Three months ago, a group of over 100 internet strangers came together to crowdfund 12 one-month residencies for independent online creators at a retreat in the Texas Hill Country. It was an experiment in universal creator income, the physical manifestation of DAOs, and decentralized cities.

We solicited open calls for applications on Twitter, held votes among DAO members, and selected twelve incredible residents to live at Creator Cabins. Our community grew around supporting these creators and paying it forward to future people jumping into independent online work.

Residents have described the experience as life changing, mind clearing, and “good vibes”. Our diverse cohorts hailed from a wide range of personal backgrounds, countries of origin, and types of creation. They painted abstract portraits, wrote a rap musical, launched an NFT community, fractionalized the Doge meme, produced oodles of TikTok and YouTube videos, and much, much more. We’ve got another incredible cohort coming to the cabins next week to round out the first Season.

The residents have been supported by our broader DAO community, which serves as sounding boards, mentors, and early project collaborators. And, just for fun, the DAO collaborated on projects like selling the first living creature as an NFT and burying a treasure chest with an ETH wallet in the Texas Hill Country.

It’s been an incredible first few months of CabinDAO and we’re so grateful to everyone who has contributed to the residency program and building the DAO. We’ve accomplished way more than we initially thought we could, and it feels like we’re just getting started.

Here are a few of the lessons we’re taking away from Season 1:

IRL is great for collaborative deep work

When you have the right physical environment and time set aside for deep work, you can make incredible creative progress. Residents were amazed by how much they were able to accomplish with the right mindset and a physical setting designed for creating. Nature, fast internet, private work spaces, and unbounded time combine to produce a potent cocktail of productivity.

Time and again, we also saw that the liminal spaces of day-to-day life breed collaborative creativity. Conversations over a morning cup of coffee or while doing the dishes after dinner can provide the spark of an idea that would never have connected otherwise. It supports our hunch that much is lost when collaboration is limited to 30 minute Zoom calls with structured agendas.

However, we also realized that building shared context takes time, and groups without prior online relationships need longer to ramp up into collaborative output. There’s a beautiful serendipity to bringing together people from widely different creative backgrounds, but it doesn’t always lead to collaborative connections. The retreat might be even more impactful for a group of people from a shared community that haven’t met up in person before.

Program structure and length

Season 1 had a very loose program structure. There have been programmatic elements like an opening campfire, trips to Pedernales Falls and Austin, an on-site camp counselor, and check-ins with the DAO—but most of the experience was open-ended and self-guided. For some people, this was the best way for them to get into a creative groove. For others, more structure and programming would have been a helpful guide.

A month is a great length of time for getting deep into the creative process. Many residents said they’d prefer an even longer program: 6 weeks, 2 months, or even a year! However, these longer programs are also prohibitive for many people. It’s hard to take a month or more of time away from your friends, family, and job. This limited the type of person who was able to participate in the program.

Program sustainability

The biggest unknown going into Season 1 was program sustainability. We knew we wanted to support unbounded time and space for independent online creators, but we weren’t sure how to close the loop so the program could support itself.

Our initial thinking was that we would support residents in creating work that would generate profit, for example by helping residents mint their work as an NFT. That turned out to be really impractical for most residents. Their work needed a longer timeline or it didn’t necessarily lend itself to the NFT format. We also want to support creators before they have a big enough audience of their own to sell NFTs. As a result, we need to find another path to generating sustainable income to support the residency program.

Cabin DAO as a service guild

One thing residents have found very helpful about participating in the residency program backed by CabinDAO is direct access to the DAO members. We have a lot of very talented DAO members, including designers, product managers, engineers, musicians, writers, and more. Residents have received help from DAO members with specific skill sets. Some of our DAO members have met and teamed up to take on bounties together.

This has all happened informally and serendipitously, by nature of the fact that we have talented people in CabinDAO. We would like to better leverage our members’ skill sets while providing more opportunities for our members by making their services available.

Based on these lessons, we are proposing four major changes for Season 2:

1. Bring out squads instead of individuals

2. Change the program length from 1 month to 1 week

3. Mint passport NFTs to make the program composable

4. Formalize Cabin DAO support programs

Bring out squads instead of individuals

For Season 2, we want to take what we've done for individuals and do it for DAOs, Squads, Guilds, etc (small groups that already know each other).

The future of work is remote, but not 100% remote. Pre-pandemic, most workplaces were probably 5-20% remote and the rest in-person. A more optimal work style is probably the opposite (i.e. 5-20% of the year in-person). This is true of our own experience of building CabinDAO: we collaborated remotely for almost a year before meeting in person at the cabins and we’ve accomplished more in the three months since our first in-person meeting than we did in the entire year prior. We’re in the process of organizing our own DAO retreat and plan on getting together in person at least twice a year going forward. That’s because remote work is great for executing, while in-person work is great for direction-setting.

