BitShares Peer to Peer Tour - USA, Spring 2015

Arrival Dates
Sat 3/21 Madison, WI
Sun 3/22 Chicago, IL
Mon 3/23 Detroit, MI
Wed 3/25 Philadelphia, PA
Sun 3/29 Washington, DC
Thu 4/2 Blacksburg, VA
Thu 4/9 Nashville, TN

Can't wait to kick it with you guys in Madison and Chicago. Hmm...Spring tour 2015....where can I get the t-shirt?

Can we get an update from murderistic? He seemed very connected and would like to know if he's still on the project.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sent him a PM

... maybe I can help out with content in the future .. unfortunately not now ..

I already though about having a one-sentence column for technical and historical details .. like
 - did you know that that an alternative name for TITAN was SATAN?
 - did you know that you can use bitshares with addresses the same way you can with btc
 - did you know that the bts client has a build in block explorer?
 .....

Yeah, we would like to include columns as well as news in the future. For now, we are accepting a few editorials, so send us what you have and we will probably be able to fit it in!

Quote from: LRENZ on March 02, 2015, 10:12:53 pm

Quote from: crypto_prometheus on March 02, 2015, 09:55:46 pm

Interestingly, the counter argument I was watching for did not appear until the very bottom of the 3rd page, when fluxer555 posted the reply “...anyone can trivially record mumble sessions without using the built-in function. There is going to be no way to stop people from recording.”

The simple logic of this statement stopped the OP dead in its tracks. Fortunately, it’s curious absence from the first 3 pages allowed many of us the opportunity to explore the roots of our feelings about censorship, and recognize that most of us have quite similar sentiments.

I said it on page 1 

Detailed profiles is good idea, but I doubt the majority browsing here cares that much to get in depth like that.

You sure as hell wrote a lot of paragraphs for 2 basic proposals. Nicely written though I must say haha

"I like to paint a picture of the surroundings before getting to the focal point" ~Crypto_Prometheus~
I dig that kind of style...but then again, I could talk all day only stopping for breaths....so maybe i'm biased

I was always an editor, but it wasn't until fairly recently that I discovered my love for writing. Like most writers I am somewhat terrified that my audience will get bored, so I guess one way I compensate is to get as creative as possible with my presentation. I dunno, maybe I'm still in that honeymoon stage where my new found passion is leading to me to be a bit excessive. 

BitShares Community,

I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your contributions to our little “thought experiment” on the relative merits of censorship. If you have not yet explored this thread, please check it out: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=14621.0

In order to better understand where and how we should apply our efforts at consensus building, I thought it might be useful to take the unpopular position of embracing censorship and give voice to what I felt were the strongest arguments in favor. Interestingly, the counter argument I was watching for did not appear until the very bottom of the 3rd page, when fluxer555 posted the reply “...anyone can trivially record mumble sessions without using the built-in function. There is going to be no way to stop people from recording.”

The simple logic of this statement stopped the OP dead in its tracks. Fortunately, it’s curious absence from the first 3 pages allowed many of us the opportunity to explore the roots of our feelings about censorship, and recognize that most of us have quite similar sentiments. We all have different ways of processing the “unknown quantities” of things that we cannot control, and I was impressed that most of you were willing to channel your frustration and discomfort into an insightful and productive debate.

Censorship does not work because censorship cannot be technically enforced. The only recourse a would-be censor has is to try and control the channels that information is distributed, but this is often easily circumvented and will soon be completely impossible to maintain. The hubris of those who would control the narrative with an iron fist will soon be eclipsed by the bright light of the truth, expressed through a decentralized revolution that is tearing down the walls of perception to expose a new emergent social order.

So how can we begin to advance our purpose in a way that empowers us as individuals, and encourages a higher degree of trust and cooperation into ecosystem as a whole?

