Author Topic: An open proposal to the community and Brian/Dan  (Read 12223 times)

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Offline luckybit

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This image is congruent with the solution I proposed. A decentralized leadership paradigm replacing centralized leadership. Leaders who I think should be called mentors or early adopters. We are basically the early adopters who take the most risk so we are in the front line leading the people who will come after us. So the class of 2013 is us, the class of 2014 comes after us, the class of 2015 and so on.

I think we should rely on our own experts rather than outside experts when the topic is DACs. So the class of 2013 will know more than the class of 2015 because the class of 2013 will have obtained more DAC experience.

I do believe that the people who take the biggest risks first should receive the most rewards. So I don't have a problem if the leaders make a lot more money than the followers. In fact I think the followers should pay for the leadership they receive in a sort of patronage or mentor system. As the class of 2013 all of us should be eligible to mentor the people who come after us. If you follow the system I presented to the conclusion it leads to guilds and leaders. This solution has been tested in case studies which I can present if necessary to defend it in peer review so I welcome peer review on the decentralized leadership model I proposed.

A leader can by no means be compared with a boss or CEO. Personally I think that out of every working group, a kind of leader will crystallize. That person does not necessarily have to be named the official leader, but he/she is much rather the go-to point inside the group for tips and help (again, this is from my past experience).
I agree. It is natural for people to want leaders and mentors. I accept that when I first got involved with Bitcoin I was clueless about how it worked or the decorum of the community. I had to gather the knowledge using my own initiative. I recognize not everyone will have the same level of initiative and as we go from class of 2013 to class of 2015 and beyond the level of expertise, knowledge, skill set, will become extremely specialized and much harder for people to just get in on. They will need mentors and we should become those mentors utilizing the economic allegiance system.

The economic allegiance system would allow people who don't understand the principles behind DACs to side with a faction which does. There will ultimately be different factions using DACs and they might want to invest in different ways for different reasons or specialize in different areas.

But....
The major flaw with Startups is the unfair distribution of wealth. The founder of Valve became billionaire. The founders of SUN became billionaires. The founder of Supercell became Superwealthy. The good thing is, that this exact problem is what DAC's solve.
I don't know whether or not this is a flaw. I think it depends. I think in our case the people in the front line should get billions and according to the social consensus that would be the early adopters. In my opinion this is fair because these are the people who are essentially the pioneers of a new industry.

I think if you're trying to create economic equality it's an impossibility. What you can do is create an atmosphere of opportunity equality. Everyone should at least have the opportunity to make a living from DACs or get rich developing a new DAC. The people who already got rich don't take any opportunity away from the future classes who want to do the same thing. So if you were not an early adopter there should be some new DAC you can be part of.


Another flaw is the hidden management and decision team behind. There is simply no consensus that they (the initial founding team) are not allowed to bring hierarchy to the organization at any point and act out of arbitrary reasons. Their hidden power inside the organization needs to be diluted in order to build a system of equality and fairness. As you have said, a human is a vulnerable, single point of failure. Therefor no single human should be the decision maker behind a DAC.
This statement I agree with. There will be leaders and leadership. Mentors would be leaders and if you want to pay a mentor a percentage of your earnings in exchange for that leadership I think this is reasonable. That is called paying your dues.

If you want to do it yourself and are willing to accept the risks associated with that then you can. If you lose your money or end up doing it all wrong its also your fault. So what you gain from having a mentor is you can learn from the mistakes they made and learn from their success, you can know how to make a successful DAC, how to launch it, how to govern it or operate it, and how to work for it. The mentor can even help you to discover the best ways to make money or introduce you to people.

Beyond mentors the allegiance system would produce guilds. These guilds would be networks of mentors all who have followers. These guilds could be organized in any fashion that they choose, to have a hierarchy if they choose or to go with a cell system if they choose that. Guilds could also be structured as families and tribes for people who want that. The point of the economic allegiance system is to allow for all of this to happen in a pseudo-anonymous environment.

After all, as you mentioned, what we require is a team that does tremendous amount of research in this space and creates enough practical case studies so we can create the perfect ecosystem and society of the future.

That is exactly what we need. In fact that is the primary job that we have to do. Of course it's not just about building DACs but building an ecosystem and community around these DACs and then marketing that so its attractive to the world at large.
« Last Edit: December 30, 2013, 04:50:16 am by luckybit »
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Offline Number 1

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Great thread! Protoshares you've got your trio, Dan, Brian and Domsch!
Now to explain DACS to the masses...and to buy more PTS/AGS before the masses arrive...
PTS: Pj8UH9ExVidcFd4LKtEgPSrwrtpYhPhug8

Offline domsch

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I think we have more followers than leaders in society because of the sorry state of our education system which trains people to look for jobs, to work for others, to expect to be lead. In my opinion it is that very attitude which helped to cause many of the problems that DACs are the solution for. It is also my opinion that in order to change the state of affairs we must promote entrepreneurship, leadership, creative self motivated individuals are needed today and factory workers who follow orders are not in demand.

The reason why I think that a leader is required is because of my past experience working with start-ups and running my own. As you have correctly stated, our current education system creates zombies within our society that are prompted to follow rules and do exactly as others say. Only a few, rebellious people take their stance against our society and are able to flourish and grow on top of the "followers". But most of the time these kind of people are suppressed and lopped after the dogma of the 21st century.
Exactly because of this inferiority promoted within our society, people need to be lead and shown how, where and why to proceed.  Our current generation is simply too shy, too risk-averse and too dependent on their peers to really be able to achieve something meaningful on their own (talking about the majority, there are a few exceptions).

But obviously these people are not the one that will be applying for a job inside a DAC.


A leader can by no means be compared with a boss or CEO. Personally I think that out of every working group, a kind of leader will crystallize. That person does not necessarily have to be named the official leader, but he/she is much rather the go-to point inside the group for tips and help (again, this is from my past experience).

In my previous posts, I have used a single terminology that is able to be compared to a DAC: Startups! They are the major economical driving force of the US economy and they are the main factor for innovational progress. And most of the successful startups initially have no hierarchy and have a decentralized management structure that allows for fast decision making and an agile, flexible team. Let me give you some more examples that are similar to Valve:

Supercell: They are the creators of the most popular and highest grossing iOS apps called "Hay Day" and "Clash of Clans". They were launched in 2011, are grossing nearly $3m per day (yes, per day) and recently received $1.5b from Softbank (for 50% of the company). Their CEO calls himself the least powerful CEO because the entire organization is split into "cells". These cells create the projects, receive the necessary resources and have to work on the entire process themselves. No hierarchy. Fast decision making. Agile management distributed inside the cells. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-11/13/ilkka-paananen-interview
SUN:  In 1982 Andy Bechtolsheim (Stanford graduate) created a new computer that can be compared to the minicomputers back in the day. Stanford licensed Bechtolsheim's design to anyone who was interested. Bechtolsheim and 9 other companies were granted the rights to the design and even though this meant it was a highly competitive market with no major difference in the product, SUN  made more than $1b in sales per year after 6 years. This was caused because they had a flat hierarchy and decentralized decision making. Leading to a flexible, cohesive and responsive company that puts the competition in the ground.


But....
The major flaw with Startups is the unfair distribution of wealth. The founder of Valve became billionaire. The founders of SUN became billionaires. The founder of Supercell became Superwealthy. The good thing is, that this exact problem is what DAC's solve.
Another flaw is the hidden management and decision team behind. There is simply no consensus that they (the initial founding team) are not allowed to bring hierarchy to the organization at any point and act out of arbitrary reasons. Their hidden power inside the organization needs to be diluted in order to build a system of equality and fairness. As you have said, a human is a vulnerable, single point of failure. Therefor no single human should be the decision maker behind a DAC.

For reference: http://www.develop-online.net/news/valve-s-perfect-hiring-hierarchy-has-hidden-management-clique-like-high-school/0115316


After all, as you mentioned, what we require is a team that does tremendous amount of research in this space and creates enough practical case studies so we can create the perfect ecosystem and society of the future.


Offline luckybit

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I proposed an "economic allegiance system" https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=1745.msg19367#msg19367 as a solution to the leadership void of DACs.

I'm very much against the idea of bosses and don't see the point of being a follower but I understand people coming from a work environment where they have a boss might believe that they need one. I also understand that people who don't understand technology like DACs will probably need a mentor to show them the ropes on how to make a living working for DACs and explain to them the concepts.

The "economic allegiance system" is a way of allowing any participant in a DAC to select their leader. There should under no circumstances be a single leader at the top of a DAC because that is a single point of failure. There should be no hierarchy because it puts the security of the entire DAC in the hands of a pyramid structure which can be defeated from the top down.

Instead there should be mentors and apprentices. The badge system and decentralized leadership is the only method I can see which can be considered acceptable because the whole purpose of a DAC is not to do things the same way its being it's done in a traditional corporation. Why do we want to duplicate everything wrong with the way things are currently done for the sake of people who need to be led? If they need to be led then we should lead them as mentors but we should not change the design of a DAC to favor the herd mentality of the follower even if it is the most popular mentality.

If you want a CEO, a boss, why not just work for a centralized corporation where the power is centralized around a single individual? Or better why not enlist in the military or work for the government where it's totally hierarchical and everyone has a master?

I don't think we need any centralized point of failure and that especially applies to putting a human being atop of a DAC. No human being should ever be the sole operator of a DAC because it defeats the entire purpose and spirit of the creation of DACs.

In my opinion the purpose of a DAC is to allow for an automated enterprise system which is operated and guided by mankind but which no individual man controls. The most attractive feature of a DAC to the people working for it is that they don't have a boss and that there is no upper management or hierarchy. If they need to be motivated to the point of micromanagement and hierarchy then they should not work for a DAC because a DAC should attract more leaders than followers.

I think we have more followers than leaders in society because of the sorry state of our education system which trains people to look for jobs, to work for others, to expect to be lead. In my opinion it is that very attitude which helped to cause many of the problems that DACs are the solution for. It is also my opinion that in order to change the state of affairs we must promote entrepreneurship, leadership, creative self motivated individuals are needed today and factory workers who follow orders are not in demand.

As part of marketing we should highlight the fact that everyone who works for a DAC is in effect their own boss. They may choose to form an allegiance with a mentor or be independent. Under the economic allegiance system choosing a mentor would cost the apprentice a percentage of their earnings, but if it is necessary for them to have a mentor they should pay for it.

Valve's model of non-hierarchical leadership in a centralized corporate social structure

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-27/why-there-are-no-bosses-at-valve
Valve's handbook for new employees
http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf
Quote
A fearless adventure
in knowing what to do
when no one’s there
telling you what to do
In my opinion we should be able to at least do better than Valve. DACs should be unique and at the forefront of non-hierarchical social structures because a DAC is a decentralized autonomous corporation. Apple is not the corporate model we should follow for anything other than marketing. Apple might be great at marketing to customers but they don't even come close to comparing to Valve when it comes to dealing with employees.

« Last Edit: December 29, 2013, 12:16:14 pm by luckybit »
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Offline domsch

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I agree with decentralized systems you cannot use HARD control systems like traditional businesses do.  To be successful the leader of the DAC must educate, guide, and seduce the market into realizing his vision without relying upon intellectual property, vendor lock-in.   DACs must be so decentralized that no one can CONTROL them and only the best leader is able to guide them.  The best leader is the one who can build market consensus and gain the network effect the fastest.

Examples of this are the fact that all DACs must be open source and freely available and therefore anyone can copy them.  The only thing that protects a DAC is the effectiveness of the leader to inspire honorable adherence to the social consensus / contract.

This whole process has been very educational to me and I am discovering a lot about how to organize and motivate consensus forming.   As an introverted software engineer with poor people skills this is really forcing me to grow.  This ecosystem is going to go far with the help of everyone and it is a real honor to have all of the support and help you all are offering us. 

