Philosophy

Imagery

In the digitalgaia tree logo, we can see 5 roots joining together (learning phase) and growing together for a first period of time to set solid bases (the trunk). This corresponds to the project inception. After that, each main branch is free to fork into its own directions and split at its own will, growing branches and leaves, in order to cover more areas of knowledge.

Each branch covers a certain expertise, and together we collectively cover a much bigger area of knowledge/expertise.

Important

An important point is that the branches need to be able to grow freely, so that the organization grows organically. A centralized organization (typical startup) would try to push everyone in the same direction, but that would be detrimental in the long run, the same as if a tree would grow all its branches in the same direction.

This way, each participant has the freedom to recognize the opportunities around him and take initiative on them, without bureaucracy associated with that. If at some point there is the need for more manpower on a certain project this can always be subcontracted.

If the project structure and organization is precisely defined, it should be possible to optimize it in order to maximize the chance of a successful organization regardless of the variance due to the participants. This allows to build a healthy base on which to build and ensure efficient communication and organization that become second nature after some time, removing it from the daily burden of tasks to do and freeing that much time and energy.

We generally start a project together at some point, and learn how to work together along the way. As the project quickly grows, there are more priorities and learning how to work together takes the back seat, usually in the form of tickets at the end of a very long backlog… There is always something else to do, and the perceived benefits (slightly less friction in communication/organization) don’t weigh much, even though it would be beneficial long-term.

I stipulate that there is virtue and eventual efficiency in first learning how to work together, but without starting to work on the main project directly. This way we don’t introduce technical debt at the very beginning of the main project, but rather on toy projects that we use to “sharpen our knives”. This allows to efficiently setup the organization in a “light” way, as there is nothing at stake. Mistakes at this stage are a good way to learn more! But the real value is that after that the main workflow of most people is done in a very fluid way allowing people to focus on “what” they need to do, not “how” they need to do it. They are now ready to work and focus on a main project that they will be able to work on in a “proper” way.

Note

old text from 2014

*** why the name?

DigitalGaia because I believe in a world that is both respectful of our planet and embraces technology. I don’t think that one should exclude the other, and I believe very strongly in the power of decentralization to help us build a better world that is inclusive for everyone and doesn’t create central failure points that accreted through concentration of money, power and greed.

Having recently come accross Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s writings, I strongly believe that anti-fragile systems are now required to run the world’s economy, and I do believe that BitShares (and Bitcoin, and all decentralized systems in general) are such anti-fragile systems.

Note

We want to be antifragile, that means we need to get stronger after encountering issues. So when fixing a bug, we should try to not only fix the bug but also to enhance the system to make it more resilient to this type of bugs, effectively proactively avoiding this class of bugs.

History

Crystallization of DigitalGaia concept as a collective dates from 2020-12-13