First, I think it would be a good idea to have a place where we each can share a more detailed profile of ourselves, our businesses, our interests, skills, and hobbies, and anything else that might help us to connect to each other so we can all work together for the betterment of the ecosystem. I have suggested to bitsapphire that we expand the bitsharestalk profile page to include a number of additional fields so that we have a convenient central hub to search for this information. This will also help to reduce the frequency of accidental objective misinterpretation, because the reader of a forum post will be able to make a more informed decision about whether the specific “disembodied opinion” they are observing is of an anonymous passerby, or rather.backed by someone who has actually chosen to place their reputation on the line.

By extension, the mumble server will continue to serve as a valuable space for the leaders of many BitShares related projects to hold meetings with different model structures, such as remote press conferences, meet & greets,  and all varieties of participatory discussions, with the disclaimer that recording is always allowed because it can never technically, much less morally, be prevented.

Finally, the two can be combined. For every mumble session, each person who speaks aloud has also given implicit consent for their @handle to be recorded, since everyone’s handle is visible on mumble. So after each event, when the audio recordings are prepared for release, a simple (low bitrate) video file can also be created to display the @forum handle of each person while they are talking, once again giving listeners the ability to better assess the relative objective value of each “disembodied voice”, and inspire them to further explore the nature of influences that are behind the opinions which are being expressed.

Although the forum is centralized, it is run by a group of people in whom we have voted to represent BitShares as trusted delegates. Although mumble is centralized, it is also run by a group of people in whom we have placed our implicit trust. Eventually everything will be decentralized, but In the interim it is imperative that we strive to honor and leverage the web of trust we have already built. Whatever course we take, I strongly suggest that we construct some sort of reliable reputation system immediately so that confidence does not continue to waver for want of objectivity.

Someday soon, your BitShares wallet, likely in conjunction with other decentralized systems, will fully support the original “keyhotee” vision. Things like decentralized DNS, open source hardware, and mesh networks will soon enable a mass migration away from the current paradigm and out onto a new frontier of freedom and security. I find it curious and somewhat paradoxical that the trust we have for each other has become the foundation for the building of these amazing trustless systems. I will therefore continue to work hard at finding solutions to help us keep closing the gap, and I am grateful for everyone’s continued guidance and support!

Shareholders and Delegates,

Cass and I are pleased to announce that we will continue publishing The NullStreet Journal (BitShares community newsletter) on a regular monthly basis. We are grateful for all the hard work that the many delegates and volunteers are providing for our community, and we want to thank them by continuing to give them this tool for updating all the rest of us on their activities.

We are now accepting submissions for the March 2015 issue. If you are a delegate, this is your chance to keep everyone up to date on your projects. If you are campaigning for a delegate position, you won’t want to miss this opportunity to get your message out to over 1,000 subscribers and loyal BitShares supporters. Even if you are just a volunteer, we are grateful for all of your efforts and we would love to hear about them!

The NullStreet Journal will publish on the 3rd Monday of each month, and the deadline for submitting content will be the prior Thursday at 23:59 UTC. So for March 2015, the Journal will publish on Monday the 16th, and the deadline will be Thursday the 12th at 23:59 UTC.

We ask that you submit your updates to newsletter@bitshares.media and be sure to include a title, your forum handle, your name (optional), and your delegate ID if you are a delegate. The categories will be similar to last month: Development updates, Marketing updates, Delegate proposals, and Opportunities & Initiatives. We are not setting a word count limit, but if your content is already hosted in another place (like a web page or a forum post) we would ask that you consider allowing us to publish the first few paragraphs in the newsletter followed by a link to the rest of the content.

For security purposes, when I receive your update I will confirm that the email is genuine by sending you a PM through your forum handle. Additionally, everyone who submits an update will receive a 7 day reminder email before each subsequent deadline. Your email addresses will never be used for any other purpose, and the emails will contain a link to unsubscribe if you wish to opt out.

After all the updates have been collected and organized, Cass will complete the layout and design and publish the finished newsletter on the following Monday. I would also like to offer my editing service to anyone who needs help writing their update or just wants someone to look it over before it is published. Several people asked for this last month, and I am happy to continue to do this for anyone who needs assistance.

