Feelings Check-in: In Our Chaos Era. Zine Update, Mission Workshop, Operational Disorganization

[00:00] I don't know, maybe a DAO. I don't know, maybe Boys Club, maybe events. I don't know, maybe a DAO. I don't know, maybe a magazine. I don't know, maybe like, fuck around and find out has been kind of the, um, kind of the mantra. Hello, I'm Natasha Hoskins. I'm Dina Burke. And this is Boys Club. Wait, is it just Boys Club? It's just Boys Club. The Boys Club podcast? No, just Boys Club. [00:25] Welcome to the show. Natasha, what is Boys Club? [00:28] Boys Club is a... [00:32] Social DAO and media mogul conglomerate multi-channel. [00:41] Great. I love that. We have a podcast. We have a newsletter. We have another podcast. We have events, a lot of events upcoming, just like a shit ton of IRL happenings. And, um, yeah. [00:57] We have a community where you can apply and join. You go to our website, boysclub.vip. You scroll... [01:05] to the bottom, and you click join. And then when you click join, you send an application, and then [01:13] Most of the time... [01:14] We read them. Somebody reads them. So please do that if you'd like to jump in to our online chat. Yeah, here's why you would. We're a group of people who are... [01:25] interested in technology and interested in, [01:29] I suppose...

[01:31] crypto and web three and AI. We're interested in all those things, but we're interested in those things as they [01:40] pertain to our lives. So it's not like a heavy duty tech infrastructure thing. [01:47] I don't know, chat. It's like, what are the things that are going on in technology? And... [01:52] What do they mean for me? And what do they mean for my career? And what do they mean for the things that I'm interested about? So... [01:58] If that sounds... [02:00] Like... [02:01] a group that resonates with you, then you should join us. If you're not sure, then just keep listening to this podcast. And at some point, maybe you'll decide to come in. And also subscribe to our newsletter. And please just subscribe to our newsletter. Okay. So we are- I actually had an interesting conversation with a coworker at my day job about Boys Club. [02:20] and super nice guy, he's an engineer, really nice, and was like asking me all these questions, like, [02:27] No shade on him for this comment. Like he was just really genuinely interested in being nice. And he was coming at it from like a dev perspective, like his experience as a developer, like what it's been like to watch what's happening in crypto and like, you know, whatever. [02:41] And for the record, he's a non-crypto developer. He's a non-crypto developer. Yeah, he works on Web2. Great. And I was talking about, like, some of our developer community and, like, the Solidity group chat and, like, stuff like that. Like, the stuff that, like, I actually don't participate in within Boys Club but, like, exists within the universe of Boys Club. Mm-hmm. [03:00] And he was like, well, you know, it's not too late. It's not too late for you. And I was like...

[03:04] Too late for what? And he was like, for you to become an engineer. And I was like, oh, no. Like, I mean, maybe. I don't know. And I was just like so thrown off by like – [03:16] I was like, something about my explanation has made it sound as though Boys Club is a developer community. And I'm like leading a developer community. And I was like, oh, and it sort of just highlighted to me like... [03:28] Boys club is what you make it. Like whatever it is that you're into, it can be that thing. But I was like, no, it is definitely too late. And he was like... [03:39] Oh my gosh. Anyway, that made me laugh. Um, so this podcast want to just reiterate that this is a new format. So if you're brand new here, [03:52] We are taking our interviews and doing separate podcasts of those, and then we're doing... [03:58] a doubt update and a feelings check-in in this episode. And we will, I guess, do this moving forward. So what does that mean, Dina? Yeah, I think so. If you're brand new to this, this is the first episode you're listening to. [04:13] That's great. [04:15] It, it... [04:16] may behoove you to listen to like one of the interview podcasts first or like the podcasts that are going to be [04:24] Just Natasha and I. [04:26] We're going to be talking about our feelings. We're going to be talking about the voice club now. So we'd love to have you along for the ride. [04:34] And...

