JournoDAO attended the ONA23 conference last week to talk about two core missions of our DAO; 1) how decentralization and blockchain can help protect the industry from the waves of AI disinformation filling our timelines and 2) how do we restore journalism at the local level using decentralized technology stacks to protect our communities from the perilous impacts of news deserts. After having just spent the summer in Paris, post ETHCC and ETHGlobal Paris, and being accustomed to ETH conferences, filled with Bufficorns, ping pong tables and puppy lounges, the difference was dramatic. And hilarious.

I recently concluded a 30 year adventure in academia and obtained an undergraduate degree in Yoga. I know, it’s as strange to type that as it was to experience it. The TL;DR is that about every 10 years, I return to academia for a few years and study something that I’m passionate about. The first round was outdoor recreation, the second round was photojournalism and political science and the third round-- yoga with a minor in religion. The say I’m a lifelong learner is a gross understatement.

Seeing the brilliance of my colleagues and our work together manifest in beautiful containers where the brightest minds of web3 could come together and build was beyond gratifying.

Let’s face it. Shit’s gettin’ real-- fast.

Community surrounds us at all times. But how often do we, in the technical world, turn to our IRL communities and find the humanity we need? I ask this question because prior to returning to school and finding my own belonging in a contemplative academic/spiritual community that gathers during the school year in person, I was at a loss for a solid IRL community.

Our intention was to protect you from the emotional turmoils, traumas and uncertainties of our world. But instead, we offered you as sacrificial lambs to the Silicon Valley overlords playing God with technology and destroying your sense of self, your mental health and your communities.

Navigating our modern reality requires a skill-set we, as a collective, are not truly equipped to deploy in such pressing times. Holding space for both the utter destruction of our planet, our ecosystems and our social fabrics and also leaving space for the simple beauty of the natural world that surrounds us and the fundamental goodness of humanity. Such a duality is not something our educational systems teach, nor does the dominate religious culture here in the West. But if we are to truly survive the reality barreling down at us with a sliver of sanity intact, we must embrace this duality and create the space in our lives for both the beauty and the chaos.

Last week I returned to my spiritual and academic community nestled at the foothills of the Rockies in Colorado. Returning to my people after an intense summer in the South was beyond a relief. All summer I was surrounded by the perpetual iconography of separation, violence and racism and while I grew up in the South, I’ve never experienced such energetic volatility at scale. And I’ve documented post conflict countries in the midst of collapse and under occupation. I’ve witnessed and experienced intensity for a living, but it pales in comparison to what’s happening in this country, and around the globe, right now.

I launched the Unraveling Collection ($UNRAVEL) on Foundation in early July of 2022 as a means to fund-raise so I could cover traveling to DC to document the Women’s March event on July 9th. While no NFTs sold before the event, I’d created a collection that I could leverage to actively use my skills to fight for my own rights and those of the collective. I began exploring this concept of deploying my NFTs as tools to raise funds for DAOs in late 2021 and now the framework was finally in place.