One final note. This delegate position has been created because I in large part paid out of pocket to great expense of myself over the past year to ensure our community had something most do not. So in essence, this delegate keeps me from being in the RED for my efforts--and maybe provides me with approximately $100 a month after taxes. So I do want to let people know that this is not an easy task and it is severely underpaid and will continue to be so even at 10x the current marketcap (because the workload will substantially increase as marketcap increases). I promise I am not simply taking our community's funds and gambling them away. In fact, this is going to likely be the only source of my own personal investment in BTS as I move forward because I can no longer afford to buy cryptocurrencies with the income I make from my real world job.
I doubt anybody thinks that you're taking anything, Fuzzy. In fact, in my proposals for separation of block producers and employees I had mentioned (more than twice) that there should be an option to reward volunteers like you; for some reason I had in my head that you were reluctant to run a delegate.
I was reluctant to run a delegate for multiple reasons. In all honesty I still am...but I realize that if I'm going to help grow this, capital is needed...and relying on tips is a no-go.
My question was more to whether the service is cost effective. Currently a few join in and a few more get the time to listen to it. Is it worth the price? I don't know.
It is so early in the game for anyone to have a clue how cost effective it is. In fact, it is pretty hard to tell with a service like this because it has been around since very near the official launch of PTS.
As far as the cost-effectiveness. I wonder if CSPAN has metrics on this or has a way to figure it out. As I see it, as we begin having marketing amp up...and begin pushing our content around on social media and the blogosphere, that we will see it is valuable. I will have to look more into it, but I am almost certain that it is funded by tax payers and by sponsors.
The value I see in this service is that it helps to counterbalance the stake-weighted voting by giving everyone a place where their voice is on equal footing with everyone else's voice--as long as they are willing to show up and use it.
I actually believe that "Beyond Bitcoin" should not be under "marketing" because it gives it the wrong feel. I think we should have our own subforum because I see it as a movement and a public service that must take root and grow throughout all of the BitShares Ecosystem...and probably in a few other ecosystems as well. The power and value of that lies in us being able to someday, a long time from now...offer these to the public saying
"Beyond Bitcoin is Proudly 'Powered by BitShares'".
Btw, I have the same question for all the big videos being churned out by Max. Everybody on here seems to love them, but are they being listened to by those outside the community? Would that resource have been better served to make small info videos targeted at, well, various targets for our products?
I think marketing delegates should be focusing on doing what RGCrypto has talked about many times. We need an affiliate network. We need people creating content...and we need people propagating that content--and we need those on both sides to profit from it. Currently it seems most people are still thinking that they need to start from the ground up when in fact I believe it would be far more effective for the marketing teams to focus on using the content we are already creating and pushing it out to as wide an audience as possible in as many forms as possible. Recycle Content!
The problem here is that we are not really working together as much as we need to. We are still in an implicit "competition phase" when to be honest our delegates' fees are not enough for anyone to compete over. The community could be so much more effective if we spent half the time we spend trying to find problems, just doing something positive.
I'm not trying to come across as mean or callous when I say this, of course. I'm simply saying it comes down to this: Divided we fall; United we Stand. I want to be United...Let's work together to propagate this content and our movement! Let the advertisers do what they do! For instance...Let's take someone else for example: Empirical.1 made an
amazing bitshares video.. It only has approximately 635 views at present. Can we get a show of hands how many community members...or even marketing delegates have propagated this at least once on social media?
Imagine if we spent the amount of time these posts have taken us...propagating that one video. How many more views do you think Empirical's awesome content would get? What if we pledged to take 5 minutes once a week as a community to each propagate this single video in at least one new place on the internet with a link to our forums or the bitshares.org sites...
When we stop asking if something is cost effective (and thus the unavoidable implication that it might not be worth doing or paying for), and start passing these ideas around (which is what humans are born to do!) through our content...I guarantee it will
become far more cost effective. When we are at a marketcap like Ripple's, I think your points on cost-effectiveness will be far more valid...but until we have far more funding at our disposal this necessarily must still be a grass roots thing.
Don't get me wrong now sumantso...I don't disagree with you that we should be asking questions. I'm simply saying we should try our best to also ask questions about how we can all contribute as well. I do my best to reward those who contribute without asking for anything in return precisely because I know how valuable it is to building something Real. Let's not be so concerned with building Hype as building something powerful and Real, and showing people that they can all take part in it...and empower both the platform and themselves.