[04:35] It, uh... [04:37] It may take some context building for you. And by context building, you need to fall in love with us somewhere else to care about what you're about to listen to. [04:47] So that's just, I guess, a PSA. On this episode, we... [04:53] talk a lot about actually something that is, came out of the DAO, but it's quickly becoming its own thing in the world. The boys club zine. [05:05] So we are launching a new internet magazine that is coming out in a month-ish. So we're very excited about it. It has been a tremendous amount of work and can't wait to put it in front of you all. So we talked about that. And then we talked about some feelings around... [05:26] a vision and mission workshop around Boys Club that we did, which was interesting and it was great. It was great and brought up some feelings. [05:35] So give it a listen. We do some drop tweets at the end. [05:40] I hope you enjoy it. [05:48] Today, we are going to be talking about... [05:52] The zine. [05:53] The zine. The zine. Which up until two days ago was going to be called Noise. And then just a Google search, which should have happened a while ago, produced that there is a magazine called Noise. There's actually many magazine calls called Noise.

[06:11] Yeah. Yeah. My Google search actually resulted in a different noise magazine than the one that someone. I'm glad we did that. Um, six months ago when we started this project. The due diligence from the boys club team just topped you. Um, [06:24] So what is a zine, Dina? The zine is a... [06:29] Physical... [06:30] and digital representation of a moment in time. [06:36] of the boys club community and the larger sort of internet culture. [06:41] So what do I mean by that? I mean, like... [06:43] We're pulling... [06:45] Articles and features from... [06:50] people from across the community and outside the community representing like things that we're thinking about right now. [06:56] And it's kind of like a catalog of [07:01] A very cool catalog. A very cool catalog of... [07:05] a fall winter internet culture, [07:08] moment. I think for me, it's like, uh, it's like almost like a, [07:13] I mean, this is just what all magazines are, but like, it's a time capsule of... It's a time capsule, yeah. What's happening in our community and in the broader like conversation around like... [07:23] culture and technology and innovation from the perspective of many people who are really working in the space and thinking about the space and with the lens of boys club. [07:34] With the lens of Boys Club. And for the most part, the tone of Boys Club. Like some people aren't in Boys Club, but they still have that vibe. Yeah. [07:41] Um, and

[07:44] I'm like very proud of it. [07:46] I'm very proud of it too. It's amazing. I was like – [07:49] looking at it, editing it this weekend. And I'm just like, this is really fucking cool. [07:55] Yeah. It's really smart. It's really unhinged in various areas. A lot of memes. There's like a lot of memes. Kind of crazy. Also like our first shot at it. Like we don't know. None of us on the zine team have ever done a zine before. Any sort of media background whatsoever actually. No, zero. So we've thrown this together and I'm excited like in a couple years to look back at it as our like the first thing that we shipped as a zine and... [08:25] It just will be really interesting to see. But like, even for our first version, I'm really proud of how it's come together. [08:32] I think that like something... [08:34] I've been thinking a lot about it as a magazine. [08:38] is like such an old format. I guess they've been doing magazines since they've invented the printing press, basically like not like in various versions of it or like, [08:48] catalogs or whatever and so in many ways it's funny for us being like technology like we're we're at the bleeding edge of what's happening and we're like reverting back to this old format but that feels so boys club though like it's so tongue-in-cheek to be like [09:06] It is. [09:07] zine around the new internet. It is kind of like in and of itself kind of a joke, but [09:12] I... [09:13] I think that also like there is something about,

