Cultural:
The perfect pod culture creates an environment where the contributors produce articles from a state of “flow.”
Flow is a state that occurs when: "The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost," as Csíkszentmihályi, the author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
In order to make this state possible for as many pods as possible we must ensure that an environment of safety and belonging is fostered in each pod from the beginning.
Therefore we recommend that the pod members feel a sense of ease and excitement as they explore how the roles collaborate, and what a production cadence might look like, in relation to how what the pod sponsor is looking to achieve.
Roles:
Each private pod will consist of 3-6 contributors. Their roles will include: writers, editors and liaison.
An writer and editor role can be shared among the pod. In other words, writers can edit articles and editors can write articles too. Each article will have writer and editor roles assigned that will count towards the correct compensation amount.
Production Cadence & Project Management:
Always keep in mind our goal of operating form a Flow state and starting from a place of safety and belonging.
The cadence of meetings and article releases will depend on the needs of the sponsor and the type of content required.
Therefore we think that each pod will have a unique meeting and production output cadence.
Our recommended private pod project management system is Trello because it’s free and easy to use. pubDAO will provide a template that has worked for other publications. However, if the pod is free to use another project management system if they prefer.