I apologize about being slow to respond to these great ideas, we are rapidly working to divide up the work so I can focus on being the leader rather than the developer.  Obviously I can only develop code at a certain pace and do not have enough hours in the day to develop everything myself.

The leader is probably the single most important role inside a DAC and can mean success, or failure.

The fact that everything is opensource means that every leader needs to correctly treat and compensate his workers. Any act performed out of egoism and machiavellianism will be punished with the decay of the DAC (i.e. workers move to another DAC). This will create a highly competitive market with innovational speed and progress that far exceeds the one of the past century.

A leader, in my perception, is something superior and therefor should require a given amount of past experience (meaning, the applicant needs to have X amount of EXP), or a given amount of Vx that are convinced of his abilities and skillset. Because of the importance of the leader inside the DAC, he/she needs to be able to take responsibility.

But exactly this is where I'm struggling: A leader and the public face/representative of a project is a creation of the 21st centuries corporate world. Most of the time, the leader of a project is the one who receives all the praise for a successful product, but on the other hand he is also the one that will be blamed for a failed project ("Steve lost his mojo and Apple is dying!!11"). This interplay between being praised/blamed kinda compensates itself, but it can agitate the workers and make them feel inferior ("It really must have been Steve who created all this. Who am I? What am I there for?").

Obviously a lot of this depends on how the leader behaves and how workers react to news that solely praise the leader of the project, and not the hard working workers who played an equal, if not bigger part in the success of the project.

Therefor my question is: Should a leader inside a DAC be awarded (with extra points/shares) for the success of the project, and punished for the failure of a project (badge/points taken away)?


As a side note to why the role of a leader is important inside a DAC: The "work/social ladder climbing" was burned in the mindset of the 21st century citizen. I think that especially the "work hard, and you will be rewarded by receiving a better paying and a more reputed job" is the sole driving force that motivates most of the workers (keep in mind, we are not talking about visionary workers here, those who want to work on a project because of its prescient ideas to change humanity). And since the role of a leader is perceived as something superior, workers get motivated to "become one too". So the leader is there for implicit and explicit motivation for the entire ecosystem.


But, if we want to create an ecosystem that expresses the ideas of equality and no hierarchy, we need to find a replacement for the role of the leader. Something that replaces his visionary thinking, motivational tasks and his way to oversee the DAC. I'm struggling to find something right now that is able to accomplish all 3 things.

Offline bytemaster

I agree with decentralized systems you cannot use HARD control systems like traditional businesses do.  To be successful the leader of the DAC must educate, guide, and seduce the market into realizing his vision without relying upon intellectual property, vendor lock-in.   DACs must be so decentralized that no one can CONTROL them and only the best leader is able to guide them.  The best leader is the one who can build market consensus and gain the network effect the fastest.

Examples of this are the fact that all DACs must be open source and freely available and therefore anyone can copy them.  The only thing that protects a DAC is the effectiveness of the leader to inspire honorable adherence to the social consensus / contract.

This whole process has been very educational to me and I am discovering a lot about how to organize and motivate consensus forming.   As an introverted software engineer with poor people skills this is really forcing me to grow.  This ecosystem is going to go far with the help of everyone and it is a real honor to have all of the support and help you all are offering us. 

I apologize about being slow to respond to these great ideas, we are rapidly working to divide up the work so I can focus on being the leader rather than the developer.  Obviously I can only develop code at a certain pace and do not have enough hours in the day to develop everything myself.   
For the latest updates checkout my blog: http://bytemaster.bitshares.org
Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract between myself and anyone else.   These are merely my opinions and I reserve the right to change them at any time.

Offline domsch

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The difference with DACs is there there is no boss. The shareholders all win together and if every worker can be a shareholder then even workers who run out of jobs to do for the DAC can be permanently connected at a stakeholder level to the DAC with voting rights in the DAC. This is something which would allow workers to not feel bad about their task being automated because it would make their shares more profitable.

What I don't want is for us to mirror the mistakes of the physical world when we have the opportunity to do things right. So while we can learn from the success of real world companies we should not adopt their management strategies because we don't need them here. We don't have to micromanage, we don't have bosses, we can give every employee in a DAC a stake, so we should do so by default so that there are no losers. You don't have to lose in this new world of DACs because by working for the machine you earn a stake in the success of the machine. This is totally different from the way things work in the corporate world because in the corporate world this level of efficiency is impossible with CEOs taking damn near all the shares and compensation to themselves.

In today's most of the start-up founders realize that they are not a boss: They are a leader. They lead the entire team in the right direction. He motivates them to come to work every day and give everything they can in order to accomplish the mission. Most of the time he is also the one that has the vision and he convinces his workers of his intentions and why they should jump on his boat to success.

So essentially in a DAC, the entire motivation will be done by an algorithm that says if you do X, you get Y? Personally, I do think that each DAC will need a leader (boss != leader). The purpose of that leader is it to oversee the entire operation and to lead the team in the right direction. Someone agile, flexible, dedicated that is able to smell opportunity and is willing to take risks. A leader can essentially also be the representative (public face) of a DAC. And obviously that person will have receive a fair compensation for his offered work (meaning, same as everyone else).

I don't quite think that the sole use of points, rewards, badges etc. will motivate people enough to continue to work and give their best. And some people have to be led in the right direction. They are crazy work-horses but are simply not able to work independently, to find their own work/tasks and most importantly, they do not have a visionary thinking like a leader. And trust me - there are more people out there like that than you think. Workers just need someone that is able to motivate them, explain the vision and lead them in the right direction.


Obviously this leads to our "ego problem" of the 21st century. A DAC's ideology is equality and fairness. So the role of a leader may be perceived as something superior - because after all, he tells people what to do.

We need to discuss something like this thoroughly and describe in detail which roles a DAC should have and how their workers are motivated and rewarded with a secondary compensation (primary = shares/money, secondary = badges/points/????).


Lets try it and measure it for success.

Right now I'm just waiting for Dan/Brian to contact me so we can arrange something together. Essentially what I want to do is that Brian focuses more on PR/advertising channels while I take on the educational and adoption part. But obviously this would all be a huge synergy.

I understand your motivation for wanting punishment. It's just not something you can implement easily in code. Exclusion in my opinion is the best punishment. It's basically pushing the scammers to the far edges of the circle. The people in the inner circle would gain the most opportunity because they are included.

This is why I advocate inclusion by default. Everyone should feel like they are a part of something, such as a part of the DAC or a part of the community. As they build up their reputation with badges and the like then you can set up DACs which only accept members with the minimum qualification. You can actually character protect a DAC by only including the people who have those character traits proven over time through the badge/honor system.

So if you want someone trustworthy, someone with honor, someone heroic, someone who claims to have certain values and who has proved it, you could program your DAC to require that people have these badges. You can also have badges for competence. There is no need to have punishment built into the system because you wont get into as many inner circles if you're a scammer because you'll never earn enough merit badges or titles to get that far.

The system I imagine is flat. There is no hierarchy. Everyone starts out as equals on a flat plane. Over time circles will form of core shareholders and core members. These circles will form based on competence, prestige or anything that the creators of the DAC program it to look for. The only people who could become members of these circles would be proven candidates. Anyone else would be part of the outter circle of the DAC away from all the action. You could even set up forums which only allow people to enter with a certain badge, or threads which charge people to enter unless they have a certain badge which lets them in for free.


We need to create a forum/discussion group where we can discuss the design and functionality of the DAC's and DACP's in detail. It would be especially good if the guys behind this https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PBjrpMBViJh1-QrWJ80XMcQmhqcG3NhhoeSn0C_ML7Y/edit?usp=sharing were included to it.

I'll search deeper into more motivation methods in the meantime.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2013, 10:28:22 am by domsch »

Offline luckybit

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I too agree on the fact that DAC's need to solve actual problems - approaching and acquiring an A-Team is just part of that mission. DAC's are just like start-ups. Therefor the team behind the DAC needs to be able to initially acquire "earlyvangelists" (convince them that the Minimum Viable Product is able to solve their problems) - and as they cross the "chasm" they need to produce an entirely different product and marketing strategy. Why? Because the desires of your earlyvangelist customers and your mainstream customer are fundamentally different. Therefor you need to focus your resources on making a product shaped to the needs of your mainstream customer, and create an acquisition strategy that is able to attract these quantitatively higher customer base.
Who is the mainstream customer? We have to find that out.

Sometimes this transition takes place in a natural and automatic way. Sometimes the entire workforce needs to be replaced in order to cross the chasm. And in other cases the start-up runs out of cash and is not able to sustain operations.

During this transition the startup goes from Team-centric, to Mission-centric and in their last step, to Process-centric. Process-centric is basically what a modern enterprise is all about: creating and reusing an efficient sales/marketing/development process that allows fast and agile production. This transition also means that the enterprise does not need to focus on acquiring expensive but talented people anymore. At this stage they already have a proved model that is working fairly well. All they need is your normal bureaucratic worker that is able to follow simple steps and guidelines.
The difference with DACs is there there is no boss. The shareholders all win together and if every worker can be a shareholder then even workers who run out of jobs to do for the DAC can be permanently connected at a stakeholder level to the DAC with voting rights in the DAC. This is something which would allow workers to not feel bad about their task being automated because it would make their shares more profitable.

What I don't want is for us to mirror the mistakes of the physical world when we have the opportunity to do things right. So while we can learn from the success of real world companies we should not adopt their management strategies because we don't need them here. We don't have to micromanage, we don't have bosses, we can give every employee in a DAC a stake, so we should do so by default so that there are no losers. You don't have to lose in this new world of DACs because by working for the machine you earn a stake in the success of the machine. This is totally different from the way things work in the corporate world because in the corporate world this level of efficiency is impossible with CEOs taking damn near all the shares and compensation to themselves.

Obviously we are not an enterprise; we still need to build an agile and fast-thinking/response A-Team, we still need to follow our mission, and we still need to create success for the DAC.

The fundamental difference between iOS and Android is integrity and opensource, simplicity and functionality. While iOS focused on keeping everything simple but integrated (meaning no freedom), Google focused on functionality and opensource. They gave their users much more freedom with the usage of the OS, and in addition to that, they also had much more freedom in picking a phone for their individual style.

This is precisely the point I was trying to make. The demographic we have who will want to be involved with DACs are freedom loving functionality and open source types. I think a lot of the mistakes made by Apple for sake of increasing profitability and control should not be mirrored in this community. The successes should be mirrored of course. To put it simple I believe Apple punishes the customer far too much for their own good and the fact that customers are loyal to Apple products defies reasoning. That loyalty is what makes Apple special, not their business processes.
And besides that, Google had an easy play entering the, then, new smartphone market. They were an addition to iOS and well, Symbian (can not really be treated as Smartphone software back then). So all Google basically had to do was say "Hey, here we are. Have fun. Be Free. Use Android!" Not much marketing effort needed there. But obviously all the marketing was required by the actual phone makers. They were the ones that had to differentiate the phone - and Android was just one argument.
I agree. I could see some DACs taking the Google approach and some DACs taking the Apple approach depending on the target audience of the DAC. If the DAC is going to try to capture the Apple target audience then it should follow a similar approach. I don't think Bitshares in specific would fit for that audience, or Keyhotee, but there will be DACs which do.