I am reaching out to the chinese community to provide an opportunity for their non-english speaking members to contribute, and I hope that many of you will reach out to your fellow BitShares supporters and spread the word. If we all work together, we can build the NullStreet Journal into a simple and effective tool that benefits everyone!

Thank you,
Michael

Lots of people, such as me, listen to the recordings. If you'd propose to get that information to us another way, I'm all for it, but as long as critical updates are buried in a one hour Mumble session or in a string of 100 forum messages, then I for one am going to dig until I find what I need to make informed decisions. I would keep the recordings, but if there is an alternative, then that's fine.

I want to clarify that I am not suggesting that "critical updates" be only announced in a private mumble session. That would be absurd, although I understand where you are coming from. (We have frequented the neighborhood of the absurd on occasion, like announcing important updates on page 15 of a two week old thread)
My idea was that these would be more like brainstorming sessions

BitShares Community,

I would like to thank everyone who was able to participate in our discussion on mumble this morning,  and I want to extend my hand and express my gratitude for all of your efforts at helping to form a communication bridge between the east and west. I am looking forward to many such meetings in the future, and I am honored and humbled to be a part of such a brilliant and gifted group of individuals.

That said, I would like to offer to you a proposal. This topic was discussed in our meeting, however I do not wish to imply that there was any overall consensus. Rather, I have organized a version that I would like to bring forward in order to stimulate further discussion.

We cherish the level of intellectual intimacy that we have thus far enjoyed between ourselves and one of our beloved founders, Dan Larimer. We also understand that as a community, our organization has often suffered from sudden market turmoil because it seems we have yet to figure out how to enable the free and open exchange of ideas between us, without leaving ourselves vulnerable to subjective responses from people for whom it is impossible to grasp the larger picture. This is not by means the only force at play, but I present it for purposes of illustrative example.

We discussed, in our session today, the various PR blunders that we have experienced in the past year, and the point was often raised that if a radical idea was initially proposed by bytemaster in a mumble session, the blunder would be quickly contained and not escalate very far. We observed that this was likely due to the immediate feedback he received, combined with a general human tendency to grasp the more subtle implications of words when they are spoken, rather than written on a page. By extension, whenever he brought fourth a radical idea or concept on the forums, the asynchronous delay (lack of real-time participation) combined with natural language barriers became a powerful fertilizer for seeds of doubt that would then be cast and sewn across the landscape.

In most places within the United States, it is illegal to use recording devices inside a courtroom. The reason for this is because a recording can potentially be taken out of context, and used as a tool to manipulate public opinion. The written account of an eyewitness, or an artists graphic rendering of a dramatic court scene do not have 1: 10,000 the impact of a “viral” video or audio recording. To make up for this, a high percentage of court preceedings are open to the public, so as to protect against overt or blatant foul play. Again, by no means the rule, but presented for arguments sake.

My proposal to bytemaster and to this community is that he consider continuing to hold mumble sessions with us, but that we do not record them. I do not believe that this would betray our principals, because anyone is still welcome to join and participate. What it does provide is an opportunity for all of us to continue the lively discussions that we have grown fond of, while protecting ourselves significantly against the accidental rapid dissemination of subjective misinterpretation.

Public Relations is the art of managing the spread of information, much more than placing restrictions on the source of the information. Many Hollywood actors are prone to running at the mouth and making a fool of themselves, but if they have a good publicist, the channels through which this information might otherwise be spread are carefully observed and controlled. Thus, the restrictions I am proposing are aimed at limiting the damage that might be caused by our open discussion by eliminating the opportunity for it to spread.

The greater internal PR strategy will continue to fall upon those who are working closely within his circle of trust. Perhaps they might consider advising Mr. Larimer to limit all initial presentation of his more radical ideas to to weekly or bi-weekly mumble sessions? That way we can continue to enjoy the inspiration and excitement of his wisdom and understanding, and he can continue to enjoy the benefits of personal growth through our valuable feedback.

What say you all?