Change the program length from 1 month to 1 week

一个月的时间很好，但对于真正深入的创造性工作来说可能太短了。但很少有人能从生活中抽出一个月或更长时间的时间去山区的小屋。因为第 2 季将是关于团队的并且它是可组合的（见下文），所以来到这里的团队可以选择最适合他们的选项和他们想要完成的工作。一个需要制定一年路线图的 DAO 可以让他们的创始团队在一起一周，并度过一段非常富有成效的时光。一个从事项目的小队可以出来 6 周，然后在他们离开之前启动。

铸造护照 NFT 以使程序可组合（且可持续）

我们想这在机舱里制造和销售一周的 NFT 护照。护照将可组合并连接到 web3 的精彩世界。任何人都可以代表在客舱里一周，可能是第一个上链小租赁。朋友可以通过 Passport 来完成他们梦寐以求的购买项目。DAO 可以开始购买 Passports 来领导团队静修会，甚至他们自己的 DAO 以赞助的驻留项目（我们将帮助您完成申请和可能！）。直播中看一个PartyBid来众筹一个的微会议，谁知道呢。

我们将在 2022 年的前 12 周中的每一周以 1 ETH 的价格出售 NFT 护照。这些 NFT 护照的收益可用于资助未来的居民群体。如果我们有几周没有售罄，我们将使用我们现有的申请和投票流程在这几周内运营驻地。

正式化 Cabin DAO 支持计划

在小屋的每一周时间里，Cabin DAO 的工程师、艺术家和建造者公会都会在那里帮助支持您的团队。我们的公会帮助想要在网上独立谋生的创作者起步，然后帮助他们成长为世界上最好的 web3 雇佣兵。

我们将帮助将 Passport 持有者的奖金与合适的人匹配，以支持他们的在线和 IRL 需求。每个 Passport 持有者将被空投 10 $CABIN 以保留或花费在 DAO 服务上。可以购买更多的 $CABIN，NFT 持有者还可以访问 Cabin DAO 赏金委员会，以列出 $CABIN 中的额外赏金或他们选择的代币。

Three months ago, a group of over 100 internet strangers came together to crowdfund 12 one-month residencies for independent online creators at a retreat in the Texas Hill Country. It was an experiment in universal creator income, the physical manifestation of DAOs, and decentralized cities.

We solicited open calls for applications on Twitter, held votes among DAO members, and selected twelve incredible residents to live at Creator Cabins. Our community grew around supporting these creators and paying it forward to future people jumping into independent online work.

Residents have described the experience as life changing, mind clearing, and “good vibes”. Our diverse cohorts hailed from a wide range of personal backgrounds, countries of origin, and types of creation. They painted abstract portraits, wrote a rap musical, launched an NFT community, fractionalized the Doge meme, produced oodles of TikTok and YouTube videos, and much, much more. We’ve got another incredible cohort coming to the cabins next week to round out the first Season.

The residents have been supported by our broader DAO community, which serves as sounding boards, mentors, and early project collaborators. And, just for fun, the DAO collaborated on projects like selling the first living creature as an NFT and burying a treasure chest with an ETH wallet in the Texas Hill Country.

It’s been an incredible first few months of CabinDAO and we’re so grateful to everyone who has contributed to the residency program and building the DAO. We’ve accomplished way more than we initially thought we could, and it feels like we’re just getting started.

Here are a few of the lessons we’re taking away from Season 1:

IRL is great for collaborative deep work

When you have the right physical environment and time set aside for deep work, you can make incredible creative progress. Residents were amazed by how much they were able to accomplish with the right mindset and a physical setting designed for creating. Nature, fast internet, private work spaces, and unbounded time combine to produce a potent cocktail of productivity.

Time and again, we also saw that the liminal spaces of day-to-day life breed collaborative creativity. Conversations over a morning cup of coffee or while doing the dishes after dinner can provide the spark of an idea that would never have connected otherwise. It supports our hunch that much is lost when collaboration is limited to 30 minute Zoom calls with structured agendas.

However, we also realized that building shared context takes time, and groups without prior online relationships need longer to ramp up into collaborative output. There’s a beautiful serendipity to bringing together people from widely different creative backgrounds, but it doesn’t always lead to collaborative connections. The retreat might be even more impactful for a group of people from a shared community that haven’t met up in person before.