Keyhotee for example seems specifically designed for the libertarian mindset. It does not trust authority by design. It's designed to promote freedom and flexibility for the user.  It's open source. It to me is following more the Google model (or Thunderbird model) because it's focusing on being technologically superior. This does not mean it couldn't be rebranded later on and marketed to a completely different audience because it is open source and under the hood it would be exactly the same. Apple built OSX on top of Free BSD.
Personally, I do not know of a product that has not at least put a minimum effort into "spreading the message" (positioning and branding). But if you know some good examples, please tell me!
Netscape. Because it was one of the first web browsers it did not need commercials. Later on AOL owned Netscape and packaged it in with their CDs. This kind of software sells itself if you can just get people to try it so for marketing something technologically special all you have to do is give out free copies and convince people to use it. Bitcoin is just like that. Keyhotee on the other hand will have to be marketed because people don't understand the importance of their privacy or financial freedom. They believe that companies like Google and Facebook will care if their privacy or financial freedom is violated and that is an error in thinking which can be highlighted. Additionally the DACs could be set up in such a way that it creates an ecosystem where the values are the opposite, to allow people to experience what it is like to have their freedom because a lot of younger generations never had it to value it.
I do not quite agree with your statement that by simply stating that you can make money with Bitshares will lead to the success of the entire system.
I treat Bitshares as a new ecosystem at the same time as treating it as a product. Bitshares, essentially, is a product that is resegmenting an existing market. Therefor a great amount of money and time need to put into educating the current userbase in that market and convince them about the superiority and usefulness of your product.
One of the best features or possible features of Bitshares is that of inclusion. That is why I pushed for the principle of inclusion to be part of any DAC. A lot of people do not have bank accounts, don't have the opportunity to get in on IPOs or take part in the stock market. Think of all the college students who are living with their parents in debt and that would be the initial target demographic for Bitshares. There really isn't a Wall Street competitor. Mastercoin and Colored Coin are the only real competitors. In the long term Bitshares may take on NASDAQ or Forex but only after a critical mass of young college students are already on board.

One thing Apple did right was give out free Ipods to colleges. Bitshares should be given away to college students in specific programs of study such as marketing, finance, philosophy, political science, computer science, economics, etc. It must be determined which students would be most receptive to the technology and target them specifically.
That is exactly why the use of some of my proposed psychological techniques should be used for Bitshares. It only leads to the success of the entire system and the fulfillment of our intentions, it also educates millions of people so they grasp the usefulness of Bitshares and why the system is crucial for the development of our society.
Lets try it and measure it for success.
Punishment should be used for dishonesty, failure to fulfill obligations (would have to be discussed in detail about what is seen as a failure and what not), scamming, faking, etc. etc.

The way someone could be punished is by giving him a "Bad Player" badge or taking some of his points (or in a DACP, his Vx. Meaning, his voting power is heavily decreased due to bad behavior).  The purpose of these punishments would be to fight wrongful behavior within a DAC and not allow any scams or other forms of illicit actions to be taken place. People who try to game the system will be punished, and their public image will be damaged (perhaps through badges).

I do think that the algorithm should be able to punish wrongful behavior. Maybe a plenum (like a court) should decide on the severity of the crime and then come up with an adequate punishment.
I think for political reasons we should stay away from algorithmic law enforcement and courts. I do think we should have peer review, audits, and use the tactic of exclusion but I don't see why we should create algorithms for punishment because then we could end up with a system of governance worse than what we already have. I think if you want to punish someone you just don't let them in on the latest projects (exclude them).

You can set it up so that DACs only distribute certain shares to people with a certain reputation. Such as Honorshares for people known to be honorable and trustworthy as a form of inclusion reward. People who scam, lie, cheat, steal, would be punished because they wouldn't achieve the same status, wouldn't make as much money, etc. But I do not want any kind of blacklist or whitelist, and no punishment. Let the law enforcement focus on punishing thieves and abusers but it should not be our job.
And obviously ones hurt image can be "worked away".
This form of punishment is acceptable. If someone is associated with a scam then everyone should know it. Their Keyhotee ID should have reputation credits in the negative. What I mean is we should not have a specific community enforced punishment. If you want to work with someone with a negative rating you do so at our own risk just like with EBay or Amazon.
This is all still uncertain and should be discussed in detail with others. But I am an advocate for including punishments.

Btw: I'll try and include pictures in the next post. Else this thread is looking so dry for the readers..

I understand your motivation for wanting punishment. It's just not something you can implement easily in code. Exclusion in my opinion is the best punishment. It's basically pushing the scammers to the far edges of the circle. The people in the inner circle would gain the most opportunity because they are included.

This is why I advocate inclusion by default. Everyone should feel like they are a part of something, such as a part of the DAC or a part of the community. As they build up their reputation with badges and the like then you can set up DACs which only accept members with the minimum qualification. You can actually character protect a DAC by only including the people who have those character traits proven over time through the badge/honor system.

So if you want someone trustworthy, someone with honor, someone heroic, someone who claims to have certain values and who has proved it, you could program your DAC to require that people have these badges. You can also have badges for competence. There is no need to have punishment built into the system because you wont get into as many inner circles if you're a scammer because you'll never earn enough merit badges or titles to get that far.

The system I imagine is flat. There is no hierarchy. Everyone starts out as equals on a flat plane. Over time circles will form of core shareholders and core members. These circles will form based on competence, prestige or anything that the creators of the DAC program it to look for. The only people who could become members of these circles would be proven candidates. Anyone else would be part of the outter circle of the DAC away from all the action. You could even set up forums which only allow people to enter with a certain badge, or threads which charge people to enter unless they have a certain badge which lets them in for free.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2013, 02:30:00 am by luckybit »
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Offline rysgc

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We're working on exactly that this moment, a community based on voting and case-based system for Keyhotee members. A preview will be live the first week of January for Keyhotee founders. Please note this is an external (unofficial) service and whenever functionality become available in Keyhotee we'll cancel them from our platform. The platform will be much more then that and I will create a separate thread for it one of these days. Cheers
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Offline bitcoinba

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Nice arguments and strategies Dom. Enjoying this thread.

Offline domsch

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I too agree on the fact that DAC's need to solve actual problems - approaching and acquiring an A-Team is just part of that mission. DAC's are just like start-ups. Therefor the team behind the DAC needs to be able to initially acquire "earlyvangelists" (convince them that the Minimum Viable Product is able to solve their problems) - and as they cross the "chasm" they need to produce an entirely different product and marketing strategy. Why? Because the desires of your earlyvangelist customers and your mainstream customer are fundamentally different. Therefor you need to focus your resources on making a product shaped to the needs of your mainstream customer, and create an acquisition strategy that is able to attract these quantitatively higher customer base.

Sometimes this transition takes place in a natural and automatic way. Sometimes the entire workforce needs to be replaced in order to cross the chasm. And in other cases the start-up runs out of cash and is not able to sustain operations.

During this transition the startup goes from Team-centric, to Mission-centric and in their last step, to Process-centric. Process-centric is basically what a modern enterprise is all about: creating and reusing an efficient sales/marketing/development process that allows fast and agile production. This transition also means that the enterprise does not need to focus on acquiring expensive but talented people anymore. At this stage they already have a proved model that is working fairly well. All they need is your normal bureaucratic worker that is able to follow simple steps and guidelines.
Obviously we are not an enterprise; we still need to build an agile and fast-thinking/response A-Team, we still need to follow our mission, and we still need to create success for the DAC.



The fundamental difference between iOS and Android is integrity and opensource, simplicity and functionality. While iOS focused on keeping everything simple but integrated (meaning no freedom), Google focused on functionality and opensource. They gave their users much more freedom with the usage of the OS, and in addition to that, they also had much more freedom in picking a phone for their individual style. And besides that, Google had an easy play entering the, then, new smartphone market. They were an addition to iOS and well, Symbian (can not really be treated as Smartphone software back then). So all Google basically had to do was say "Hey, here we are. Have fun. Be Free. Use Android!" Not much marketing effort needed there. But obviously all the marketing was required by the actual phone makers. They were the ones that had to differentiate the phone - and Android was just one argument.


I guess your point was that some products need the use of marketing (and psychological) techniques in order to succeed, and others don't. For VERY few products that may hold true. But the statement "Build it and they'll come" should never be used within a company - it is lethal. Therefor Customer Development is equally important, if not more important, than focusing on the product strategy in the early weeks/months/years of a start-up.
Personally, I do not know of a product that has not at least put a minimum effort into "spreading the message" (positioning and branding). But if you know some good examples, please tell me!


This is true but IBM and Apple have completely different customers. IBM is also the company associated with Linux and Open Source. They are associated with businesses. So really the difference is in the demographic target audiences.

Back in the day both companies tried to acquire the home computer market and they were direct competitors. Advances in technology and the partnership of Windows with IBM required Apple to position their company differently and eventually focus on new industries. With success (and some failures).


And this is where we differ. I don't see Bitshares as a product. I see Bitshares as a new economic ecosystem. I think something like this does not really need much marketing. The best marketing for Bitshares will be the news articles about people who made millions of dollars trading Bitshares, or the early adopters who went from being penniless to making millions in Silicon Valley. The rags to riches story is the best marketing and also one of the oldest and most cross cultural forms of marketing. This is why I said money really sells itself and Bitshares isn't just programmable money, it's a new economy entirely. If we look at Bitcoin as a success, there hasn't been a single Bitcoin ad on TV and Bitcoin actually suffers from negative press and people ignore the Silk Road press FUD because they read about how some kid discovered some coins he lost worth $700,000. They see Bitcoins going from $15 to $1200 in the same year and really what better advertising could you have to attract investors other than logarithmic growth? They will look at their economic situation and compare it to what they see going on with Bitshares and want to be a part of it because they can do math.


I do not quite agree with your statement that by simply stating that you can make money with Bitshares will lead to the success of the entire system.
I treat Bitshares as a new ecosystem at the same time as treating it as a product. Bitshares, essentially, is a product that is resegmenting an existing market. Therefor a great amount of money and time need to put into educating the current userbase in that market and convince them about the superiority and usefulness of your product. (I already scraped on methods of education in the OP so I won't discuss them in detail here)
And by no means would I rely on media with the success of a coin/DAC! Most mainstream outlets are doing a really bad job at articulating the advantages/disadvantages of crypto currencies. All they really intend to do is to create a nice story that offers a quick read for their reader-base. They are riding on fads and one day they talk about "Bitcoin is skyrocketing", and on the other they say "Bitcoin lost $20 today - DEATH. Why Bitcoin will never succeed and why it's bad for our society!!!!112!!24".

That is exactly why the use of some of my proposed psychological techniques should be used for Bitshares. It only leads to the success of the entire system and the fulfillment of our intentions, it also educates millions of people so they grasp the usefulness of Bitshares and why the system is crucial for the development of our society.


Rewards yes, punishment no. You have deterrence in the form of damaged Reputation which leads to exclusion and reward in the form of increased inclusion.

If someone is a thief and scams people that should permanently damage their "Good Name".  If they agreed to abide by a social contract and they don't then that is the same as being a thief and it should damage their reputation beyond repair.

But I don't think any algorithm should have the capability to dish out punishment, only rewards. Human beings dish out enough punishment as it is and we don't need DACs to get in on it.

Punishment should be used for dishonesty, failure to fulfill obligations (would have to be discussed in detail about what is seen as a failure and what not), scamming, faking, etc. etc.

The way someone could be punished is by giving him a "Bad Player" badge or taking some of his points (or in a DACP, his Vx. Meaning, his voting power is heavily decreased due to bad behavior).  The purpose of these punishments would be to fight wrongful behavior within a DAC and not allow any scams or other forms of illicit actions to be taken place. People who try to game the system will be punished, and their public image will be damaged (perhaps through badges).

I do think that the algorithm should be able to punish wrongful behavior. Maybe a plenum (like a court) should decide on the severity of the crime and then come up with an adequate punishment.

And obviously ones hurt image can be "worked away".

This is all still uncertain and should be discussed in detail with others. But I am an advocate for including punishments.

Btw: I'll try and include pictures in the next post. Else this thread is looking so dry for the readers..

