Well it was beautiful regardless, my friend.  That is a certainty.

A good question I would like to ask you sometime for an audience, after listening to this:  "how will decentralized exchanges help free currently-centrally controlled markets?"

Good interview.  Love listening 

Quote from: toast on February 12, 2014, 03:01:14 am

People who don't do software don't see why it should be any harder to make time estimates about software development than about any other kinds of projects, but they are not unreasonable for thinking that and your PR should take that into account

Hi toast,

Yes, you're right, this is one of those battles that software developers are always having with their managers too, I suppose. I'm not a PR guy, but I guess a PR guy might have trouble explaining the details of software development, so I'll take a stab at it.

Management always wants a hard date for software delivery, whereas the software guys know they can't really guarantee one, because on any reasonable size software project, it's very difficult to scope out enough details of the design ahead of time (nor is it even often fruitful to try to take the "design it all out first" approach, since once you get into prototyping the code, you sometimes find you need to take a different path than you originally anticipated).

Unexpected problems almost always arise in any truly "new" software (as opposed to adding a feature to an existing piece of stable software, where dates can often be set as long as the feature isn't "big"). As an example, in my own personal work in the past few days, I'd hoped to finish up the database versioning code, but I'm only partially done as I've had to fight problems related to register KHIDs with different capitalization and some related issues (collapsing of similar names like qqq and qqqq to be the same name). Fully understanding the problems associated with this (none of these issues were in code that I had personally worked with before), coming up with a solution that put the least demands on Keyhotee founders, then implementing and testing it,  took several days I didn't expect to spend. But any real programmer will tell you this is typical of the job.

I understand people's frustration, especially as, by Bytemaster's own admission, his original deadlines were unrealistic, but all I can really say is that we're competent programmers, we're working as hard as we can, but we don't want to rush the software out before it's well tested. This just results in more problems, and makes it take longer to deliver a correct version of the software, since we then have to work around legacy problems from software delivered too early. Whether it's the end of February, the end of March, or even later, my main goal is to have a solid, upgradeable experience for Keyhotee users once the block chain is launched.

Anyways, I hope none of the above gets anyone too upset. It's just my own personal feelings about software development, and it's not been "vetted" by Invictus (or our PR department).

One thing I can definitely say, is that if you look at all some of the best products on the market in software, it is often the case that the public awaits the projected launch date just to be dissappointed 2, 3, 4 times.  Though this is not always the rule and certainly not the best practice, the community tends to appreciate a polished product even if it frustrates them to launch it late. 

Imo, taking the time to produce a superior product is best, but definitely worth it to provide the community with updates when it is taking longer than planned.  Glad to see that so many changes coming down the pipeline though...

and also keep our eyes open to the ones that pop up in this ecosystem as it grows...

Reputation and BitShares as collateral would be interesting as well. But then again, we have a great many unknowns in this space...especially with government and, more importantly, the consensus of the general public about "BitCoin". 

How do you guys suppose navigating these two landscapes will look?

2 hours of discussion...much of it funny, some of it eerily frightening in the potential layout of "gov regulation" in the crypto-space.

IMO, not frightening because of gov regulation's dominance, but rather for the potential of many community members being punished for participating in this community.  Very interested to hear comments. 

http://altcoinpress.com/2014/02/altcoins-rising-bitcoin-the-altavista-as-google-waits-in-wings/

Interesting thought.  Looking forward to seeing how this will play out.

Sounds like a nice spot.  Probably best to start with that and allow everything to just grow on its own as more people start joining up and the group gets large. 

I am personally looking into making a little blog that I can post to and would like to try to interview people who want their idea spread from within the community..  For instance a chat with Adam B Levin just to give him a platform to tell the community about his ideas, or MMC's Dev along with people who are actively producing new tools for the community...etc.

That will be a longer term venture on my part though and wouldn't even necessarily need to be attached to your weekly fireside chat, though clips could be shared and "mixed" freely among the community. 

Great idea bytemaster!

The simplest way is to have one of those beer-drinking man-chats between nerds on Skype or whatever that are so popular these days. But I'd aim a little higher. This could double as serious promotion for Invictus and potential DAC creators, and quality production is very cheap with the technology we have available. It could also triple as media training - talking to a live camera is a skill like any other.

Pre-production

Scripting? Questions?  The community could post questions in a forum thread initially or a portion of the show centered on them.  (Bytemaster, a media "category" in the forums would be beautiful).  Of course people could also show up and ask questions when we are live, but I know I always have questions for Devs even if we get few people at first.  My hope for this would be to make it in the spirit of cryptocurrency--decentralized.  I'll gladly "host" a channel though.

Should there be an introduction video? Of course!, and I'm sure ByteMaster would let us use clips of their own for certain instances.

What's the format? Different each time? A) open, but people can "take the mic" and add their own points?, B) consider 1 hour of a 2-3 hour show to be "structured", with 1-2 hours hangout.

Quality
How will it be entertaining?  Sometimes it might not be, but the great thing about things today is that "best of clips" could be compiled by community members who love to do those things...or perhaps another model will eventually take shape.  Someone will eventually fill that hole just like you are stepping up to ask these questions

How will it be informative?  The hour of structure will talk about basics, news, sociopolitical "deep" questions...perhaps let "newbies" show up and ask questions during a certain portion (with backup material in the case noone shows up)
HD? HD shouldnt be too hard using Google Hangouts, but I personally hope it can be inclusive of a broader audience...unless their equipment is TERRIBLE ;P

Production

Where/how will it be filmed?    Personally like Google Hangouts (until a decentralized solution exists)...or in a Haunted Cemetery.

How will it be post-edited?     I will definitely play with it and edit it.  Will probably make a blog to post links to news, youtube vids...etc.  But I think it would be awesome if noone "owned" them.  Just post it under BitSharesCommunity or something to that effect and let other channels grow out of people doing their own work to the clips.   

Promotion

Where will it be posted?     Posting through popular social networking sites will be a good start.  I personally love that Decentralized platforms can, if done correctly, incentivize participants to work to add value to the network (thus increasing the value of their stake).
If ByteMaster puts a "Media" Category in their forums, I would be glad to post pertinent videos there and would love to see others do the same (make it a kind of video social video blog).

How will it be advertised?  Good question on the Advertising. 

As for the rest, we will see how this goes.  I want to be there and make this thing my baby, but I dont want it centralized around me.  I also would like to eventually find someone who is willing to call me out when I'm an ass.  If it even matters what "I" want, in this.  Opinions from the community should be of utmost importance.  The next step would be to open a thread (I'll figure this out) that asks some important questions as to how the community would like to bootstrap this.  The up votes are starting to get high enough for me to take notice...and obviously it is the same with Bytemaster

I'd love to help with this project...