Holy Crap. So much support should have me speechless. But we all know I am one who always has an opinion.
I'm going to be honest. I do my best, but do often question my own value to this project (until I see all these positive comments, which serve as metrics for me to recognize that I do bring value). The reason I have stuck with it for so long and supported it with such passion is because I have had a very difficult time since joining the military to "fight for freedom"...and learning when afterwards that I was actually doing the complete opposite. There was a time when I felt so small that I thought I could never have an impact in this world and that our problems were insurmountable. Watching the NDAA written into history with the stroke of a Tyrant's Pen on New Years Eve of 2011 sealed the deal. It was probably the saddest day of my life to see Habeas Corpus denied in the "Land of the Free". But BitShares, its devs and community have been a bright spot in my life. When I look at my baby I think that maybe, just maybe I'm helping build a better world for him.
It has been this community and Bytemaster's Vision that has given me hope when nothing else did. So I simply can't see myself living without helping it grow big enough and strong enough to rebuild the old paradigm and spur a Revolution. I'm not talking about a violent revolution (the one the "elites" are wanting to incite so they have an excuse to roll out the Police State they've been building), but a Revolution of the mind and the heart. In fact, I would like to see the community hold a stake in 100's and maybe even 1000's of DACs "Powered by Bitshares" so when the inevitable politics of any one system change to such a degree that users wish to leave, that they have another place that might be more philosophically aligned with their goals--and based on the best damned suite of crypto-protocols available. Thank you for always supporting this project and most of all thank yourselves for recognizing YOUR value. Simply showing up and giving one's opinion can change the entire course of history at this point (and I am not over-doing it with this statement).
Now that I'm done being my usual crazy, sappy self... there was a question.
Finally fuzzy gets a delegate
Do you plan to set some amount aside to pay for a couple of members whose job is to vet the delegates and communicate to the community in a concise manner? We need this service.
I would love to do this, but to be honest I am trying to set it up so we hold community-based delegate hangouts that eventually grow to be the size of Bytemaster's hangouts. True to form, I would like these to be community-driven where I moderate, ask a list of initial questions and then open it up for the community to do their own "interview" of the candidate.
From there, I would personally like to see Max Wright of
BitSharesTV then interview those who actually get hired on BitSharesTV, and push both the content and inform people that to be hired by the blockchain it is the community who decides---and if they pass the gauntlet, they will be offered a slot to chat on BitSharesTV. Of course, it would be great if he then told people about our community hangouts with both the Developers and the Delegates and direct them to the content we create.
I will be running a 100% paid delegate and will likely only receive 20-30% pay from it myself. As stated before, I intend on hiring those who currently volunteer to edit our hangouts, and expect them to provide a far more polished version of the Raw formatted ones. At present they will likely be paid 20% each for editing which brings us to 60-70% of the 100% already used...because this frees up more time for me to schedule and run more hangouts. The other 30%-40% will be split up between the tech guru who is helping me and teaching me the best practices of running a delegate (my father), who I will be paying 10% to ensure this is a "backbone" delegate like Riverhead's--with redundancy built into it.
This brings me to 20-30%. With this remaining amount, I would like to pay a member of the chinese community who has always attended our hangouts and never asked anything in return for translating to the Chinese members of our community: BTSWildPig (or if he doesn't want to, another Chinese Community Volunteer). Then I have to also account for taxes. So as you can see my personal pay rate will be substantially lower than the 100% I am asking, but that is only so I can help grow what we are building.
Of course, as we grow and as those editors "hired" by this delegate prove themselves, it may be possible (as long as the community agrees) to let them run their own delegate(s) and hire even more editors...which would free up more funds for me to hire more moderators for hangouts with different Devs/Delegates for even more chains. Eventually we could have an entire media network that supports 100's (and potentially even 1000's) of "altchains" that sharedrop on us. And Max could get those who rise to the top and do what he does best---personal one-on-one video interviews.
I want this delegate to help expand and grow our community...and most importantly help to empower all of you. Does this all make sense?