Offline luckybit

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My approach and use of psychological techniques was rather focused on the question: "How do we increase the adoption rate of the products produced by the DAC?"
I think we share the same goal and just have different approaches. My approach would accomplish the same goal from a different angle. I look at what Blizzard has done with their World of Warcraft franchise, and I think of DAC employees as gamers or players of the DAC.
Why is Apple more successful than any other consumer company and still sells millions of phones and tablets each quarter? Because they knew exactly who their target consumers were and how they should approach them.
I give you credit that Apple is very successful, and it seems to be entirely based around marketing. Unlike the approach taken by Apple I want the success of a DAC to also be based on the efficiency of that DAC in solving the problem. I do not want a well marketed DAC with inferior features, functionality, and core efficiency to win purely on marketing against a superior technologically driven DAC. The way I see to do it is to make sure the technology is the best, that the DAC can offer value that cannot be found elsewhere.

So what is it that people need? They need money, they need products. A DAC which pays workers in shares for example could be set up in such a way so that these shares could be traded directly for products and services in the DAC or traded into other DACs. That in my opinion is a game changing feature and a technology which would be such a huge breakthrough that it could be like Google.

Google did not do much marketing or have "die hard" fans but it does have the best search algorithm, it does have the best search interface, it does offer the best value (Gmail launched by giving away what was back then a ton of free hard drive space). Google may outlast Apple because it has more forward thinking and better designed technologies while Apple could lose it's edge at any time because it relies on product releases which each have to be successfully hyped, launched, etc.

I don't say one way is better than the other, I think time will show us along with statistics.

They succeeded because they created a huge following of people that were willing to spread the message of Apple being the #1# company in the world and how the iPhone kicks everyone's butt.
The iPhone quickly was replaced by the Android precisely because it wasn't the best technology. Of course die hard followers will seem to buy Apple products no matter what and I cannot discount the value of that, but is that necessary for something like Bitshares?
Moreover, because of this, the public's perception of Apple being a boring computer company like IBM changed to it being a rebellious and agile company. Exactly therefor, Apple was able to attract worldclass talent to join their workforce (more about my definition of "worldclass talent" and "A-Teams" later).
This is true but IBM and Apple have completely different customers. IBM is also the company associated with Linux and Open Source. They are associated with businesses. So really the difference is in the demographic target audiences.
The premise to all of this is obviously a superior product to the current market-standard (which we obviously have with Bitshares). So what I'm saying is that it is possible, with the right use of psychological techniques, to create a following similar to Apples. We need these "messengers" to spread the word of a new DAC, or in a more recent case, Bitshares. Think of it, would you rather pay someone to create a dull presentation about your product, or would you take your time to convince that same person of your vision and your intentions to "change the world", so that he's going to passionately talk to his friends, family, co-workers and his entire social environment about how innovative and how game-changing the product is. The outcome of both such presentations is fundamentally different.
And this is where we differ. I don't see Bitshares as a product. I see Bitshares as a new economic ecosystem. I think something like this does not really need much marketing. The best marketing for Bitshares will be the news articles about people who made millions of dollars trading Bitshares, or the early adopters who went from being penniless to making millions in Silicon Valley. The rags to riches story is the best marketing and also one of the oldest and most cross cultural forms of marketing. This is why I said money really sells itself and Bitshares isn't just programmable money, it's a new economy entirely. If we look at Bitcoin as a success, there hasn't been a single Bitcoin ad on TV and Bitcoin actually suffers from negative press and people ignore the Silk Road press FUD because they read about how some kid discovered some coins he lost worth $700,000. They see Bitcoins going from $15 to $1200 in the same year and really what better advertising could you have to attract investors other than logarithmic growth? They will look at their economic situation and compare it to what they see going on with Bitshares and want to be a part of it because they can do math.

By gaining such "messengers" you not only spread the message about your product (cheap word of mouth branding), but you are also able to attract world class talent to join your forces.

So what is world-class talent for me?
For me, it is someone that is not focused on the monetary (or share) compensation he/she can expect for the given work - but someone that works independently and passionately follows the projects progress. Someone that aspires you and the project for being prescient and innovative. TL;DR, worldclass = someone that works beyond his capacity in order to influence the output of the project for the better - someone who cares about you and the project. As Sun Tzu said:

"The will is rooted in character, and for the man of action character is of more critical importance than intellect.
Intellect without will is worthless, will without intellect is dangerous."


Especially in our crowded market as software engineering it is of the best for a DAC to be able to convince talent to join them. A higher monetary compensation could mean that you can acquire a lot of talented people. But do these people really care about the output? Do they share your vision about producing something game-changing? Essentially, each DAC is like a start-up, they need to know their market, the product and they need to be able to acquire and motivate talent.

So basically, some of my proposed psychological techniques can be used to acquire talent and create a die-hard following for a project, which in return leads to a higher success-rate. But obviously the operator of a DAC (do your intended DAC's have representatives?) needs to be a good charismatic storyteller that is able to influence people.

I'd like to see your techniques tried out on a DAC and the success measured before I can form an opinion. I think if the success rate is as high as you say then it's a no-brainer. I think you're right that a storyteller who is able to influence people is important, but the demographics you're focused on aren't the people who need to be convinced. It is my opinion that the investors are the ones who need to be the true believers. If you can use your psychological techniques on them to make them crowd fund at a higher rate then more DACs can be funded and more ideas tested. The Angel investors ultimately are the people who are the single biggest decider of which DACs have a chance and which wont.


Essentially, the mentioned techniques (and a few more) are what I will be trying on Bitshares with Brian and Dan.



About Gamification:

Gamification is a great method to pump up activity. It is something I have been researching for quite some time and I am currently using it on my start-up. The purpose of Gamification (more closely, badges in our case) is to increase the completion rate of our To-Do List e.g. invite 10 friends and get this badge, do X and Y and get that other badge.
I do really advocate your proposal to use Gamification inside a DAC to increase activity/completion. But after all, Gamification is just another form of compliance technique that increases the motivation of a prospect.
Right but badges serve two purposes in my system. It motivates the prospect to do task completion, but it also increases their status in a way which can transfer across to other DACs. It's a meritocracy of accomplishment as their resume.
Let me elaborate with some more examples:
Giveaways: At first glance, a giveaway's sole purpose is to garner attention. But with the adroit use of a second component (as you have proposed) it becomes a powerful method for creating consistency in your prospect. Lets say that your giveaway is focused on giving away 100 PTS to all the people that write a public, 500 word statement to why BitShares is better than Nxt. This requests for a stand to be taken from the prospect who is supposed to write the statement. As case studies have shown, this kind of action that needs to be taken, causes the prospect to be consistent about their statement and even openly express it. Meaning, you have a new "messenger"!
Gamification: This is used nearly everywhere around us: Facebook Likes, Twitter Followers, Youtube Subscribers, Achievements, Rewards, ... all these cause us to comply to a desired action by our opponent. Most of the time it is used to increase activity, but sometimes, if used in an adroit fashion, they can cause contagious and addictive behavior. Gamification satisfies some of our needs: belonging to someone/something, social cohesion/acceptance, feeling of superiority (altruism)  and achievement.
Social Proof: "He is doing it, so it must be right!"This is another "flaw" in the human brain. We request for a shortcut in most of our daily activity that is why we use methods that lead to automatic action. Social Proof also leads to heard behavior.
Reciprocation: "Do me a favor, and I shall give you one in return!"
This is all very true and I don't dispute it. The problem is I've seen these exact techiques used by some scammers and so have many others. So because of what we have seen in the past a lot of us are jaded and see any of these techniques and think it could be a scam. How do you avoid the perception that your product is a scam because the language pattern matches the pattern that some scammer or the camera angles in a photo of a product look too well thought out and matches that of the scam ASIC people seen so they now don't want to buy it. This all takes place subconsciously and often people don't even know why but they just have a bad feeling about something.
So what I'm saying is that with the correct use of compliance techniques the activity and acceptance of a DAC can be substantially increased - which leads to a higher success-rate. None of these techniques are really obvious compliance techniques at a first glance and thus do not hurt the reputation of a DAC that is simply using them to increase activity/adoption.
I'd like to see it tested out. I know these techniques work I just don't know if they will work with the current demographic. I don't think Bitshares can be marketed as a product with a brand because it's a protocol and economic ecosystem. It's like how do you market the NASDAQ or Forex? We cannot think of it like an Apple product because Apple has never made anything on this scale. While we can learn from Apple we also have to learn what NASDAQ and Forex did to become so widely cherished while at the same time avoid the mistakes which caused Wall Street to be hated.
And by no means am I evil haha - I am simply suggesting several techniques that can be used in a DAC. I will propose more methods in detail to Invictus. So lets see where this leads!

I'm open minded. In my opinion this is a completely open space which will probably be studied by academics and become completely new fields of study. We are essentially the pioneers of a new industry so there is no right or wrong when we don't even know what we are building yet. We will eventually figure out what works and what doesn't after we see a lot of DACs rise and fall. So there is room to try many different experimental techniques.

A DAC should not only be there to assure a fair distribution and correct use of the invested capital (distribution mechanism) - but it should also include a motivational mechanism. This algorithm should offer a combination of rewards and punishment to induce behavior. Meaning, we need to find the correct use of behavioral and motivational techniques in order to assure the highest possible productivity inside the DAC.

Rewards yes, punishment no. You have deterrence in the form of damaged Reputation which leads to exclusion and reward in the form of increased inclusion.

If someone is a thief and scams people that should permanently damage their "Good Name".  If they agreed to abide by a social contract and they don't then that is the same as being a thief and it should damage their reputation beyond repair.

But I don't think any algorithm should have the capability to dish out punishment, only rewards. Human beings dish out enough punishment as it is and we don't need DACs to get in on it.
« Last Edit: December 27, 2013, 04:05:18 pm by luckybit »
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Offline domsch

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A DAC should not only be there to assure a fair distribution and correct use of the invested capital (distribution mechanism) - but it should also include a motivational mechanism. This algorithm should offer a combination of rewards and punishment to induce behavior. Meaning, we need to find the correct use of behavioral and motivational techniques in order to assure the highest possible productivity inside the DAC.


Offline domsch

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My approach and use of psychological techniques was rather focused on the question: "How do we increase the adoption rate of the products produced by the DAC?"

Why is Apple more successful than any other consumer company and still sells millions of phones and tablets each quarter? Because they knew exactly who their target consumers were and how they should approach them. They not only know how to sell products, the reason why they are so successful is because they know how to create a following of die-hard fans. They succeeded because they created a huge following of people that were willing to spread the message of Apple being the #1# company in the world and how the iPhone kicks everyone's butt. Moreover, because of this, the public's perception of Apple being a boring computer company like IBM changed to it being a rebellious and agile company. Exactly therefor, Apple was able to attract worldclass talent to join their workforce (more about my definition of "worldclass talent" and "A-Teams" later).

The premise to all of this is obviously a superior product to the current market-standard (which we obviously have with Bitshares). So what I'm saying is that it is possible, with the right use of psychological techniques, to create a following similar to Apples. We need these "messengers" to spread the word of a new DAC, or in a more recent case, Bitshares. Think of it, would you rather pay someone to create a dull presentation about your product, or would you take your time to convince that same person of your vision and your intentions to "change the world", so that he's going to passionately talk to his friends, family, co-workers and his entire social environment about how innovative and how game-changing the product is. The outcome of both such presentations is fundamentally different.

By gaining such "messengers" you not only spread the message about your product (cheap word of mouth branding), but you are also able to attract world class talent to join your forces.

So what is world-class talent for me?
For me, it is someone that is not focused on the monetary (or share) compensation he/she can expect for the given work - but someone that works independently and passionately follows the projects progress. Someone that aspires you and the project for being prescient and innovative. TL;DR, worldclass = someone that works beyond his capacity in order to influence the output of the project for the better - someone who cares about you and the project. As Sun Tzu said:

"The will is rooted in character, and for the man of action character is of more critical importance than intellect.
Intellect without will is worthless, will without intellect is dangerous."


