By Oliver Yao, BubbleDAO Contributor

What is inclusion? There are so many ways of defining it. But to me, I heard it defined this way, in relation to diversity, and it just stuck: Diversity is inviting people to the party while inclusion is inviting people to dance.  In other words, diversity alone is insufficient to building high-functioning teams. Diversity is just potential greatness; inclusion is the other ingredient that’s required to create a high-impact team. Together, diversity and inclusion allow an organization to bring out more voices, more perspectives, resulting in increased adaptability, creativity, and innovation. The problems we’re solving are diverse, and the teams solving them must be diverse as well. 

However, web3 companies are struggling to attract and retain diverse talent. Furthermore, web3 communities are struggling to attract and retain diverse contributors. After all, what’s so special about many web3 communities is the ability of users to contribute, and if we don’t have diverse contributors, we can’t create inclusive communities that can scale. 

Excitingly, DAOs and NFTs are great avenues to bring in women and BIPOC. To illustrate, when SyndicateDAO launched web3 investment clubs, they said that half of their launch cohort were either all women or women-led DAOs. How did this happen? Co-founder Ian Lee said that they hadn’t intended it and it just naturally happened out of an alignment of mission and values.  To explain deeper, I would argue that traditionally web3 projects solely required web3 specific skills. With DAOs and NFTs, with a community-centric focus, the web2 skills of community building and marketing open doors for many traditionally underrepresented minorities to step into web3. 

So how can we do more? In my opinion, talking about inclusion in web3 isn’t enough. Rather, we need visibility. This means giving underrepresented minorities more spotlight opportunities such as showcasing their work or teaching about web3. Another important part of visibility is being very explicit about having inclusion as a core value of your organization. All members, current and prospective, must be aware that by applying to be a member of the organization, you must embody inclusion. 

Furthermore, we need direct engagement opportunities. An example of this is She256, an organization that matches women that want to get involved in the space to mentors. And of course, BubbleDAO! Outside of hosting community events, we are building career development channels to help place people from all backgrounds into web3 companies. Come check us out at one of our festive or educational events coming up, including an awesome immersive art benefit for the ASAP Foundation on 9/22! Use this link for 10% off tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-parallel-convergence-tickets-417388820197?discount=BUBBLEDAO 

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