[09:18] a magazine, [09:20] which is reflective of this collective effort, right? Where you're able to... [09:26] you're compiling contributors into one thing and trying to... [09:31] have that one thing be a container for all these different voices. And I actually think that's like really representative of what Boys Club is and where we want it to continue to go. It's like, how is it pulling in all these different perspectives? [09:48] using Boyz Club as like a container or a platform to help like, [09:53] elevate all these different voices. So I'm really excited about how it's come together. We're already got a lot of thinking for version two, for edition two, and how we can improve upon not only the output, but also the processes. It's been like a... [10:10] It actually hasn't been that chaotic, but... [10:13] It's been an experience. It's been a learning experience. It's been a learning experience. [10:18] I would say that [10:20] So we're launching it in South by Southwest. We're doing like a huge blowout thing there with it. Originally the party was going to be called Noise, but now it's not because there's another magazine called Noise, if we haven't mentioned that. So anyway... [10:35] Keep an eye out for that. It will... I think what's really fun about it is we're like layering in sort of these different digital components like... [10:45] like digital treasures and NFTs and things you can mint that are a part of the story of how this thing works.

[10:53] lives beyond [10:55] this one moment. Yeah. And, um, [10:58] The hope is that it will like we will do many editions of this and they will become like these collectibles over time that you can sort of peek into a moment in time of the Boys Club universe and crypto and culture generally. Yeah. So but I do think that the cover will be a collectible. So as soon as you have the opportunity to mint the cover. [11:20] You should do it. It will be a limited time free mint. So just jump right on it. [11:25] Mint it. [11:25] Get in your wallet? [11:27] And then you have the edition one of the boys cup scene. And once we get to edition 100, you're going to be like, wow, I have edition one. That's really cool. [11:34] So that's Zine. Yeah. Then something else that I want to just talk about quickly is we are meeting yesterday. [11:43] So yesterday we had a mission and vision program. [11:49] workshop. [11:50] led by Sam. [11:53] on our core team who's just a dream come true. Um, [11:57] Because as we're sort of evolving Boys Club, and we talked about this quite a bit, but like there's things that are staying within the DAO. There's things that are spinning out of the DAO. So like media company is spinning out of the DAO. [12:07] That means that like [12:09] events, podcasts, newsletter, events. [12:11] potentially a zine, those things are going to be in this other entity and have a relationship to the DAO in many different ways, but operationally, [12:19] are going to move outside of the dome. [12:22] So,

[12:24] that [12:25] That in conjunction with, okay, we've been doing this a year, we're headed into 2023 or we're a month into 2023. What do we want from the Dow and what does the Dow want from us? [12:35] And... [12:36] How does that larger mission and vision trickle down into... [12:41] the day-to-day work and the operational running of the DAW itself. And... [12:48] So we did a workshop yesterday, part one, part two is next Sunday and I'm [12:57] It was... [12:58] really... [12:59] Amazing. [13:00] To sit on a call with like 15 other people who are so fucking smart, like so smart, so talented and like care so much about boys club. [13:11] Yeah, it was special. It was so special. There was like a moment where we were like, okay, let's write all of the things like on these little sticky notes about... [13:19] What we... [13:21] love about Boys Club or like what we feel like there's a fit with Boys Club. And to like see all of these people working in this document and like, [13:28] like immediately just like listing off all these things felt like a real moment to like reflect on and be like, wow, this is – [13:36] It's easy to lose sight of how far... [13:40] we've all come over the past, whatever it is, 14 months of building Boys Club, [13:45] But that was a moment for me where I was like, this feels very special. And I feel very honored to be in this room with these people. [13:53] who really care about this thing and want to see...

[13:56] And are like... [13:57] On the... [14:00] like ride. [14:02] of figuring out what it is. And I don't know. What do you think? [14:06] We have approached this whole thing with a real spirit of experimentation. [14:13] In moments like that where you're sort of doing both some reflecting on what's worked and what hasn't worked and also thinking about planning for the times ahead – [14:24] it becomes abundantly clear where the experimentation shows itself and there's gaps, major gaps and major failings, which if you're not failing, you're not like pushing it far enough. Right. So I think it's all healthy. [14:41] And I think it's [14:42] expected appropriate if we're not feeling like we're not trying but it is um [14:49] Yeah, it's... [14:51] This is not a well-oiled machine. We have... [14:55] failed across many fronts and will continue to fail across many fronts. But everyone on that call, and I think... [15:04] in many ways the wider community is kind of at peace with that. [15:08] Because this is also new. And like, that's what you do in a new space. It's like- [15:13] We're just pushing on some edges. And I think that that's, I think everyone finds that really fun. And I think the community finds that really fun as well. [15:21] So... [15:22] is willing to be along for the ride and do that with us. So anyway, that's my feeling.

