[DAO:e2a9606] Add CarlFravel to DAO Council

by 0xd6c957f9a6411f35d01baae2658758f277408878 (Rizk)

Should CarlFravel be added to DAO Council?

Address

0x63f587fc66d140368be6f808785937d63b8e6fc4

Reasons for adding

Name: Carl Fravel

Resume and Relevant Professional Experience:

My professional resume can be seen at Carl Fravel - Arrival | LinkedIn

Highlights of especially relevant experience for Decentraland:

• Technology Management and Software Development - more than 40 years, including a senior manager of Java and C++ tools at Borland
• Serial Entrepreneur - Founder of a number of startups, two of which have current activity in Decentraland
○ Gentle Electric - Synthesizer accessories and custom audio compoents
○ AFI - hardware and software for musicianship training
○ Synchron Networks - Enterprise software for system management - VP Engineering, COO - grew team to 40 employees.
○ Applied Talent - technology and management consulting.
○ 3DChess - virtual-world chess play and tournaments
• Fund Raising - led successful Angel and Venture Capital fundraising of over $18M
• VP of Engineering at TurboSquid (Online 3D model marketplace, 2007-2009)
• Early adopter of virtual worlds and scene-building (Second Life since 2009, Decentraland since 2017)
• Retained by the DCL founders on at 2 year contract as a consultant in virtual worlds, district formation support, and community development (2017-2019)
• Founded the Decentraland Conference Center, cofounded the Decentraland Film Festival.
• Authored a book on creating virtual experiences (Kindle)

Cover Letter / Vision statement for Decentraland’s future
I have seen Decentraland grow from a brilliant idea and evolutionary platform development, to a rich ecosystem of visitors and creators.
I can see it growing in traffic and experiential quality far into the future.
To do this we need to put the right attractions and incentives into the environment for creators to make engaging, innovative and improving experiences for visitors to want to return, to stay, to bring their friends and social networks. This is truly a need for collaboration, great communication, alignment, and mutual support between the DAO, Creators, and the Foundation. Where I see the DAO playing strongly in this mix is to be very engaged with the Creators - listen to their needs, understand what brings and retains visitors, and bring both support and appropriate resources to those things that will build long term value and traffic.
I think that the DAO and its leadership could have its ears closer to the ground of what the strengths and opportunities of the world and its community are and could be.

Evidence

Evidence of expertise in the Decentraland ecosystem
• Served as a retained consultant by the founders (2017-2019) for my previous experience in virtual worlds and to help with community and district development.
• Provided days of online user support to the community during the terraforming event.
• Purchased land in the original auction and contributed to 9 districts.
• Founded the Decentraland Conference Center and built it out in time to be live and highly functional on day one of the public opening of Decentraland in 2020
• Hosted over 20 conferences and 10 Film festivals, bringing in new, external traffic to Decentraland
• Hosted twice-weekly dance and social parties with live DJ in the Unity Café since 2020
• Hosted monthly 7-hour Music festivals in the Unity Café since 2021
• Hosted creator (vendor) events both in the conference center and the “Vendor Row” in the VRS district, enabling DCL creators to show their wares.
• Created numerous scenes in Decentraland including 44 in the Conference Center and 6 in the VRS district
• This creative work includes design, model creation or enhancement, and software development.
• Provided consultative help to several companies formed to provide services in Decentraland.
• Have had over 375,000 visits to scenes I have created since I started monitoring them in July of 2020
• Have assisted many other creators to structure their content into functional scenes and get them deployed.
• Have developed many functional code modules to support advanced interactive behavior in scenes, and have collaboratively made those available to other Creators.
• Provided documentation for Creators - created early documentation for Creators in the original DCL doc Wiki, taught a Decentraland University course in scene building, created documentation for district leaders to do DCL land management, and created documentation for the conversion of SDK6 scenes to SDK7.
• Have submitted dozens of issues to the Decentraland code repositories, of which nearly all have been accepted and resolved
• Authored an appeal to the community for improving the culture of communication in the DAO

• Have voted on about 60 proposals in the DAO, with 83% alignment with the community
• Have initiated a monthly series of successful Chess tournaments in Decentraland, with cash prizes and enthusiastic spectators.

I am changing my working arrangements to have more time available for Decentraland work starting Jan 1 2025.

I hope to be able to contribute significant value to the community through serving on this council

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

1 Like

Yes, this committee would fare much better with a senior advisor, as I perceive Carl to be.
Good Luck,
Jenn

Hi Carl! I do not know much about you and so it makes it hard to vote. I have voted no for you but that was not a fully informed decision. For some people my vote for yes is probably not going to change and for others I probably should have waited and learned more before voting. However, I can still change my vote. Anyway, I voted no so far because I read others felt you were insulting. I want to know you better and may switch to abstain because I know so little (which make me deficient as a applicant because I should know you more from reading these threads), but with only 5 people on the council, whoever is chosen must be able to get along with others… I feel need solid communication between all councilmembers and a willingness to listen and revise our opinions as new ideas surface. We also need someone who is well experienced in DCL, which you have, so I hope to learn more before we chose councilmembers.

