Hey fuz, maybe it makes sense to clear up your intentions about the mumble server. As I understood it, it would be a cool thing to always have someone there so a newbie can come and ask something. Which doesn't hurt if you are working something on the computer anyway...  I suspect people here on the forum rather think it is a community chat (which it also is). But I guess they always go out of the chat again if they dont find anybody there... Maybe it would make sense to announce again what it is (also) there for?

There are many individuals who do not frequent the forums on a regular basis, and bitShares holders who do not know why bitShares is so different from most other crypto-projects.  This is certainly here for them too. 

But since it was brought up, lets dig in and try to shed some light on this entire project.

On Fanboy-ism
I originally wanted to start a show similar to Adam B Levine's "letstalkbitcoin" and be a fanboy for bitShares.  After a conversation with Adam, he made a good point that I believe we all would do well to remember "It's dangerous to be a fanboy of one specific technology" (paraphrasing here). 

The Vote and People's Voice
For this reason, rather than name it what I wanted to name it, I decided it would be best to let the community give their opinions on the name and then give them another opportunity to vote on said names.  The name voted on was "Beyond Bitcoin".  This is the name that was not too long after also chosen for a conference to be held in Las Vegas.  I am unsure whether this was done because of the results of the community vote I put up, or not...but it is what it is.  To my knowledge Beyond Bitcoin was chosen by the community for a show at least a good week or two before the announcement of the conference. 

Enter Team Viral
With that said, not long after a thread on "Team Viral" was posted (I believe, by CLains).  In it he sought out volunteers to help market the technology we all find so much promise in, but that is not given the buzz that similar, less passionate, crypto-projects have received from the mainstream crypto-community.  We had some steam at the beginning, but to be honest when we initially had a difficult time finding a time to meet up I began thinking of alternative and more inclusive approaches to form a foundation for our communication/coordination efforts. 

The Vision
In the background I was acquiring a web-domain (for a Blog), twitter, youtube, G+, and subreddit account for "Beyond Bitcoin".  These were acquire with the intent of giving anyone who wanted to use them a platform to build something without having to worry about paying up-front the initial charges and time/effort that normally stays people's hands.  The vision was that we would start out with the bitShares community and bring in other people from the crypto-space, using Google Hangouts as the platform and the Subreddit to enable a platform for the community to ask and vote up/down questions in the days prior to an interview.  This way it was not tied centrally to my opinions on what are important questions.  The intention was to enable competition to flourish in the space of the Q&A so no single person would feel afraid to ask questions that although often pertinent, might seem offensive to the guest.  In short, it was a way to take the heat off of a single person so the likelihood of "fanboy-ism" would not as easily creep in.  It would also be a way to protect the actual interviewer (whomever that is/will be) from the fear of hurting their community standing for asking an "unpopular" question. 

Mumble, the Open Source VOIP Service
As I invited people to join Google Hangouts, I soon found many people didn't want to be on camera.  This is understood as many people have wall-flower tendencies (and I do too!).  There were also issues with this because if I close my computer or shut it down, I must then re-open the hangout and reinvite everyone.  In short, we needed a way to keep a service always up and running so availability is there without requiring the continued efforts of a central entitiy--in this case myself and my laptop. 
So I thought back to my gaming days and the times when I was in the military and far away from family and friends who, though they loved me, had completely different schedules and were not always able to interact with me via the traditional channels.  I used Team Speak at the time to keep in contact with my little brother and best friend and did the same with my wife who was working in overseas.  This was perfect because we had a central location and could keep logged in at all times, even if we were afk. When I was homesick, I could look in the client and see my bro and my friends were still there...and sometimes when I was too busy to chat I could still listen to them in the background as though they were in the other room.   
It was my hope that using this Mumble server would enable people from the crypto-space to interact with one another and have meetups/conference that are not hindered by geographic and financial hurdles (not everyone can afford $1000 bucks for travel and entrance fees to conferences).  It was also meant as a means for people to easily meet new friends so they could then form more interconnected relationships (getting skype id's, g+, twitter, fb handles...etc). 

Conclusion
Beyond Bitcoin is a platform I have paid for and intend to give for free to the community and any other Bitcoin 2.0 community that wishes to use it to actually innovate and collaborate to find ways to keep power from becoming centralized in the space.  It is my gift to you guys and the movement and I hope that eventually I can walk away and know that it will not require I even post here.  Until that day, I will be focusing on working as hard as I can with the spare time I have to build up the infrastructure and do the background lifting that goes into something like this. 

It is starting with this forum as a test ground because I have by chance found myself here as opposed to any of the other altcoin forums (even the other ones I hold stake in).  There has to be a reason for this...and my personal opinion is that this community sees something that most others do not (yet). 

I sincerely hope you will feel free to use the Mumble Server and stay in there even when you are afk.  Invite people you know in the crypto space--even people outside of bitShares' community.  Help to teach each other about this space, use it as a place where concepts that are too difficult and/or time consuming to explain/explore on the forums can be explained more efficiently.  Then use the forums to post a more succinct and polished version of the consensus determined. 