[15:27] *music* [15:33] Okay, it's a feelings check-in time. [15:35] I think we got a lot going on. [15:39] We've really ramped things back up. Man, we've really ramped things up. Okay, so let me just quick rundown of what the events are in the next... [15:46] Eight weeks. [15:49] Okay. [15:50] New York community event. She can't even remember. She can't even remember. New York community event, mid-Feb. [15:54] Mirfab. [15:56] And a FED. New York City. [15:59] Denver. [16:00] East Denver. First week, East Denver, first weekend of March. Second week of March, South by Southwest. Mm-hmm. [16:07] April, April. [16:08] LA. [16:09] Mm-hmm. [16:10] And I'm doing a hang in Nashville this week, but that's just fun. [16:14] Oh, fun. She joins Soho House once. All of a sudden, builds a community. [16:20] It's going to be really fun. I'm really looking forward to just getting some coffee with the [16:24] With the gals. With the gals. [16:27] Um... [16:28] Thank you. [16:29] Yeah, we got a lot going on. All of those things. We're launching Zine. We're now have the podcast universe that we've nonstop listening and editing. The content machine, like the editing. We're constantly, if you're wondering, ever wondering, what are Dean and Natasha doing right now? We're editing a podcast. We're definitely editing a podcast. I'm on the Stairmaster editing a podcast. That's what I'm doing. If you're thinking, what are you doing right now? [16:53] So, yeah, it feels like a lot. Maybe that was actually the feeling waking up, just like a touch overwhelmed, like –

[17:00] There's a lot of moving parts. [17:02] And... [17:03] Just for context, whenever we are doing an event, [17:08] It's like, yeah, the event, the producing of the event is a whole thing. It's like getting the invites, getting a photographer, getting a DJ, getting printed materials, getting assets together, getting collateral together, getting the invite out. All of that sort of stuff, yes. It's also... [17:21] getting a sponsor, finding a venue. Like there's all of these things and all of them have to happen in a certain order to then come to life. It's a symphony. It's a symphony. It must come together like a symphony. Yeah, because you can't, [17:34] You often can't lock the sponsor until you have the venue, but you don't want to have the venue because you're then committing to a spend when you don't know... [17:42] If you have the money. If you have the money. Chicken or the egg. Chicken or the egg. Big time. Big time. And I'm a planner. I'm a real planner. And so I just want to plan. I want to get the invites out. I want to let people know. I want people to be able to put it on their calendar. I want to build hype. [18:00] I, we're just kind of waiting and talking and acting super chill when we're talking to sponsors. And like, it just, it's... [18:09] there's a fatigue around that, especially when you have... [18:13] many different events that you are, oh, we also forgot that we're doing monthly. [18:18] Community events. Monthly community events. And also having full-time jobs. And full-time jobs. And full-time jobs. Full-time separate jobs that are not Boys Club. Full-time separate jobs and also tickets for me. So, yeah, I think it's just like a touch overwhelmed is maybe the feeling. And you're like carrying all those things in your head and trying to –