Hi, ChronoT
Thanks for inquiring.
I agree that communication is going to be really important within this council and between it and the community.
Generally I am a thoughtful and tactful communicator, and those who have worked on projects with me know that to be true.
I avoid ad-hominem attacks and try to be courteous.
I have sometimes not answered questions from people that I don’t know well and that are posed to me in a hostile way.
I have sometimes not answered questions when I cannot figure out a good way to answer, or where i have previously spoken on the matter.
You can read how I have tried to answer some such communications in the comment thread of the original postulation.
I am a strong believer in consensus, consultation, and courteous communication.
Thanks for the thoughtful way you are approaching your voting.

1 Like

Hi Carl,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts; I appreciate your time and consideration. I’m glad to hear that you recognize the importance of communication within the council and with the community. I also understand that engaging with everyone, especially those who are insulting, can be time-consuming, frustrating, or even impossible.

We are charting undefined territory with this technology and of course there will be paths taken and lessons learned. There is a certain level of distrust and negativity in our community, and I feel that as we move forward transparency and consideration for the community will be important. We cannot make everyone happy but maybe we can replace negativity with understanding so that energy can be put forth for constructive innovation.

I believe it’s essential for council members to uphold a standard of respect while remaining open to updating their perspectives as new information emerges and as we chart a path forward. It’s encouraging to hear your views on these matters.

You have my vote, Carl! Good luck!

Best regards,

Michael (aka Chrono T)

Nothing personal, Carl :wink:

And just because the admins can’t realize that only the truth is the right way, I’ll leave this here: https://files.0x.beer/dcl/council-postulation/carlfravel.pdf

Carl is the one and only candidate I am passionately encouraging everyone to vote “No” for.

Nothing personal against Carl, people who have worked with him have told me he’s a great guy. I am voting purely based on the performance of Decentraland’s largest district, Aetheria.

One key aspect of decentralization is transparency. The official website for the Aetheria district at aetheria.io currently down, so nobody can go and read the founding documents anymore. This seems like a very conveniently timed coincidence, if it is indeed a coincidence that this happened during Carl’s council campaign. Nobody can go see what I’m talking about when I say that Carl and the rest of the board of directors that control Aetheria’s multi-sig were supposed to be up for re-election 4 years after district ratification, which was 2 years ago. That information seems to have been memory holed for the election. Or, again, a very conveniently timed coincidence is currently taking place. (lol okay it’s back up now, you’re welcome)

Land in Aetheria used to have the benefit of being cheaper to buy than other land in Decentraland. One of the trade-offs was only getting operator rights over your land, which means no VP. The floor price of Aetheria is now higher than the floor price of regular Decentraland land, making it more expensive, more difficult to use, and offering zero benefit over regular land. You cannot even buy a parcel in Aetheria that is right up against a road and benefit from being along the road. There was supposed to be a wall surrounding the entire district, so nobody can build on the parcels adjacent to official roads. But the district never built the wall, or any of the planned roads either, so every build deployed in Aetheria is a floating island in a sea of black tiles. The district looks like a giant burn mark on the Decentraland map.

More on roads - our district was promised roads when I bought land (or “deeds”) there 3 years ago. The idea was that parcels near the roads would gain some sort of value similar to how Stars district is set up around a private road. There are still no roads. I’m sure this is another instance where not having a DAO means Carl’s hands are tied because the decision on what roads to deploy needs to be decentralized. But if Carl is supposed to be on the board to provide high-level strategy and remove any roadblocks, the main roadblock right now is not having a DAO. That roadblock hasn’t moved at all since I first bought land in early 2022.

If Carl is going to step into this position where he’s expected to be holding an operational company and its employees accountable to budgets, initiatives, and deadlines, we definitely need better evidence than Aetheria to demonstrate that this is something he can do well, because the attitude in Aetheria seems to be the very “it’ll get done when it gets done” indie-dev mentality, and I have never worked for an actual company or client that accepted that answer when asked about estimates. Carl needs to better delegate the work that his district needs to get done before trying to oversee the work the other 90% of the platform needs.

I personally won’t be able to take this DAO seriously at all anymore if Carl is on the council. To me, it will be clear evidence of cronyism at work in Decentraland, because based on merit as a district leader, Carl should objectively be sitting this one out.

1 Like

Looking at the top 6 candidates, I changed my vote from No to Yes for Carl Fravel.

I think Carl is more Knowledged and more Experienced (wise) than Maraoz.

Besides, I don’t believe we should have all 3 Co-Founders as council members. It’s always good to have someone from outside for instance Maryana or Metaryuk.

This shouldn’t be an Argentinian reunion however if they want to catch up IRL and drink yerba mate nothing is stoppping them from doing this.

2 Likes

Carl has been a big supporter since I joined Decentraland in 2018. He’s always been there to help and has shared invaluable knowledge, tutorials, customized codes, scripts, documentation, and builds throughout all SDK stages. In addition to this, he’s organized hundreds of events. and with his 40 years of experience in the industry, he will undoubtedly be a valuable addition to the Council.

2 Likes

Add CarlFravel to DAO Council

This proposal is now in status: PASSED.

Voting Results:

  • Yes 87% 14,832,407 VP (49 votes)
  • No 10% 1,736,428 VP (14 votes)
  • Abstain 3% 586,872 VP (5 votes)