This is for you...and although I will accept anonymous tips for this (as I do for any of my ideas or work), I will NEVER expect them.  Of course, there are limits to what I can do...so the community must at some point in the future determine how valuable this service is to them and decide to help it fly or let gravity take it down. 

Sincerely,

Fuz



 

Quote from: Stan on April 14, 2014, 01:00:20 am

Quote from: jwiz168 on April 14, 2014, 12:25:46 am

Quote from: luckybit on April 13, 2014, 11:21:29 pm

I would do the drop in such a way that it's AGS being dropped and not BTS. They'll have to buy BTS, but they'd get AGS so that they share a stake in the future successes of the DACs which honor AGS. This would actually make it more likely that DACs will honor AGS because more people will own AGS.  It would also build the network effect.

This better airddropping scenario. Making BTS valuable.

I like the idea, but how would this be done without "altering the agreement"?  That always seems to cause wailing and gnashing of teeth. 

Also, AGS is designed to be a targeted group of proven patron donors.  Once developers figure out that this is a "mailing list" of people they want to court as supporters, it will be the most valuable thing to honor.  If you mix in people who are not donors, you dilute the demographic and therefore harm the "pulling power" of those who did donate.

Recall that PTS is designed to be a targeted "mailing list" of proven saver-supporters who won't grab and dump.

Now, if someone created a third "mailing list" proto-coin, separate from PTS and AGS, that honored a mix of the first-generation industry leaders, then future snapshots would have the option to attract them with their own 10% if they so desired.  Maybe it would be called "BitShares POS" and make it a nice neutral introduction to profitable DPOS block-chains for everybody.

Just a wild idea.  What would be the pros and cons of that?

How about an Airdrop alliance version of AGS which we can donate to? The purpose of this AGS would be to facilitate strategic alliances between compatible communities. Think about it as something similar to the birth of the United States or a trade agreement between countries. A strategic agreement should be reached between all communities which promote the concept of the DAC.

The social contract should be formed among these communities such that they'll Airdrop to each other. All who donate to the Airdrop AGS address would become part of the mailing list which will receive the Airdrops from the communities which join the alliance in the future. Mastercoin can have it's own Angel address where it's community can donate, Counterparty could have theirs, each community which agrees to this would contribute to the funding of Airdrops. As a gesture of good will the Bitshares community could go first.

This way in one move you could quickly build a web of alliances between the communities such that the grassroots would benefit from the successes of the overall DAC community. If one of the DACs are a major success then everyone would have some small portion of it and it also means people would be much quicker to learn more about it and buy more shares.

That is the best I could come up with. It needs a lot more thought, but I think now it might require a new kind of intercommunity social contract.

Damnit lucky, why were you not on the Mumble Server today when Bytemaster was talking about this stuff?  Your points are always well thought out and make me think.  I am not saying there aren't flaws that other people would pick out, but these thoughts are precisely the kind that lead to truly superior methodologies. 

Quote from: Stan on April 14, 2014, 01:00:20 am

Just a wild idea.  What would be the pros and cons of that?

Just ignore the airdrop thing and make more ideas of DACs. Bitshare has already been snapshot. To get/have bitshare is thru an exchange. Not as bounty for marketing. PTS is already doing that.

would there be a way to allow, say, the top 10 cryptocurrencies to vote on which DACs under the "Alternative DACs" forum section they would like to see next?  Have an AGS-style donation that also functions as a vote (kind of like on Cryptsy) only where every coin donated rewards those who donated similarly to how AGS did? 

Instead of "ending" the AGS period, we would essentially just be adding the top 10 cryptos to the Remaining AGS days and find some way to make it also count as a vote.  Not sure if this is possible from a coding perspective, and just a thought, but as I see it, the AGS funding model might gain Invictus a great deal more funding in the long-run if they open up the Alternative DACs AGS funding to Alternative Coins. 

While we're talking about world-class debates, here's a question:

1.  Who among the top-tier respected sound money advocates (e.g. Peter Schiff and his peers) would be the most likely to support crypto-assets if they somehow had the chance to consider the BitShares profitable DAC metaphor instead of the Bitcoin currency metaphor?

2.  What is a good link to a statement of their current position on Bitcoin and crypto-currencies in general?

I have sent a request to have Chris Duane come to our Beyond Bitcoin channel to discuss this in an open format.  The way I see it going is that we would have as many members from the forums as we can get log onto their youtube accounts, and each personally request he do an interview for our community (link for my post is here if you want to up-vote it: https://www.youtube.com/user/TruthNeverTold/discussion) . We would keep this up and continue occasionally posting in this fashion until we finally get him to accept. 

The day we get confirmation of the interview acceptance, we will start working on figuring out the date/time for it to occur.  Once this is done, we post to the Beyond Bitcoin Subreddit under the heading "Chris Duane Interview, 1 May 14"--approximately 1 week in advance.  Under this heading, we will have forum members and other crypto community's members post questions and vote them up/down.  At the end of the week, we will have a list of questions in descending order based on the popularity of the questions. 