Program structure and length

Season 1 had a very loose program structure. There have been programmatic elements like an opening campfire, trips to Pedernales Falls and Austin, an on-site camp counselor, and check-ins with the DAO—but most of the experience was open-ended and self-guided. For some people, this was the best way for them to get into a creative groove. For others, more structure and programming would have been a helpful guide.

A month is a great length of time for getting deep into the creative process. Many residents said they’d prefer an even longer program: 6 weeks, 2 months, or even a year! However, these longer programs are also prohibitive for many people. It’s hard to take a month or more of time away from your friends, family, and job. This limited the type of person who was able to participate in the program.

Program sustainability

The biggest unknown going into Season 1 was program sustainability. We knew we wanted to support unbounded time and space for independent online creators, but we weren’t sure how to close the loop so the program could support itself.

Our initial thinking was that we would support residents in creating work that would generate profit, for example by helping residents mint their work as an NFT. That turned out to be really impractical for most residents. Their work needed a longer timeline or it didn’t necessarily lend itself to the NFT format. We also want to support creators before they have a big enough audience of their own to sell NFTs. As a result, we need to find another path to generating sustainable income to support the residency program.

Cabin DAO as a service guild

One thing residents have found very helpful about participating in the residency program backed by CabinDAO is direct access to the DAO members. We have a lot of very talented DAO members, including designers, product managers, engineers, musicians, writers, and more. Residents have received help from DAO members with specific skill sets. Some of our DAO members have met and teamed up to take on bounties together.

This has all happened informally and serendipitously, by nature of the fact that we have talented people in CabinDAO. We would like to better leverage our members’ skill sets while providing more opportunities for our members by making their services available.

Based on these lessons, we are proposing four major changes for Season 2:

1. Bring out squads instead of individuals

2. Change the program length from 1 month to 1 week

3. Mint passport NFTs to make the program composable

4. Formalize Cabin DAO support programs

Bring out squads instead of individuals

For Season 2, we want to take what we've done for individuals and do it for DAOs, Squads, Guilds, etc (small groups that already know each other).

The future of work is remote, but not 100% remote. Pre-pandemic, most workplaces were probably 5-20% remote and the rest in-person. A more optimal work style is probably the opposite (i.e. 5-20% of the year in-person). This is true of our own experience of building CabinDAO: we collaborated remotely for almost a year before meeting in person at the cabins and we’ve accomplished more in the three months since our first in-person meeting than we did in the entire year prior. We’re in the process of organizing our own DAO retreat and plan on getting together in person at least twice a year going forward. That’s because remote work is great for executing, while in-person work is great for direction-setting.

Change the program length from 1 month to 1 week

一个月的时间很好，但对于真正深入的创造性工作来说可能太短了。但很少有人能从生活中抽出一个月或更长时间的时间去山区的小屋。因为第 2 季将是关于团队的并且它是可组合的（见下文），所以来到这里的团队可以选择最适合他们的选项和他们想要完成的工作。一个需要制定一年路线图的 DAO 可以让他们的创始团队在一起一周，并度过一段非常富有成效的时光。一个从事项目的小队可以出来 6 周，然后在他们离开之前启动。

铸造护照 NFT 以使程序可组合（且可持续）

我们想这在机舱里制造和销售一周的 NFT 护照。护照将可组合并连接到 web3 的精彩世界。任何人都可以代表在客舱里一周，可能是第一个上链小租赁。朋友可以通过 Passport 来完成他们梦寐以求的购买项目。DAO 可以开始购买 Passports 来领导团队静修会，甚至他们自己的 DAO 以赞助的驻留项目（我们将帮助您完成申请和可能！）。直播中看一个PartyBid来众筹一个的微会议，谁知道呢。

我们将在 2022 年的前 12 周中的每一周以 1 ETH 的价格出售 NFT 护照。这些 NFT 护照的收益可用于资助未来的居民群体。如果我们有几周没有售罄，我们将使用我们现有的申请和投票流程在这几周内运营驻地。

正式化 Cabin DAO 支持计划

在小屋的每一周时间里，Cabin DAO 的工程师、艺术家和建造者公会都会在那里帮助支持您的团队。我们的公会帮助想要在网上独立谋生的创作者起步，然后帮助他们成长为世界上最好的 web3 雇佣兵。

我们将帮助将 Passport 持有者的奖金与合适的人匹配，以支持他们的在线和 IRL 需求。每个 Passport 持有者将被空投 10 $CABIN 以保留或花费在 DAO 服务上。可以购买更多的 $CABIN，NFT 持有者还可以访问 Cabin DAO 赏金委员会，以列出 $CABIN 中的额外赏金或他们选择的代币。