[18:39] execute on them. And then I did have a feeling yesterday. So we had this like mission and vision session yesterday. [18:44] It was wonderful. It was so great. I had so many positive feelings. I had one negative feeling, which was there was like a slide where it was like, okay, what do we... [18:55] um, like need this next year or what do we like, what was basically a failing of, of the boys club community in the past year or not community, but like, [19:05] Whatever boys club and everybody's riding stickies, like, you know, whatever. [19:12] And I wrote these. So it's not that I disagree. I completely agree. But there was a consensus. The half of the slide was filled up with stickies around... [19:24] operational chaos and disorganization [19:29] around [19:31] contribution, accountability, all of these things. [19:36] And... [19:37] as the founder of this thing, I couldn't help but feel responsible. [19:41] For that. [19:42] and take it as a personal family. [19:46] And I don't think anybody on that call was saying Dean and Natasha have not created enough [19:53] Structure. Structure. I don't think that was what... [19:56] people were saying. [19:57] So [19:58] But it's not what they weren't saying. It's not what they weren't saying. But I think they were saying a DAO is chaotic. [20:06] And all of this is chaotic and...

[20:10] the work to do is to try to make some sense of... [20:15] the chaos that exists. And... [20:19] I... [20:21] I completely agree. I couldn't agree more. I'm like, yes. [20:25] like preaching to the choir. But I did have a moment where I was like, [20:30] Am I like not a good operator of a business? [20:32] And had to let that go. Mid-19. [20:35] I was like, let this go. This is not... [20:37] a feeling that's productive and it's not what it, nobody's saying it directly to me. I'm taking it personally as feeling ownership over this thing and wanting to take care of the people who are invested in it. Yeah. [20:51] I don't know. What do you think? [20:52] Yeah, I'm with you. I didn't really take it personally because... [20:58] Thank you. [20:59] I don't know. Maybe it's a shared problem. I do think it's kind of a shared problem. Like I think it's in a DAO. [21:05] It's... [21:07] Yeah, it's kind of, it kind of is up to all of us. But maybe I should take it more personally and then maybe it would be more structured. [21:15] Um... [21:18] I, um, yeah, I was mostly like, man, um, [21:25] There's... [21:27] there's like a tenacity that I saw in all of the people that were on that. [21:32] workshop, the 15 people that were in the workshop. [21:35] Call. It's a tenacious group of people. It is. People who are like really... Ambitious. Get at it. Yeah. And consistently get at it. And...

[21:45] I... [21:47] I became present to [21:49] Oh, yeah. [21:51] this group has self-selected for that type of person because of all the, they are willing to stick around and to pursue something that, [21:58] Yeah. Through the chaos of it. [22:01] And so I think that maybe for like early season one boys club, like early days boys club, that that's appropriate. That we need that type of person who's willing to like walk through the mud. [22:12] with us together and like figure out what this is. Yeah. But I do worry about all the people who have been interested in boys club. [22:20] on the sidelines for the past six months or nine months in the past year, uh, [22:24] haven't found their access point to like come in or, or maybe sent an application and it went to nowhere, or maybe they did contribute on a team for a minute and... [22:34] couldn't like find their [22:36] Flo, couldn't find their footing. I worry about like those, like I was sort of more thinking about those people and like, [22:43] man, there's probably a lot of collateral damage around the chaos that- [22:48] I want to apologize for and like invite them back, bring them back in. Yeah. And just sort of acknowledge that, [22:55] there has definitely been collateral damage and people have definitely like, like, [23:00] not found their way and and [23:03] So I do think that the conversation yesterday was, like, a lot of it was an attempt to care for those types of contributors and to open up more access areas for contribution. [23:15] across a lot of different...