Bytemaster would then have this "debate"/conversation and forum members would log in and have their devices muted, using the chat feature to converse during this time, instead.  After the debate/conversation, there will be an interlude of approximately 5-10 minutes when those logged into the server can go back on the subreddit and finalize their questions/votes. 

The interlude could provide a time space where we could run a commercial for the individual we showcased, along with sponsors from DACs that honor social consensus in some form, or really anything else we feel is important to help move us forward.  (I am currently not sure if I want to monetize this as I want people to trust the motivation behind why Beyond Bitcoin was originally created...but I could potentially be persuaded otherwise if good arguments are made--or good causes found to donate the funds to)

After the interlude, we come back and those who had the questions voted highest by the community would have their mic's unmuted and would ask their question to either Chris, Bytemaster...or both. 

After the interview is over I take the recorded file, add it to a video editor along with a premade image with Chris Duane's and Dan's portraits and we upload it to the Beyond Bitcoin Youtube Channel.  From there, we can Tweet it through the Beyond Bitcoin Twitter account, post the link to the the subreddit(s) and BitShare's official Facebook can post it there. 

I have thought long and hard about these formats and hope this sounds like an acceptable means of accomplishing it.  Please let me know what you guys think.   

@Legend, I want to do anything possible to help you out despite your inet connection.  With that said, lets chat offline about options.  We need content creators and especially someone other than me with a "voice made for radio" (I sound like Stevo, from "Jackass"--except for, ironically, when I sing).  Honestly, you might be able to do voice-overs for us as that would not require a fast, low latency inet connection...and sending .wav files will not take extraordinarily long time even on a 56k connection.  Please let me know how I and the community can help you help us

Aside from the daily chat we should begin to "officially" announce the Tuesday and Thursday 7-8 pm (Eastern Standard Time) hangout session (incl. Bytemaster and Toast)...

We'll have to make sure the best time for him and the dev team but I am perfect with that.

Quote from: legendface66 on April 13, 2014, 12:50:27 pm

Hello Bitshares forum. You don't know me because I never post but I read you guys every day.

Within two weeks I hope to release the first episode of a podcast detailing the developments which are taking place in the bitshares ecosystem. I'm no computer scientist but I've been avidly following Invictus since the debut of Protoshares, I also posses a neutrally accented baritone. Hopefully that's sufficient to qualify me for the role.

A bi-weekly podcast allows people to make bitshares part of their weekly routine so this will be the ultimate goal. Initially however one episode a week seems like a more manageable workload.

Let's hash out the most important questions on the minds of the community and come up with detailed, concise, easily understood answers. I myself am very much a layman so my ability to understand and re communicate will inevitably be the litmus test here.

Tell me what you think guys. If you're interested in getting involved please speak up and let's start producing some media!

 

Here is an important debate I recommend for discussion.

The role of social entrepreneurship, building community, and the effectiveness of airdrops.

For the most part a majority agree that an airdrop should happen, but we don't all agree on why it should happen or how. My side of the debate is that airdrops should happen to promote long term strategic alliances and to grow the community. The strategy I proposed is based around courting social entrepreneurs and rewarding community service with airdrops. Details can be found if you check my profile for my posts.

I think it's a main topic of discussion for the forum at this time and it needs to at least be more thoroughly addressed in the podcast format. Many people are not going to want to read every post but having the different arguments discussed in a podcast would be neat as anyone could just listen to the podcast.

@Lucky

The mumble server can be used precisely for this...and can be more inclusive of the community than a podcast, though of course a podcast would end up being one of the perfect means for publishing what the group consensus ends up being.  It is far more efficient to speak over VOIP services for big topics like this and use forums to refine the consensus agreed upon during these sessions...
Record them with a Google Hangout and post the session under "Beyond Bitcoin" channel.  Then do a podcast with the Devs and key decision makers to speak about the pros, cons and contingencies of the finalized concensus. 

So where are you man??!

it is official.  Legendface is the first Beyond Bitcoin Mumbler

Thanks Toast.  We are waiting for all of you to jump in and say hi.

Quote from: CWEvans on April 12, 2014, 03:15:42 pm

<blockquote>

Looks like there are some grumblings of financial discrepancy...

Interesting that they can spend so heavily in marketing a product that doesnt even have a deadline anymore. How long before we get a "Gee Golly guys, we tried our best but we ran out of funding!"
</blockquote>


http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/22q6t5/bitshares_the_next_neobee/

And your point is...?

Stan answered my question, I said thanks and even changed the title of the post to [Explained].

What exactly are you trying to say?

I see nothing wrong with potentially calling out Devs and bringing potentially unpopular opinions into the fray.  Our world largely got into the mess it is in because people were too afraid of being considered unpopular by the rest of the herd for bringing up "negative" thoughts. 

I say you say it, but you admit if you are proven wrong...that is far more than "professional" journalists on mainstream media do...

Download Mumble Client Youtube Guide

Hope this helps.  If not, let me know...if it comes down to it, I might have to make a quick video of my own, but this seems like it will work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQSilwOySU8