right before the call started, we also had a dry run where we planned for different scenarios. What if we only had 5 people turn up? What if we had over a hundred?

Each of these scenarios changes the way we facilitate. We agreed that if we had less than 5, everyone could stay in the main room. As soon as it went over that, we would start splitting it out into groups. We ended up having over 6 groups of 5. 

Team work makes the dream work

The three of us from the community team (Bhaumik, Kass and myself) were made hosts of the call so we could split the work. Bhaumik led most of the call. As learners streamed in, music played in the background, we also kicked off an activity of asking learners to share where they were dialling in from. As new learners entered, they could see the steam of replies and pick up the cue to add their city to the mix. This is designed to ensure learners are aware that the call is live and it means we don’t start off by wondering if the audio is broken, or having the awkward silence while we wait for others to enter. 

After a few minutes of letting learners stream in, Bhaumik started presenting. Kass and I continued admitting learners into the call. We’d all pre-agreed who was going to talk to which slides and the talking points were written at the bottom of the slides.

The call went smoothly and people really enjoyed it. 

Most of the thinking behind this very successful orientation call came from our strategy lead and long time EdTech entrepreneur Bhaumik. He was an early employee at Maven, Head of Education at OnDeck and started his EdTech journey at Thinkful. He’d seen the crème de la crème of how education can be delivered online, and our learners were the beneficiaries. 

The orientation call taught me that we can never overlook how much goes on behind the scenes in designing smooth, well functioning events. This is something I will never take for granted again. And it humbles me to know how much more one can learn in the art of holding spaces for people.