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Topics - sschechter

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This is very relevant to BitShares: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/waze-shows-wayto-scale-up-fast-sometimes-youve-got-slow-bob-sutton

Consider what Waze CEO Noam Bardin did in 2010. This navigation software firm had just received $25 million in funding. Investors were pressuring him to hire new employees, add features, and expand to new markets. But Bardin (pictured above) was concerned because Waze was losing new U.S. customers at a rapid rate and he wasn’t sure why (only 8% of users who started using Waze still did so 90 days later). So he implemented a hiring freeze and asked every employee to help figure out why their product was driving new users away. After six weeks of analysis, employees turned to removing the customer pain points they identified. They released a new iteration of Waze about once a month for six months. As Bardin wrote in an inspired post on LinkedIn last month:

    “We created a list of the issues getting in our way; this included big things (the map wasn’t good enough in a region or our response time from our routing servers was too slow) to small things (confusion arose when audio prompts said “keep right” instead of “exit right” in the US to get off a highway.) By clearly defining and knowing what our MIT [“Most Important Thing”] was at that point (retention vs. acquisition), we decided not to hire any more people until we could implement our plan since new people hurt output in the short term, and focus our time and effort on the right things. Six months later we hit 30% 90-day driver retention and it continued to grow from there. Once we knew we were on the right track, we could re-evaluate out MIT and look at our next one.”

These improvements propelled customer retention and acquisition. Waze now has over 50 million users and was acquired by Google for over a billion dollars in 2013.

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General Discussion / Controversy is POISON when it divides the community
« on: February 03, 2015, 03:47:01 am »
Who was it that said controversy is a good thing?  Was it the guy who no longer works here because most of the community was not satisfied with his work? I believe so...

-Controversy is a good thing if we are unified in our message

-Controversy is POISON if it divides the community

At the time of this message, 68% of voters think Bingo is a bad idea.  Please don't make the wrong decision.  If it will only take 80 hours to implement, instead, try using those hours on tooltips, help messages, a help section in the menu bar.  Even something simple like a link to the bitshares wiki would be useful.  Better yet, link context based help messages to appropriate section in the wiki.  What the hell do all those voting options means?  Well gee, how about a link to voting explained section in the wiki? This ISNT rocket science....

Imagine if BitShares was TurboTax.  Do you think Intuit would take a dump without any help messages and expect to keep their customers?  Surely you can do your taxes from the command line, why wouldn't anyone want to do that? You can Google your way to the answer, if you don't get distracted by a competitor along the way.

I'm a few versions back, so some of these points may be out of date.  But last I checked, the market was still....how do you say 'not sexy.'  Like a fat old toothless hag.  I want a smooth seamless trading experience like Bter. That alone will bring more gamblers to our system than some shitty bingo game.  I like bingo.  But I don't want it on BitShares when basic functions are lacking.  Where are multi-tabbed markets??  I can't trade GOLD, EUR and USD at the same time.  Where is the common panel where I can see all my feeds? Traders need to trade in multiple markets at once - and they need to see when prices move in one common dashboard type panel that's available from everywhere in the app.  Traders need to get in on the action as soon as the price moves.  They can't (and they wont) be bothered clicking back and forth all day.  If it takes 5 clicks to go from one market to another, no one will do it except the religious.  Online poker players don't play on one table at a time, and neither do traders. Multi-tabbed markets will bring move volume than some controversial gimmick. Minimizing the amount of button clicks needed to perform functions is UI design 101.

We are getting sharedropped by PLAY.  Why disrespect their community with this idea? Let them handle gaming.

Its quite amazing all these brilliant ideas that went into BitShares, while the basics keep getting fucked up.  It doesn't matter how far ahead of the curve it is, as long as BitShares can't get the basics right, it will remain a toy for overgrown children, and not a serious investment for mainstream adoption.  If its not easy, no one will use it except the people already using it.

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Stakeholder Proposals / Make BitShares go viral from within the app
« on: February 01, 2015, 09:56:14 pm »
In the book Growth Hacker Marketing, by Ryan Holiday (http://www.amazon.com/Growth-Hacker-Marketing-Primer-Advertising/dp/1591847389) the author discusses the number 1 technique for growth hacking is making your product go viral from inside of your app.  An example would be Apples 'sent from my iphone' messages it made as its default email signature.  The book has other examples similar companies have used to hack their growth, absent large traditional marketing departments, although I can't remember off the top of my head - but you get the point.

I am writing this thread in order to get ideas flowing, but here is one of my own which I think can be very powerful:

Allow users to send money to an email address. Something similar may have been discussed in the past, but here is how I think it could work:

1. User clicks on the 'email money to a friend' button somewhere in the application, and user is brought to a referral form
2. User enters the destination email address
3. User enters the amount of money to send, and the type of asset.  It could be BitShares, BitAssets, or UIAs
4. User selects the timeframe in which the money can be redeemed.
5. User clicks send.  The blockchain holds onto the money they want to send as if it were market collateral
6. An email is sent to the friend.  Would we need to host an external mail server somewhere?
7. Friend receives email that says 'BitShares user sschechter has sent you 10 bitUSD'
8. Friend follows link in the email (which has some referer id like 'r=sschechter')
9. Friend signs up for BitShares account. When they download the blockchain, the collateral is released from step 5.
10. If the friend never signs up, the collateral is refunded to the user after the gift expires (step 4)

Is this technically feasible?  What would be needed to get this done? What are the security risks?

-Scott

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Greetings,

I am a software engineer in Southern California. In the past, when looking for jobs, I have worked with staffing firms.  In particular, there is one company I turn to first, as their recruiters have always been very helpful, and I have maintained a good working relationship with them.  A few months ago, I had lunch with two of the recruiters I had worked with and spent all meal talking about cryptocurrencies, BitShares, what the industry is doing and where its going.  They have been very receptive to the ideas, and while they haven't dove in yet, crypto is on their radar. 

I had lunch today with these same two individuals and updated them with BitShares status, including the addition of one of its best new features: Blockchain Hiring.  I pitched them with my ideas of how they can help, and if you ask me, finding top developers has ALWAYS been one of BitShares greatest challenges.  These two men just so happen to have have a rolodex full of quality engineers, many of whom are unemployed and looking for work, or are already used to working on open source projects for free.  They are also used to working in environments in which the effort they put in determines the rewards they receive.  As I went over the process for getting hired, and how to maintain accountability, they still remained very interested.

So, my question to the community is this:

How badly do you want professional recruiters working for our project? 

I told my friends I would direct them to this thread, so please show them our support and convince them to make a submit a proper proposal. Let us know that you'll vote them in as paid delegates for either 1 or 2 positions (a tech partner may be needed), and what criteria you will use to judge their performance.

Thanks,

sschechter


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General Discussion / BitShares Book Club
« on: October 27, 2014, 10:45:44 pm »
No this is not a DAC........

I've seen a few book suggestions thrown around lately (thanks to whomever recommended Zero to One - great book), and thought it would be a great idea to get your best suggestions into one post.  Please keep recommendations relevant to the BitShares ecosystem, and share why you think its important. Mods, this might make a good sticky post.

My first pick: Breakpoint: Why the Web will Implode, Search will be Obsolete, and Everything Else you Need to Know about Technology is in Your Brain
http://www.amazon.com/Breakpoint-Implode-Obsolete-Everything-Technology/dp/1137278781

Written in 2012, this book covers tons of stuff that we talk about here all the time - networks, network effect, exponential growth, breakpoints, startups, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, social networks, wisdom of the crowds (just for you Brent.Allsop), and case studies of many companies you hear about on an almost daily basis.  Additionally it covers the parallels between the human brain, the internet, and ant colonies.  Noticeably absent of course, is the rise of a new kind of network - blockchain based financial networks.  Perhaps a community member can write an addendum in the updated version :)

From the blurb: We are in the midst of a networking revolution--set to transform the way we access the world's information and the way we connect with one another. Studying biological systems is perhaps the best way to understand such networks, and nature has a lesson for us if we care to listen: bigger is rarely better in the long run. The deadliest creature is the mosquito, not the lion. It is the quality of a network that is important for survival, not the size, and all networks--the human brain, Facebook, Google, even the internet itself--eventually reach a breakpoint and collapse. That's the bad news. The good news is that reaching a breakpoint can be a step forward, allowing a network to substitute quality for quantity.

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Muse/SoundDAC / BitShares Music just got some competition
« on: June 11, 2014, 03:02:14 am »
If you're a 3 Doors Down fan and an accredited investor, then you might be intrigued by a new investment vehicle that lets you own royalties from the band's popular songs.

Just last week, the band's producer put up for auction his royalty rights to 11 tracks. Starting at $5,400 a share, you can own a portion of that portfolio and receive royalty revenue monthly for the next 35 years.

He's among a growing number of songwriters and producers using a 3-year-old technology platform called Royalty Exchange to sell intellectual property rights at auction and, in many cases, to use the cash to fund other projects. The 3 Doors Down producer plans to use his proceeds to build up his indie label and fund a new studio.


http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/06/09/baverman-entrepreneurs-and-startups-royalty-exchange/10012941/

However, you need to be an accredited investor.

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Technical Support / SOS
« on: March 04, 2014, 03:44:59 pm »
I write Java code for a living, and quite frankly, I have not seen anything more demoralizing than trying to build the Bitshares/Keyhotee workspace.  I have wasted countless hours on this to no avail.  Every hurdle cleared is met by the next obstacle.  If it were not for the fact that I have a DAC I want to build, I would have given up long ago.  I have invested far too much of my time and money for me to let this die.   THIS IS A CRITICAL ROADBLOCK FOR ANY POTENTIAL DAC DEVELOPER! For better or worse, my target platform is VS2012/Win7/64.  That means in addition to building the workspace on my platform, I need to build every single dependency on my platform too.  Quite frankly, the documentation to do this sucks.  The error codes suck.  The support sucks.  Not just I3,  but Boost, Qt, etc, everyone who needs to support my platform.  It sucks because every platform has its own set of quirks that the user must be familiar with,  and if every user is using a different environment, it increases the chances that they get unique errors that no one else has seen before.  Why did I pick my platform?  Because no one told me "use this" instead.  I would much prefer something that I know works than something I have a base level of comfort working in.  I was not married to using VS2102, but I may just be now since I've spent so much time on it. If it weren't for sites like Stack Overflow, I would be nowhere.  This is not just my problem.  This is everyone in the community's problem.  If I can't build you a DAC, then you are getting cheated as an AGS/PTS holder.  Like I said, I write Java code for a living.  I figured there would be some bumps along the way getting re-acquainted with C++, but this is just unacceptable. If I do this for a living and can't get this working, then I can't be the only one whose had issues and given up.  I'm willing to bet that there are others who have been made to feel stupid by this opaque process, and that they've been made to think that these issues are due to their own technical limitations. 

Here is what I propose as a solution.  I3 needs to hire a full time configuration management specialist.  They should be responsible for all working build environments.  Having a bounty for a working build system is not enough.  This CM person would be responsible for maintaining at the minimum, one working Windows, Mac, and Linux environment.  They would need to write tutorials for building the workspace for developers.  This has to be a step by step guide for building every dependency from a clean machine.  Make no assumptions about what the user knows.  I want a complete list of tools to use and the URL to find them.  It should be written in such a way that a non-developer can set set up the workspace.  And finally, they should be supporting developers who are still having issues in order to get it working.

ps - When building Qt statically, I get the following error, so please try to convince me that this doesn't suck:

NMAKE : fatal error U1077: 'cd' : return code '0x2'

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Technical Support / Building Boost on Windows
« on: February 27, 2014, 03:17:55 pm »
I'm having trouble building and properly linking Boost 1.54 for my Win 7 64 Visual Studio Express 2012 environment.  Apparently there's a bug in the coroutine library.  Theres a patch but I'm not sure if I applied it correctly, or if its my environment that is incorrect.  I keep getting errors when trying to build the Keyhotee solution that look like the following and its been driving me crazy:

Error   464   error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol "public: static unsigned __int64 __cdecl boost::coroutines::detail::standard_stack_allocator::default_stacksize(void)" (?default_stacksize@standard_stack_allocator@detail@coroutines@boost@@SA_KXZ) referenced in function "public: __cdecl fc::context::context(void (__cdecl*)(__int64),class boost::coroutines::detail::standard_stack_allocator &,class fc::thread *)" (??0context@fc@@QEAA@P6AX_J@ZAEAVstandard_stack_allocator@detail@coroutines@boost@@PEAVthread@1@@Z)   C:\Users\Scott\Documents\GitHub\Build\Keyhotee\BitShares\bts_wallet\fc_debug.lib(thread.obj)   bts_server
Error   465   error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol "public: static unsigned __int64 __cdecl boost::coroutines::detail::standard_stack_allocator::default_stacksize(void)" (?default_stacksize@standard_stack_allocator@detail@coroutines@boost@@SA_KXZ)   C:\Users\Scott\Documents\GitHub\Build\Keyhotee\BitShares\bts_wallet\fc_debug.lib(mutex.obj)   bts_server
Error   466   error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol "public: void __cdecl boost::coroutines::detail::standard_stack_allocator::allocate(struct boost::coroutines::stack_context &,unsigned __int64)" (?allocate@standard_stack_allocator@detail@coroutines@boost@@QEAAXAEAUstack_context@34@_K@Z) referenced in function "public: __cdecl fc::context::context(void (__cdecl*)(__int64),class boost::coroutines::detail::standard_stack_allocator &,class fc::thread *)" (??0context@fc@@QEAA@P6AX_J@ZAEAVstandard_stack_allocator@detail@coroutines@boost@@PEAVthread@1@@Z)   C:\Users\Scott\Documents\GitHub\Build\Keyhotee\BitShares\bts_wallet\fc_debug.lib(thread.obj)   bts_server

If anyone has seen this before and could help out, it would be much appreciated.  If you're specific instructions help me get this solution compiled, I will send you 1 PTS.   If I can get it working tonight, you'll have it before the snapshot.  Thanks. -Scott

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