[23:18] Across the spectrum of contribution from like very light touch, low contribution to like [23:24] coming in and doing or owning a project or, or taking a leadership position position. But yeah, I just, I think that's like, [23:31] If that was you, listener. [23:33] I'm sorry. And glad you're still listening to us. And more to come. More to come. Yeah. [23:39] Outro Music. [23:46] Okay. [23:47] Draft tweets? [23:50] Let's do draft tweets. The new format is really going to challenge me because we're going to have to have to avoid the amount of draft tweets, which... [23:57] It means I need to be producing more content on top of the additional content that we're producing. So it's going to be interesting. I have one and I'm sort of like saving it. [24:09] Because I do think it's funny, but I just, it takes some work from the reader and I just don't know if that's something they're willing to do. Okay. So it's a link to Blake's new podcast. Okay. Okay. [24:19] And then... [24:21] That's at the bottom. And then on top of that, it's a screenshot of a Google search. [24:25] Okay. [24:26] And the Google search is M-M-O-R-P-G definition. [24:31] And then there's my caption, which says, me, producing Blake's podcast. [24:37] So I like, I think it's really good, but like you've really got to track. Like it's like not something that like. [24:44] Yeah, well, here is what you need to understand. You need to understand that.

[24:49] Blake talked about MMORPGs in her podcast. [24:52] You need to have a grounding for MMORPGs to begin with. [24:56] Exactly. And then you need to be able to... [25:00] It's inside baseball. It's the most inside baseball. It's an inside joke. It's an inside joke. But I kind of like it. I kind of like it. And I feel like there's another MMO... [25:12] RPG joke for you somewhere in the universe. Okay. We can be worshiping. Oh, maybe I'll hold out. [25:17] Okay, so I had a viral tweet yesterday. [25:22] You did? Yes. What? Yeah. Yeah. [25:25] No wonder you were in such a good mood. No wonder you are at peace with everything. Yeah. Wait, let me see. What was it? So about Dows. [25:32] About taxes. So what I learned... [25:36] Nice. In that moment. [25:38] was a couple of things, a couple of lessons from that, from that viral tweet moment. One, [25:44] Topical. [25:45] Excuse me, timely. [25:46] Timely. Yesterday was the 1099 deadline day for filing taxes. So there was just a lot – there was a big pain point around taxes that – honestly, it was true for me. I was also filing our 1099s, but it was – [26:00] Just, you know, I hit a truth. I hit a moment of truth. Yeah. Wow. And the other experience I had... [26:07] which [26:08] I don't know. It's kind of ominous. [26:10] was at a certain point during the day yesterday. I mean, it didn't go like crazy viral. Like, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, over three, almost 400 likes. Yeah, almost 400 likes. [26:19] And a bunch of retweets. At a certain point yesterday, I was like,

[26:21] Please stop retweeting this. [26:24] Like I want it to like stop. I wanted it to stop. [26:28] Cause you were like, this is drawing a lot of attention to our taxes. [26:31] No, I just like some dude, some dude like quote tweeted it and was like, if your DAO is filing taxes, it isn't a DAO. And like, you know, there's context collapse that happens as soon as your tweet starts to travel. It's telephone. It's literally a game of telephone. Yeah. And like, I was just like, shut the fuck up. I don't shut the fuck up. That's a stupid take. No one asked you. You didn't ask him. I didn't ask him. I didn't ask him. And so, yeah, there was this moment where I was like, oh my gosh, just stop. [27:00] retweeting me. Anyway, so yeah, I kind of like blew my watch with that tweet. But I do have another one, which was [27:11] Um... [27:12] This is, I don't know, it's not really funny, but it's, [27:15] It's just kind of weird. Um, [27:19] My husband told me he only had strawberries twice a year when he was growing up because they were too expensive. [27:24] and I kind of want to like look at [27:30] So he grew up in England. Yeah. [27:33] in... [27:34] The 1960s. [27:38] *laughter* [27:40] um anyway i kind of want to like sorry dave sorry dave he's he's also the um editor of our podcast so we really apologize for you um [27:50] I kind of wanted to...

[27:52] look at the price of strawberries, [27:54] In England. Yeah. Yeah. [27:56] in... It's just like it feels a little sad. The 80s and 90s. Yeah, it's really sad. I mean, it is sad. Yeah, it's sad. But it's also like, how have strawberries... [28:06] What's been the market dynamics? Big strawberry. Yeah, something's happened. [28:11] Okay, that's it. Okay, bye.