Especially in our crowded market as software engineering it is of the best for a DAC to be able to convince talent to join them. A higher monetary compensation could mean that you can acquire a lot of talented people. But do these people really care about the output? Do they share your vision about producing something game-changing? Essentially, each DAC is like a start-up, they need to know their market, the product and they need to be able to acquire and motivate talent.

So basically, some of my proposed psychological techniques can be used to acquire talent and create a die-hard following for a project, which in return leads to a higher success-rate. But obviously the operator of a DAC (do your intended DAC's have representatives?) needs to be a good charismatic storyteller that is able to influence people.


Essentially, the mentioned techniques (and a few more) are what I will be trying on Bitshares with Brian and Dan.



About Gamification:

Gamification is a great method to pump up activity. It is something I have been researching for quite some time and I am currently using it on my start-up. The purpose of Gamification (more closely, badges in our case) is to increase the completion rate of our To-Do List e.g. invite 10 friends and get this badge, do X and Y and get that other badge.
I do really advocate your proposal to use Gamification inside a DAC to increase activity/completion. But after all, Gamification is just another form of compliance technique that increases the motivation of a prospect.

Let me elaborate with some more examples:
Giveaways: At first glance, a giveaway's sole purpose is to garner attention. But with the adroit use of a second component (as you have proposed) it becomes a powerful method for creating consistency in your prospect. Lets say that your giveaway is focused on giving away 100 PTS to all the people that write a public, 500 word statement to why BitShares is better than Nxt. This requests for a stand to be taken from the prospect who is supposed to write the statement. As case studies have shown, this kind of action that needs to be taken, causes the prospect to be consistent about their statement and even openly express it. Meaning, you have a new "messenger"!
Gamification: This is used nearly everywhere around us: Facebook Likes, Twitter Followers, Youtube Subscribers, Achievements, Rewards, ... all these cause us to comply to a desired action by our opponent. Most of the time it is used to increase activity, but sometimes, if used in an adroit fashion, they can cause contagious and addictive behavior. Gamification satisfies some of our needs: belonging to someone/something, social cohesion/acceptance, feeling of superiority (altruism)  and achievement.
Social Proof: "He is doing it, so it must be right!"This is another "flaw" in the human brain. We request for a shortcut in most of our daily activity that is why we use methods that lead to automatic action. Social Proof also leads to heard behavior.
Reciprocation: "Do me a favor, and I shall give you one in return!"


So what I'm saying is that with the correct use of compliance techniques the activity and acceptance of a DAC can be substantially increased - which leads to a higher success-rate. None of these techniques are really obvious compliance techniques at a first glance and thus do not hurt the reputation of a DAC that is simply using them to increase activity/adoption.

And by no means am I evil haha - I am simply suggesting several techniques that can be used in a DAC. I will propose more methods in detail to Invictus. So lets see where this leads!



Offline luckybit

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More on gamification of work

The idea is to make working for a DAC fun and profitable. Interaction with a DAC could essentially be "gaming with a purpose".

In a game there are certain components which if put in place motivate the player to go for a winning experience. Working for a DAC should be fun and rewarding so that as you move up in status, rank, prestige, the rewards increase and you can earn more shares in that DAC or any DAC which accepts the cross-DAC gamification elements. This is necessary because for any kind of important job we need to know that people doing the work are qualified and a badge or certificate of achievement with levels, a belt or whatever you choose for your DAC, it must basically contain a set of properties and value data which signify the level of achievement of that participant over a period of time.

Resumes? gone. Education? Not necessary. You gain experience working for (or playing with) the DACs and gaining achievements. Only by working for DACs can it allow you to go to any other DAC to work. In my opinion these gamification elements like awards, trinkets, badges, credits, are essential, proven to work and make up the serious games movement.

References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_game
http://gamification-research.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Smith.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_with_a_purpose
« Last Edit: December 27, 2013, 02:05:56 am by luckybit »
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Offline luckybit

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Basically what I'm saying is that you need to put in more factors in your success-equation of a DAC. Talent is not only convinced by the monetary compensation they receive - "rational" people are more convinced of the intentions and purpose of a project.
The current demographic on this site already believes in the idea and doesn't have to be convinced. It seems to me it's just a matter of getting some money to pay some of the people already here rather than a situation where we have to attract people from elsewhere. The people who believe have bills to pay and families to feed just like everyone else.
The example of Jonestown was included to articulate how far you can get with a deliberate usage of these psychological compliance techniques. Obviously you will not want to convince potential participants to commit suicide for you - you want to convince them of your intentions and their purpose in the project. Only if you state the WHY, HOW and WHAT you will get an A-Team to join your project - and with such, you can get them to comply to your request (Lets assume you do not have enough money to pay a programmer the current industry standard. So you want to convince them to take less).
No you really can't. If a programmer has to pay their rent and other bills you might be able to convince them to take a little bit less in $ but you're ignoring the high appreciation rate of a successful DAC. When you look at start-ups a lot of them pay in stock, it's really no different. The stock might turn out to be worthless or it might make them millionaires. At the time you give them the stock they have the choice to sell it to pay their bills and decrease their risk or save if you give them enough stock they could pay their bills and have some to save which is actually the ideal situation.

If you're short on money then you can outsource to people in countries where it's cheaper but I don't see how this particular community would be short on money if we had crowd funding. Mastercoin raised a million dollars at the time which has appreciated greatly and is now worth millions more. I think paying at whatever the market rate (or slightly below) will not be a problem because the crypto assets you're dealing with don't suffer from the problems associated with the dollar or euro.
If these techniques are used by the wrong person they can be a real menace to the platform. You probably heard of "Kony 2012". A movement that caused millions of people to care about Uganda and their dictator Joseph Kony. People protested (well, they tried to), flyers were scattered across towns and millions of dollars were donated to Invisible Children (which in return, kept like 50%+ of the donated money). All of this was caused because a team of psychologists and cinematographers knew how to create a video that touched people on an emotional basis.
I get it. Psychology does matter. But I think you're looking at a completely different demographic from most here. Most DACs are not charitable organizations and will attract either very greedy institutional investors or people who use Bitcoin and who think it's a cool idea/technology. I don't think this kind of psychological marketing is necessary because Bitcoin for the most part leaves a trail of bread crumbs directly to the DACs. It's real simple, people will be drawn to the DACs as a way to get Bitcoins (or shares in the DAC) and you don't have to motivate by more than that.

If you're after the A-team whatever that is then you might have to use more motivation but how do you define the A-team? I think it depends on the DAC. I'm not discounting the use of psychology. I have advocated switching Bitshares to the smallest denomination in the client and display so that psychologically people feel like they have more or will buy more. I believe it's possible Bitshares could reach parity with Bitcoin and surpass it in price and so in order to have people not think it's too expensive we would be best to adopt the smallest denomination showing the total number of Bitshare units. The idea that Bitshares are scarce is important as well so for marketing you want to market the scarcity of the largest denomination to professional/sophisticated investors.

What I'm advocating against is the use of any kind of dishonesty or purposeful con-artistry and some of the compliance techniques will drive people away because they will be viewed as dishonest. The giveaway thread for example attracted people who wanted something for free and when they found out they had to do something for it they felt like it was a bait and switch. Just because a technique may be temporarily effective for a DAC it does not mean it should be the preferred technique. Being perceived as honest, having a good reputation, are very important (more important than just making $) because there are too many scams.

People felt connected, they thought the same could happen to them and thus wanted to take action - with no compensation. They did it because they believed in it.
There are plenty of documentaries about the economic crisis and the banks. I think if people are looking to try Bitcoin they are already sold on this and don't really need to be sold further but I could be wrong. If people crowd fund documentaries which successfully bring people to different DACs then lets do it. In fact I think documentaries could be a successful method of marketing. Really I care about effectiveness and I think if you follow an algorithmic approach which measures effectiveness through a voting/rating system then you can try out different compliance techniques, marketing techniques, etc.
So to get to a conclusion: What I'm saying is that the DAC's and the entire project's chance to succeed is subsequently higher if we deliberately use compliance techniques in order to achieve widespread adoption, acceptance and understanding of the intentions. With such, you are able to get "diehard" fans that spread the message not because they receive a badge or another form of compensation - but because they believe in the system.
I think you're just trying to trick people into working for the DAC for free. That might work for some people but you will be limited to those people. Anyone who has a job which pays them is not going to quit their job to work for a DAC which does not give them the same money, kudos, credentials, experience, credit, recognition, prestige, badge of honor, titles, or whatever they could get somewhere else.

The prestige system has been tested over and over in studies on gamification and you can see that these game mechanics work in practice. It is a fact that World of Warcraft is addictive for a reason, because of specific gamification mechanics. People work not just to make money but also for prestige and status to keep up with the Joneses. Different people are motivated differently and some people are motivated as "die hard" types who would work for free but those people in my opinion are incredibly rare and it goes against the tenants of capitalism.

I'm sure a DAC could pull it off if it were a charity DAC but I don't think people are going to work for a DAC which is clearly capitalist, clearly designed to make shareholders money, and not expect anything out of it.

Maybe you can show me that I'm wrong but I think if you look at why most people work or play it's because they want trinkets, credit, recognition, fame, money, etc. This applies as much to prize fighting and sports as it does to acting, being a doctor, lawyer, computer technician, or just gaming for fun.

People want to feel a sense of win, and they also have to be given enough money to of course feed themselves and their families so they don't have to worry about money. There is a balance of course where if you give people too much money you're wasting money, but if they are worried about money they will take their talent elsewhere to whichever DAC, business or team which gives them more money. Any DAC I develop will be designed in a way which includes gamification components but it would be good to try different approaches as that is why there should be competing DACs so that the market can decide what it likes.
Marketing != Compliance techniques
If you're using the word compliance techinques you're not exactly saying who they are to comply with. Are they complying with shareholders? To me a DAC should be all about inclusion and anyone should be able to become a shareholder if they are willing to work for the DAC to earn shares and have faith that those shares will be worth something then they should be rewarded.

A reiteration of my opinion is that we should just create a functioning algorithm which can fairly distribute the work and funds according to the voting of the stakeholders. We should reward anyone who helps develop and build up a DAC with ownership of the DAC making them stakeholders just as we reward the investors who crowd fund it and the Protoshare holders who are part of the social contract. I think only through ownership and only by allowing people to earn a stake can you have inclusion and I think inclusion is what will attract people to the DACs. It's just like how inclusion is what attracts so many people to mining.


Reference
http://gamification.org/wiki/Gamification_of_Work
« Last Edit: December 27, 2013, 01:39:13 am by luckybit »
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Offline domsch

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I think that a lot of your problems/questions can, and have to be solved on a psychological level. In order for someone to comply to one of your requests Reason , Emotional Attachments and eventually, Social Proof (herd behavior) need to be provided.

As you can see all of these compliance techniques (and obviously more sophisticated ones) are being used in today's time and age. In my perception, today's religion is nothing more than a form of mass psychology so that the "small sheep" stay within their region and do not cause any chaos. Meaning, religion has allowed the elitists to expand their power across all 7 continents and capitalism has flourished due to the awareness of the smaller sheep being stunned by religious prayers. All these people live for is the hope for a better future. The people around us need to realize that not God is the one that will save them, but their own behavior, their own actions, THEIR own hands will save them from all the sorrow. They are the ones that decide upon their future and only they can influence and create their own luck.

Obviously not only religion is a form of mass-psychology. The media, sports, music, movies, social media, etc. are all used to influence the decision making and perception of our modern day citizen.  The USA performs all mass-psychology techniques with adroit excellence. The quote that best fits the USA:
Quote
None are so hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes.
-Johann von Goethe


So to get back to the point, what I was saying is basically this:
The goal of a DAC is it to not only craft a vision, but to properly market that idea with compliance techniques in order to achieve their goal (in your case, get others to quit their day job in order to work for the DAC). A DAC needs to answer the WHY, HOW and WHAT (in this periodic order). Furthermore, the corollary to this is that the most successful DAC is not the one with the best idea, but the one that is best at convincing others of their plan. The representatives of a DAC need to be great storytellers, they need to reach their prospects on an emotional level to convince them about their intentions.

I don't see why it has to be this complicated. You're liberated. No boss. Work whatever hours you want or need to get the job done. Work at little or as much as you want, actively or passively. To top it off these shares or coins you work may dramatically appreciate in value. What more could you want?

Why wouldn't a rational person want that if the pay rates were high enough? I don't expect people to work for free or to do it out of spiritual motivations but if you want a job with no boss then the DAC can provide it.

To corroborate my statement, I'll give you an example, lets go back to religion.
I'm pretty sure that most here have heard of Jonestown (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown). Basically, in the 80's a crazy dude called Jim Jones convinced more than 900 people to move from Cali/Indiana to Guyana and live in communistic subsistence economy. He convinced nearly a thousand people to liquidate all their assets, leave friends, family and their work behind to move in an uncertain terrain - and an uncertain future. He did all this by convincing these people of his intentions (in fact, he was a great story teller) and he touched all of these "sheep" on an emotional basis that made them perform such irrational actions. His use of compliance techniques peaked when he convinced nearly all members of Jonestown to commit "revolutionary suicide".
Why do we want or need to mimic this? It is not my goal to convince people to do any irrational or suicidal acts. I think if you're talking about a marketing strategy this will be too dangerous, have many unknown consequences, and does not provide greater value for shareholders or better service quality for customers to offset the risks. If you're telling people to quit their job to work for a DAC then all you have to do is offer a better value proposition by paying them in shares of the DAC. If they believe in the long term value of the DAC they'll want to have some shares in it. So if the DAC were the Internet 2.0 then the way to own a piece of the Internet 2.0 is to help build the Internet 2.0 or crowd fund it.

I prefer not to go the irrational route because irrational thinking does not seem to benefit scientific discovery. I also admit I'm not experienced with marketing products and you are.

So to articulate this example, what Jones did was the following:
WHY: " Come with me and you will achieve personal enlightenment. You will be able to communicate with your ancestors and get advice from their wisdom"(reason and emotional attachment)
HOW: "I found this new meditation technique with which I was able to reach God and my ancestors!"(reason)
WHAT: "We will create a new religion based on our believes"
What lead to widespread adoption of his intentions was the early visionaries/adopters. These were the people that spread the message and helped Jones convince others to join their company. And these people were not paid - they did it out of self belief. They believed what Jones said was right and they wanted others to achieve self enlightenment as well. They wanted to spread the message because they knew it was right.
Jones wanted people to do something which is entirely irrational. Why do we want to do this in the context of the DAC under discussion?

In the context of this particular DAC I don't see what message has to be spread other than "Work for the DAC and earn shares". Money really sells itself, especially when people don't have any. If you have to convince the people to like money then you should choose a more rational demographic.

This is just one example of many, where the use of compliance techniques had lead people to perform irrational actions and comply to nearly ANY form of request.
Once again, what irrational action are you trying to get people to perform?


Basically what I'm saying is that you need to put in more factors in your success-equation of a DAC. Talent is not only convinced by the monetary compensation they receive - "rational" people are more convinced of the intentions and purpose of a project.

The example of Jonestown was included to articulate how far you can get with a deliberate usage of these psychological compliance techniques. Obviously you will not want to convince potential participants to commit suicide for you - you want to convince them of your intentions and their purpose in the project. Only if you state the WHY, HOW and WHAT you will get an A-Team to join your project - and with such, you can get them to comply to your request (Lets assume you do not have enough money to pay a programmer the current industry standard. So you want to convince them to take less).

If these techniques are used by the wrong person they can be a real menace to the platform. You probably heard of "Kony 2012". A movement that caused millions of people to care about Uganda and their dictator Joseph Kony. People protested (well, they tried to), flyers were scattered across towns and millions of dollars were donated to Invisible Children (which in return, kept like 50%+ of the donated money). All of this was caused because a team of psychologists and cinematographers knew how to create a video that touched people on an emotional basis. People felt connected, they thought the same could happen to them and thus wanted to take action - with no compensation. They did it because they believed in it.

So to get to a conclusion: What I'm saying is that the DAC's and the entire project's chance to succeed is subsequently higher if we deliberately use compliance techniques in order to achieve widespread adoption, acceptance and understanding of the intentions. With such, you are able to get "diehard" fans that spread the message not because they receive a badge or another form of compensation - but because they believe in the system.

Marketing != Compliance techniques

Offline luckybit

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I think that a lot of your problems/questions can, and have to be solved on a psychological level. In order for someone to comply to one of your requests Reason , Emotional Attachments and eventually, Social Proof (herd behavior) need to be provided.

As you can see all of these compliance techniques (and obviously more sophisticated ones) are being used in today's time and age. In my perception, today's religion is nothing more than a form of mass psychology so that the "small sheep" stay within their region and do not cause any chaos. Meaning, religion has allowed the elitists to expand their power across all 7 continents and capitalism has flourished due to the awareness of the smaller sheep being stunned by religious prayers. All these people live for is the hope for a better future. The people around us need to realize that not God is the one that will save them, but their own behavior, their own actions, THEIR own hands will save them from all the sorrow. They are the ones that decide upon their future and only they can influence and create their own luck.

Obviously not only religion is a form of mass-psychology. The media, sports, music, movies, social media, etc. are all used to influence the decision making and perception of our modern day citizen.  The USA performs all mass-psychology techniques with adroit excellence. The quote that best fits the USA:
Quote
None are so hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes.
-Johann von Goethe


So to get back to the point, what I was saying is basically this:
The goal of a DAC is it to not only craft a vision, but to properly market that idea with compliance techniques in order to achieve their goal (in your case, get others to quit their day job in order to work for the DAC). A DAC needs to answer the WHY, HOW and WHAT (in this periodic order). Furthermore, the corollary to this is that the most successful DAC is not the one with the best idea, but the one that is best at convincing others of their plan. The representatives of a DAC need to be great storytellers, they need to reach their prospects on an emotional level to convince them about their intentions.

I don't see why it has to be this complicated. You're liberated. No boss. Work whatever hours you want or need to get the job done. Work at little or as much as you want, actively or passively. To top it off these shares or coins you work for may dramatically appreciate in value. What more could you want?

Why wouldn't a rational person want that if the pay rates were high enough? I don't expect people to work for free or to do it out of spiritual motivations but if you want a job with no boss then the DAC can provide it.

To corroborate my statement, I'll give you an example, lets go back to religion.
I'm pretty sure that most here have heard of Jonestown (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown). Basically, in the 80's a crazy dude called Jim Jones convinced more than 900 people to move from Cali/Indiana to Guyana and live in communistic subsistence economy. He convinced nearly a thousand people to liquidate all their assets, leave friends, family and their work behind to move in an uncertain terrain - and an uncertain future. He did all this by convincing these people of his intentions (in fact, he was a great story teller) and he touched all of these "sheep" on an emotional basis that made them perform such irrational actions. His use of compliance techniques peaked when he convinced nearly all members of Jonestown to commit "revolutionary suicide".
Why do we want or need to mimic this? It is not my goal to convince people to do any irrational or suicidal acts. I think if you're talking about a marketing strategy this will be too dangerous, have many unknown consequences, and does not provide greater value for shareholders or better service quality for customers to offset the risks. If you're telling people to quit their job to work for a DAC then all you have to do is offer a better value proposition by paying them in shares of the DAC. If they believe in the long term value of the DAC they'll want to have some shares in it. So if the DAC were the Internet 2.0 then the way to own a piece of the Internet 2.0 is to help build the Internet 2.0 or crowd fund it.

I prefer not to go the irrational route because irrational thinking does not seem to benefit scientific discovery. I also admit I'm not experienced with marketing products and you are.

So to articulate this example, what Jones did was the following:
WHY: " Come with me and you will achieve personal enlightenment. You will be able to communicate with your ancestors and get advice from their wisdom"(reason and emotional attachment)
HOW: "I found this new meditation technique with which I was able to reach God and my ancestors!"(reason)
WHAT: "We will create a new religion based on our believes"
What lead to widespread adoption of his intentions was the early visionaries/adopters. These were the people that spread the message and helped Jones convince others to join their company. And these people were not paid - they did it out of self belief. They believed what Jones said was right and they wanted others to achieve self enlightenment as well. They wanted to spread the message because they knew it was right.
Jones wanted people to do something which is entirely irrational. Why do we want to do this in the context of the DAC under discussion?

In the context of this particular DAC I don't see what message has to be spread other than "Work for the DAC and earn shares". Money really sells itself, especially when people don't have any. If you have to convince the people to like money then you should choose a more rational demographic.

This is just one example of many, where the use of compliance techniques had lead people to perform irrational actions and comply to nearly ANY form of request.
Once again, what irrational action are you trying to get people to perform?
Also why use a poorly framed word like compliance? What demographic are we targeting with that?

I have no interest in compliance techniques. I believe in incentives. Offer the incentive and if they reject it then create a better incentive. Offering shares, dividends, money, these are incentives and that is really the only mechanism a DAC should need to compel human beings to want to work for it. The free market is all about incentives. I suppose you can make the argument that some people will work for religious or spiritual reasons instead of money but that seems like an entirely different demographic than the demographic we are dealing with.

« Last Edit: December 26, 2013, 03:44:35 pm by luckybit »
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Offline domsch

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Text

I think that a lot of your problems/questions can, and have to be solved on a psychological level. In order for someone to comply to one of your requests Reason , Emotional Attachments and eventually, Social Proof (herd behavior) need to be provided.

As you can see all of these compliance techniques (and obviously more sophisticated ones) are being used in today's time and age. In my perception, today's religion is nothing more than a form of mass psychology so that the "small sheep" stay within their region and do not cause any chaos. Meaning, religion has allowed the elitists to expand their power across all 7 continents and capitalism has flourished due to the awareness of the smaller sheep being stunned by religious prayers. All these people live for is the hope for a better future. The people around us need to realize that not God is the one that will save them, but their own behavior, their own actions, THEIR own hands will save them from all the sorrow. They are the ones that decide upon their future and only they can influence and create their own luck.

Obviously not only religion is a form of mass-psychology. The media, sports, music, movies, social media, etc. are all used to influence the decision making and perception of our modern day citizen.  The USA performs all mass-psychology techniques with adroit excellence. The quote that best fits the USA:
Quote
None are so hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes.
-Johann von Goethe


So to get back to the point, what I was saying is basically this:
The goal of a DAC is it to not only craft a vision, but to properly market that idea with compliance techniques in order to achieve their goal (in your case, get others to quit their day job in order to work for the DAC). A DAC needs to answer the WHY, HOW and WHAT (in this periodic order). Furthermore, the corollary to this is that the most successful DAC is not the one with the best idea, but the one that is best at convincing others of their plan. The representatives of a DAC need to be great storytellers, they need to reach their prospects on an emotional level to convince them about their intentions.

To corroborate my statement, I'll give you an example, lets go back to religion.
I'm pretty sure that most here have heard of Jonestown (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown). Basically, in the 80's a crazy dude called Jim Jones convinced more than 900 people to move from Cali/Indiana to Guyana and live in communistic subsistence economy. He convinced nearly a thousand people to liquidate all their assets, leave friends, family and their work behind to move in an uncertain terrain - and an uncertain future. He did all this by convincing these people of his intentions (in fact, he was a great story teller) and he touched all of these "sheep" on an emotional basis that made them perform such irrational actions. His use of compliance techniques peaked when he convinced nearly all members of Jonestown to commit "revolutionary suicide".
So to articulate this example, what Jones did was the following:
WHY: " Come with me and you will achieve personal enlightenment. You will be able to communicate with your ancestors and get advice from their wisdom"(reason and emotional attachment)
HOW: "I found this new meditation technique with which I was able to reach God and my ancestors!"(reason)
WHAT: "We will create a new religion based on our believes"
What lead to widespread adoption of his intentions was the early visionaries/adopters. These were the people that spread the message and helped Jones convince others to join their company. And these people were not paid - they did it out of self belief. They believed what Jones said was right and they wanted others to achieve self enlightenment as well. They wanted to spread the message because they knew it was right.

This is just one example of many, where the use of compliance techniques had lead people to perform irrational actions and comply to nearly ANY form of request.

So my proposal is to use the vulnerability in the human psyche - not for illicit intentions as our opponents - but to achieve widespread success and acceptance of our DAC's. I want to live in (and create) a society where the thought of ones self persuasion and the rapid advance in technology is the backbone and driving force. We need to lead the people in the right direction and help them distinguish the good from the evil.

Btw: This is really becoming interesting. I have been researching on a new form of economic theory for quite some time and I think that we are getting somewhere here. But there are still some questions that need to be answered on how to create this new form of a society. Check this out btw http://thevenusproject.com/ - quite interesting.
« Last Edit: December 26, 2013, 01:52:38 pm by domsch »

Offline luckybit

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You might be interested in this proposal currently circulating.


Application Specific, Autonomous, Self Boot-Strapping Consensus Platforms (And the DACs that live on them)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PBjrpMBViJh1-QrWJ80XMcQmhqcG3NhhoeSn0C_ML7Y/edit?usp=sharing
That proposal mirrors what I'm thinking about with the exception being that there could be artificial intelligence at the center (there is no top) which gets feedback/commands from shareholders to better achieve the goals of shareholders. Ultimately it's not hierarchical and there really is no top, it's flat and anyone who works for the DAC becomes a shareholder as a payment received for their level of commitment according to the PoC algorithm.

Apparently we are on the same page. Let's work together on this and blend ideas into something great.
« Last Edit: December 26, 2013, 02:29:06 pm by luckybit »
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Offline Lighthouse

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You might be interested in this proposal currently circulating.


Application Specific, Autonomous, Self Boot-Strapping Consensus Platforms (And the DACs that live on them)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PBjrpMBViJh1-QrWJ80XMcQmhqcG3NhhoeSn0C_ML7Y/edit?usp=sharing
Before you say the price of PTS is too high, take a look at theThe Reason.  Protoshares are an entirely new type of Cryptocurrency, one that pays to hold.

Offline luckybit

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Developing a good "How to" or more specifically "What is" website is key in bringing on people that are less in tune with the bitcoin space.

While I really like the aesthetics of the new protoshares.com site, it assumes a certain base level understanding of the bitcoin protocol, its basic function and its many iterations.   To really draw in the average person, the DAC concept needs to be dumbed down so that my parents and grandparents can really begin to understand what DACs are and the many advantages they offer. 

I still have trouble explaining the DAC concept to people unfamiliar with bitcoin so this might be one of the most challenging things to produce.

I think we need to develop an economic ecosystem which leverages crowd funding to reward human builders and operators of DACs. It seems I'm the only one pushing for this, but if DACs offered "good jobs" then you would have no problem finding talented people to fill the bounties. It's a matter of crowd funding primarily and also a matter of creating an ecosystem which isn't going to be easy because it's not really been done before.

The badge based system of certification has been discussed before. You can see the concept at Open Badges http://openbadges.org/

But the idea of human beings working for software based autonomous agents is straight out of science fiction to most people. The way to make this idea catch on fire is to take it out of the realm of science fiction and have a welcoming inclusive website with phrases like: "Anyone can work for a DAC"   "We have jobs for everyone from any background or experience level" "If you want Bitcoins, work for abcDAC"

That kind of marketing will sell the DACs to people who are trying to get paid and who have time. People who have money will have to be pitched Angelshares. People who need services will be pitched in a different way. All three are critical components of a healthy economic ecosystem.

If you have no one working for the DAC then the DAC is just another app or altcoin and people won't get it. If no one uses its services (no demand) then it wont make a profit, shareholders won't get the dividends, it wont be self sustaining. If it does not receive crowd funding then it will not have the initial catalyst to build the whole thing.


« Last Edit: December 26, 2013, 07:10:19 am by luckybit »
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Offline luckybit

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I think you have a good idea. Let's try and discover a formal DAC construction system?

I think the key to making it work all is to find a way to get members of the community to work directly or indirectly for the DAC. Involvement is a way of saying it, but if you want people to put up posters, put urls in signatures, or do guerrilla marketing then you have to give them a stake which increases in proportion to their level of commitment/involvement. I think if we get that right then the community will start marketing the DACs by itself.

So here is how I suggest we start. While the idea I presented in the past was to create a DAC to handle it, I think since we don't have a DAC will we have to start by going about it the human way and slowly automate functionality until it becomes a DAC.

So you've taken the first step by presenting your proposal. We do not yet have Proof of Stake voting so the community should first somehow vote on it to approve or disapprove your marketing plan. If the plan is approved then you will need to come up with a step by step to-do list so that members of the community can become your street team and get rewarded with shares or credits in the case where shares do not exist yet for this purpose. This would mean you'll have to keep a spreadsheet with coin addresses, as well as keep track of who followed through.

About giveaways, when I hosted a giveaway it was also required that they do something in exchange for receiving their portion of Mastercoins and it was also limited so that each only gets to do it once. One individual complained that it was bait and switch because the title of the thread was giveaway but I was asking for signatures and other proof. It may be helpful not to call it a giveaway, but more a reward for participation. If you call it a giveaway you will attract people who want something for free and who may not even know what it is.

About reputation, it is critical that we get reputation right. The vision I have (since you call us visionaries), is a situation where the DACs are are the center of our eco-system. We move away from the traditional labor or full time job based model into a model where it's task oriented and problem solving.

So to create a prototype or protoDAC which uses Proof of Commitment you need:

1. Reputation (prestige, status, badges designating role, effectiveness rating, etc)
2. Credit (If they attain a badge and are in a role they should be credited for verified completed work)
3. Tasks - (to-do lists or DAC instruction sets)

It's cheaper to say lets use volunteers but then you get what you pay for, you get people who can eventually quit their jobs to build and operate DACs. Building a DAC requires a lot more than just programmers, and we have a lot of people here who in an ideal situation would quit their jobs and work directly for DACs. If you show the world that you can build a functioning economic ecosystem which is self contained enough that people work for DACs exclusively then you can show the world another economic model.

Some open questions:

How much do we want to spend on marketing? The first thing to decide is a budget. Once you have a budge in place you can decide other things.

How would you like to get paid if at all to do certain tasks? Since we don't really know how much certain tasks cost we probably should have some surveys to find out, alternatively you could pay at a rate relative to what people would get working for a corporation but when you're global and online a lot of things are cheaper.

What would it take to get community members to quit their job and spend their day doing DAC tasks? Ultimately no matter what these tasks will have to be completed each and every time to build a DAC and every DAC seems to follow a similar pattern so if I were trying to build a DAC I don't want to have to set up a website, set up an exchange, do the art work, create the messaging, handle the marketing strategy or any of that. The DAC should build itself through us because the incentives are structured in such a way that these are self building DACs.

So in order to streamline a self building DAC kit or self building DAC manufacturing then we start with the basic components. Off the top of my head every DAC starts with an outline, a whitepaper or set of instructions on how to build it. This includes the service the DAC will offer, the problem the DAC is trying to solve, how much funding the DAC will need, some crowd funded mechanism of funding it, a list of tasks or bounties which have to be filled from start to finish in order to complete the DAC.

All of that should be released at the same time in a formal package and every DAC should at least come with a similar sort of instruction manual. I don't have a name for this but basically the way to think about it is just as you would think about source code which feeds instructions the computer, DAC instruction sets are to tell the human workers how to construct and operate the DAC.

An example To-Do list (DAC instruction set) could be like

1. Crowd funding figure must reach X amount. (set funding target)
2. If crowd funding figure reaches X amount then roles/jobs in these categories must be created, tasks/bounties for these roles will be created, assignment to humans on first come first serve basis. (determine assignments)
3. Proof of Commitment algorithm determines how much funding goes to each bounty/task or a committee of shareholders decide on their own. (measure participation/commitment and set bounties)
4. Every task is checked, audited, every participant who successfully does a job is rewarded with credits for a job well done and a badge to signify they have experience. (reward a job well done and track experience of participants)

The badges are necessary, as is the crediting system, because then each member of the community can collect these badges which can immediately indicate their level of experience. Badges can represent levels, so if a particular DAC employee if you want to call it, or DAC bounty hunter decides to go work for another DAC then that DAC would immediately know exactly the level of experience they are at and it could all be an automated process.

If the system were set up how I envision it then you could have DAC employees like

1. An individual who could write DAC documentation for a living. This individual would be rated over time and go from novice to expert. As an expert this individual would get bonuses depending on the algorithm used to reward the credits.  If the algorithm is PoC then the payout would be according to that algorithm but every DAC could have it's own payout algorithm so that over time an individual can decide to not work under certain payout algorithms they don't like.

2. An individual could do DAC artwork for a living. This individual would be rated over time and if their work sucks they would not go from novice to expert but if the work is good then they will. The algorithm should always allow for measuring the quality of their work in a decentralized manner using human beings to rate. Just as with the first example if there are plenty of DACs in the ecosystem then eventually the artist will be able to select the DAC they want to work for based on the payout algorithm they prefer.

3. An individual could be a DAC programmer for a living. In this role the individual would write code, the code would be audited by the community and could even be rated by peer review. If the DAC programmer consistently writes buggy code with securities holes then that should go on their record but if their code is clean, consistently passes security audits, then they should be rated an expert. Once again you can use a badge system to finely tune it so that successful projects by the programmer in certain areas like say cryptography could win the programmer a specialist badge in cryptographic protocols. This badge would allow the programmer to go to any DAC and work for it based off previous experience.

4. An individual could be a DAC marketer for a living. In this role the individual is part of or the leader of a marketing team. The individual is either given a set of metrics and goals or they are in charge in strategy. In general their success should be measured statistically and if the statistics don't look good they should be rated novice by the community but if the statistics look good they should be rated expert.

Now some problems could occur in the case of collusion and for this reason voting pools should be anonymous and selected at random. Voters should be paid to give them incentive to want to rate others work. So this job would be similar to the kind of jobs you see with Bitcoinget where you just need some human being to look at something or review some code. Over time the work of the reviewers should also be reviewed in the same way so that quality reviewers get paid the most.

These ideas are a bit radical and may be too much for right now but if we are serious about building DACs we should create our own work or task distribution processes and tie that in with share/coin distribution so that the incentives are aligned similar to how they would be if we were working for a real corporation.

Only in this case these corporations would be decentralized, autonomous, and there are no bosses. The only boss would be the community itself which would review everyone and everything with incentives for it. I believe the best way to market a DAC is to show what a DAC is and the only way to truly know what it is would be to work for it and be serviced by it, so the community has to interact with DACs on both these levels just as they would with corporations in the world.





« Last Edit: December 26, 2013, 06:56:41 am by luckybit »
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Offline domsch

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Btw if you guys are interested in interactive websites. Really check out http://www.zensorium.com/tinke/ - I love it!

Offline domsch

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Developing a good "How to" or more specifically "What is" website is key in bringing on people that are less in tune with the bitcoin space.

While I really like the aesthetics of the new protoshares.com site, it assumes a certain base level understanding of the bitcoin protocol, its basic function and its many iterations.   To really draw in the average person, the DAC concept needs to be dumbed down so that my parents and grandparents can really begin to understand what DACs are and the many advantages they offer. 

I still have trouble explaining the DAC concept to people unfamiliar with bitcoin so this might be one of the most challenging things to produce.

I thought exactly the same when visiting protoshares. (nothing against super3, he is doing a great job really). Improving the user experience is to make the usage as simple as possible and offer a short 2 - 4 word introduction to what problem the product solves.

If you look at https://www.simple.com/ you realize that they want to help you manage your banking relations and offer transparency
https://trychec.com/ - Sell anything, anywhere. A simple 3 step process and you are able to make money already.
https://www.zopim.com - real time customer satisfaction
https://www.mint.com/ - manage your monthly expenses/income
https://do.com/ - get shit done
https://www.infinit.io/ - easily send files

Just some of the websites of my "awesome website designs" list which I work on daily. The Invictus Innovations website could look similar to http://www.6wunderkinder.com/ for example.

Obviously explaining Bitshares in layman terms requires a lot more effort, that is why I think an interactive "How it works" or "Tour" page on the website that explains the projects (Bitshares and Keyhotee) in a funny/easy way will bring clarification to our average user. But the most important work for the marketing team is to not only explain the intentions of Bitshares, but to create an entire movement. We need to influence the users to take action against grievances and get them to independently spread the solutions offered by Bitshares (i.e. word of mouth).  Once Brian/Dan contacted me I can try and get to work with them and present some more ideas to the community/them. 


Offline bytemaster

Guerrilla Marketers: Are any of you Clapton fans?

Take this to some old alleyway in New York but write "Larimer is God" or "Bitshares > Bitcoin"


Please don't write Larimer is God....  too much responsibility and centralization ;)
For the latest updates checkout my blog: http://bytemaster.bitshares.org
Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract between myself and anyone else.   These are merely my opinions and I reserve the right to change them at any time.

bitbro

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Guerrilla Marketers: Are any of you Clapton fans?

Take this to some old alleyway in New York but write "Larimer is God" or "Bitshares > Bitcoin"





Offline wasthatawolf

Developing a good "How to" or more specifically "What is" website is key in bringing on people that are less in tune with the bitcoin space.

While I really like the aesthetics of the new protoshares.com site, it assumes a certain base level understanding of the bitcoin protocol, its basic function and its many iterations.   To really draw in the average person, the DAC concept needs to be dumbed down so that my parents and grandparents can really begin to understand what DACs are and the many advantages they offer. 

I still have trouble explaining the DAC concept to people unfamiliar with bitcoin so this might be one of the most challenging things to produce.

Offline onceuponatime

Makes me want even more to keep on buying protoshares!

Offline domsch

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Domsch,

You have some great ideas, many of which are already in development, some of which are original and worth considering. Feel free to PM me directly your contact information and I'd be happy to discuss some of these with you.

-B

Sounds good, sending you a PM now.

Offline rysgc

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Guerrilla Marketing , I like that idea, oldskool but it get's peoples attention. I can put them on here in the Caribbean islands
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Offline MktDirector

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Domsch,

You have some great ideas, many of which are already in development, some of which are original and worth considering. Feel free to PM me directly your contact information and I'd be happy to discuss some of these with you.

-B

Offline bytemaster

Great post, I will direct Brian your way.
For the latest updates checkout my blog: http://bytemaster.bitshares.org
Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract between myself and anyone else.   These are merely my opinions and I reserve the right to change them at any time.

Offline domsch

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Great first introduction by Brian. It is a relieving to see someone take on the marketing aspects of the project. But as others said: actions speak louder than simple words. That's why I would like to get in touch with Brian and discuss the entire marketing plan in detail. I'm sure that we will have a great chat on the potential of Bitshares/Keyhotee/I3 and share our expansion plans, ideas and just have a random chat to get to know each other.

I may not be the most active on this forum, as I was just a lurker until recently becoming active, but I definitely think that I can and want to contribute to the success of the project.

I3 and Bitshares can be treated as a technologically advanced start-up that is trying to disrupt and resegment an existing market. The I3 team is done a great job on the product-side but as I had mentioned in my thread, Customer Development is currently being neglected. This is where I want to work with you side-by-side with the I3 team and my people. I will create a short "To-Do" list to present my solution.

But before getting to the fun part, I will give you a brief description of who I am: My name is Dominik S. and I'm an Italian entrepreneur. I fluently speak English, German and Italian. I am an addict of philosophy, reading, start-ups and technology that share my ideology of creating freedom and to completely erase the current threat in our society: Our very own monetary system. 
I am well connected in the start-up scene around the world, but I would focus my connections as of now to London, Berlin, Singapore, Hong Kong and India (because of a partner). The industries I worked in are: Affiliate Marketing (learned A TON from there, especially about creating websites that convert), Advertising and Media (different advertising forms and where to buy cheap traffic), Entertainment  (how do you create addictive games?) and well, the Adult Industry. I first got to know about Bitcoins in 2010 when a seller requested to be paid in Bitcoins. Since then I kept myself up to date with the entire crypto currency world. And lately I came to a stop at Protoshares/Bitshares. A friend introduced me to the system and I instantly knew that this project had tremendous potential. That's why I want to dedicate my time to work on establishing this project.

Either way, lets get started. As I said earlier, I want to work side-by-side with Brian on Customer Development and eventually, work locally together and build an entire team that works with us on solving centralized problems with decentralized solutions.

Customer Development is a simultaneous process with Product Development. That means that the teams focused on pushing the product out the door (sales and marketing) need to get started with a proper plan already before the release of the actual product. And obviously statements like "build the product, users will come don't worry" are blatant lies and never work. Most of the time, Customer Development is the first step every start-up takes (even before creating a product). The reasons are obvious: You need to get a confirmation that there is demand for your product and that you are really solving a problem that not only you, but millions of people have. After this confirmation, you tailor a minimum viable product that solves the exact problems your users have. During the entire product development process the customer dev. team works on a plan on how to make a perfect product launch, how to go from 1 user to 100k and how/where the product will be advertised.

To my understanding, we are still in a very early stage of Visionaries.  The community around I3 is constantly growing but it still mainly consists of Visionaries and Tech-Enthusiasts that are interested in the technological composition and factual use of the disruptive projects. In addition to that, most of the potential adopters are currently waiting for I3 to hold on their promises and release a functional new product (i.e. Keyhotee). If I3 succeeds with that, they(or rather we) need to work on the next step: Widespread adoption of non-techies.

Widespread adoption of non-techies is what the entire ideology behind I3 is: Solving centralized problems with decentralized solutions. As we all know, the problems and needs of techies are distinctively different from the problems of our average citizen. That is why a great effort of the entire operation needs to be put into these 3 steps (pictures taken from the book "The four steps to the Epiphany" - great book, really).:
  • Customer Discovery
  • Customer Validation
  • Customer Creation



Due to to keeping this thread shorter and since I3 already has done an adequate job on customer discovery/validation with Protoshares, I will only focus in-depth on explaining Customer Creation.



Customer Creation



The only question the entire team should ask themselves is: How do I solve problems that are non-existent in the mindset of my potential users? That means that before even thinking of gaining widespread adoption, we first need to create problems to solve. We need to make it clear where the flaws inside our monetary system lie, why they need to be solved and most importantly, why our solution is the best for them. This protracted process of creating the problem and offering the solution should take more than 6 - 8 months and requires patience from all parties involved in the project. But once we get started, the snowball of the revolution can not be stopped.

What we can do

  • More appealing product websites: I personally know the creators of https://www.giftcoins.me/ , http://buygiftcoins.com/#home , https://www.maxxo.com/ . I know how to create easy to understand websites, where the main purpose of the website will be seen at a first glimpse. With the right product development team and a clear vision by the customer development team, I'm sure that we can create the best looking website in the crypto-currency space.
  • How-To Websites/Games: Think of this as an interactive websites that explains our intentions and requires actions to be taken from the viewer. What I want to create is something similar to http://www.google.com/green/storyofsend and http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/thestory/ .
  • Giveaways and competitions:Giveaways don't necessarily just create costs: They ask for involvement and users get interested in the project/the ideology. Giveaways do also create some form of reciprocation: "I got something for free, I will try m best to pay back the favor." Competitions instead require commitment and consistency. The more work is required to get something, the more committed I get for the project and once I get started my decisions and actions will be consistent. “It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.” – Leonardo Da Vinci
  • Games:This should not be understood as an actual game where a Bitshares gunman is shooting down Dogecoin and Quarkcoin. But rather something similar to SatoshiGames that increases the adoption and usage of the coin. Sadly, I could not come up with something while writing this down - but I will think of this thoroughly within the next few days.
  • Guerrilla Marketing!!!: Lets say f*ck it and make posters of hidden entrances on buildings that say "Enter the future at bitshares.com". Obviously this needs to be planned beforehand and requires the allowance of the state, and obviously we need a better PR stunt than my half-assed idea.
  • Videos that actually explain what we do: Simple. Do you want a video that explains our activity in a funny, yet easy to understand way such as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI . Or do you want something dull like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LPU3RNDuNI
  • Public speeches and meet-ups: In May I will be staying at Hong Kong for a month. Currently I'm still negotiating with the Hong Kong government to fund one of my projects (think of it as an open accelerator that gives everyone the chance to learn about start-ups). That means I can arrange a talk (or even a seminar) in Hong Kong and invite the press/entrepreneurs/important people and openly present the ideology behind Bitshares and explain what problems the system solves. I had already mentioned something like this to one of the exec's from http://www.investhk.gov.hk/ and I can definitely push this harder. But obviously we would not stop here, and we can even arrange meet-ups where we can discuss/share ideas. And as someone stated, Ted talks are quite possible and will give us exactly what we need.
  • Cold-calls/emails with companies: As I had mentioned, I am well connected in some of the major metropolis in the world. That means we can ask hundreds of companies if they are interested in a system like Bitshares and if not, we will get the reasons behind their decision and understand what is wrong and is halting our growth. 
  • PR campaigns: The value of a crypto-currency is highly dependent on its marketing. As a confirmation: look at Dogecoin. The difference between Dogecoin and Bitshares is that one is a complete joke and the other is a problem solver. Imagine what could happen if the same hype created from Dogecoin, will be done with a crypto-currency that gives its holders an actual value? Forbes India, Yourstory.com, BusinessInsider, Allthingsd, Techcrunch etc. are potential news-outlets that can and will make posts about Bitshares. In addition to that, I can get us an interview on one of the major TV Shows in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Netherlands called "Galileo".
  • Social Media: I know that most of the users here hate Facebook (so do I), but in today's time and age you can simply not look away from the advantages of participating in social media. The potential of reaching millions of people and garnering interest for our project require involvement.
  • Trading Platform and Wallet: This is rather a personal project that I am interested in creating. But what I want to do is create a wallet similar to KryptoKit that offers its users maximum security (not discussing how, for obvious reasons) and includes modern technology like NFC. And a professional trading platform for day to day trading for BitShares is also something I have been interested in for a long time. This is a monstrous project that requires the proper licences and investments. I will see what I can do, maybe we can create something together with I3. But obviously I will call for involvement from the community. More about this in the near future.




Conclusion

Sorry for not getting into too much detail but I rather just wanted to focus on a few aspects to not reveal too much - and my ability to write is currently limited since I am not on my PC. Either way, the reason why I created an open thread, instead of messaging this to Brian, is because I first want to get the opinion and acceptance of the community before talking privately with Brian and Dan. Therefore: Please post what you think below and let me know if you have any questions.

TL;DR: I will influence my ideas and experience in gaining widespread adoption in the BitShares project and will work with Brian on creating a Customer Development team that leads to the success of this and other projects.

To Brian and Dan: If you want to hear more, please contact me via PM and we can share contact details.
« Last Edit: December 27, 2013, 09:01:03 pm by domsch »