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Pre-Proposal Discussion: Amanda Johnson Full Time Dash Ambassador

TaoOfSatoshi

Well-known member
Hello Everyone!

So through my conversations with Amanda from The Daily Decrypt on Twitter, she would like to become our full time ambassador. I feel that this is a great opportunity. She has made a proposal, we need to sort out the details before we make a formal proposal.

Here are Amanda's thoughts:

"Hi, everyone. Yes, I have been reached out to by both Tungfa and Dash Dalmatian about this -- and yes, I do live in Manchester, New Hampshire (the location of Liberty Forum, and the hotbed of Free Staters). I will post here what I sent to Dash Dalmatian via Twitter message:

"Nice to hear from you, thank you for sending this information. I am, of course, *always* interested in earning more Dash, and bringing cryptocurrency to anyone who wants and needs it.

What I must consider about your proposal, however, is that it wouldn't be an episode sponsorship from Dash. Because the only product The Daily Decrypt offers is sponsorship of our episodes -- which allows us to be transparent about our funding sources -- I fear that getting paid to promote Dash in a way that's not episode sponsorship would appear as a conflict of interest to our followers.

I agree with you that Dash is more suited to business than Bitcoin -- the need for instant confirmations was confirmed to me only yesterday when I bought a drink with Bitcoin here in New Hampshire, and the bartender was confused why the payment didn't 'confirm' immediately.


If the Dash community is ever interested in hiring me full-time, however -- meaning I would change my efforts from The Daily Decrypt to Dash promotion only -- I would consider it.

To give you an idea of my affordability, I'd be willing to full-time for Dash as an ambassador (with videos, in-person appearances, blog posts, etc.) for 298 Dash per month. A 12-month payout agreement with the arrangement and pay rate up for another vote upon expiry, obviously. Thanks."


If something like this -- like The Daily Dash, for example -- is of interest, perhaps the funds (298 Dash/month) could be re-allocated from the current 2165 Dash/month which are already created as a part of Evan's "Public Awareness" proposal? Just a thought.

Cheers."

We should definitely consider this proposal. As I've stated before, I'm one of her biggest fans.

I'm a fan for the following reasons:

1. She is a great communicator, and has a certain charisma.

2. She is hard-working.

3. She is down to earth, approachable, while being intelligent at the same time.

4. At the risk of sounding sexist, she is female, and this is a demographic that we and crypto as a whole has to reach out to.

We need a full-time ambassador, and at this point I believe that she would be perfect for the job.

When this proposal is made, she can count on my votes. It's awesome that she is offering to do this. She works with different cryptocurrencies daily, and the fact that she wouldn't mind stepping to the plate and getting behind Dash speaks volumes.

With the community's help, I'm sure she would excel at this job.

:grin:

What are your thoughts, Dash community?
 
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Hi. I am both happy and surprised to see that my comments have been posted as their own thread.

As I expressed the interest, this is likely the perfect place to make a pitch:

1 - As things currently stand (all competition considered), Dash in my opinion is the most well-positioned currency not only to deliver everything Bitcoin currently delivers, but to outperform Bitcoin. Basically to be what so many people thought Bitcoin was going to be -- but more.

2 - With Evolution's username feature, a cryptocurrency will finally be marketable to those who simply *don't like* the look of long numeric payment addresses -- and that's a lot of people (like Evan's mom, *and* mine!)

3 - The importance of instant confirmations cannot be underestimated -- real-world face to face commerce absolutely requires it

4 - The eventual possibility of Dash masternodes acting as "decentralized oracles" means that Dash can even compete in the smart contract market -- not just the currency market!

5 - Dash's incentivized masternode infrastructure -- along with its internal funding mechanism -- make it more likely that the currency can remain nimble even as its userbase grows -- which will be required to remain competitive as other crypotocurrencies begin to adopt the excellent ideas of Dash (as well as come up with new and good ideas of their own)

For these five reasons, I often find myself talking about Dash with friends and family -- and even monitoring myself on The Daily Decrypt to make sure I don't mention Dash a disproportionate number of times! A significant portion of my own assets are also in Dash.

All this said, the details of the proposal are what matters -- the exact product you could expect from me and its exact frequency. So if there appears to be solid interest on this from masternodes, I will draw up a detailed proposal for taking on the role of Dash's first full-time Ambassador.

Thank you for your time.
 
An interesting idea.

I think after the Terpin budget proposal the biggest issue is a >1 month contract using a monthly budget system. I know Evan is working on integrating that in the budget system, but until then, I don't think it is fair to either the Foundation (or whoever signs the agreement) or Amanda (who might get stiffed down the road).

I also think the devil is in the details; while I'm open to the idea myself, I would want to see more details, such as the exact work she would do, measurables for success, and stipulations for ending the contract early.

One specific concern I would have with Amanda in particular would be her ability to reach outside the crypto world. With Evolution there seems to be a push to reach outside that world, and I don't know if Amanda has any experience with that. Or perhaps we would just decide that reaching the crypto world is exactly what we want her to do.

Looking forward to hearing more on this...
 
just a headsup goes, we just killed a long term agreement for PR for dash, the reason was half terpderp is a scammer and half we dont need to worry about PR just yet

we need to support our product, befpore we market and worry about our "image problem" which by the way, image problem is a non issue because only the crypto nerds care about this, not the people who want or need dash.(edited)

so rushing into a 12 month agreement with amanda might backfire for both parties unless we have a project manager for her if she is just making her own content all the time its going to go sour quickly if you are agreeing to a set amount of dash and using up more % of the budget per month

the math needs to be tied toa monthly-2 months time period max and needs to be also tied to the current USD velue of the services, but can be still paid in dash obviously, just dont tie up the rest of the funds we have available trying to be the nice guys of the crypto group. We need her to have a quality standard set by the community and provide easy guidelines for her to achieve these marks in order to appease both the masternodes and the community without creating more useless drama and arguments.(edited)


we still need room for more small projects in the budget to keep it attractive, a 12 mo agreement would not assist us imo

im all for her being the ambassdor, just make sure the agreement is mutually beneficial and doesnt shaft the rest of the communnity who was interested in helping out with stuff.


so yea. I copied this from slack, won't be responding to any posts.

edit:

When you build a start up you build your product first, (dev team) then you build your support team (customer service and information stuff) THEN you do marketing, and if you screw up along the way you then hire a PR firm for a short term project to create awareness of the "fix" for the slip up you had. How so few understand this is beyond me lol. Not to be rude to anyone or anything.
 
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Oooh, I'm excited about this! You're exactly what we need.

ericsammons , I wouldn't have a problem with a long term contract if it's weighted right. That is, to me, Amanda's proposal sounds very realistic. 298 or so Dash per month is cheap to have her exclusively promoting and talking about Dash. After a year, if those Dash give her $10,000 per month income, it'll be highly due to her efforts. And she is charging a very small price that may not increase for years. Since to me, she can grow to be a huge asset, I think it would be excellent to take her up on this. We can also make a contract for 6 months or 3 months, but since she won't have the possibility of a big payday, you can't expect her to accept 298 Dash for 6 months, you'd have to pay her more, perhaps 500 Dash?? Etc... In the case of the PR firm, they have a regular price of $6000/mo and so the contract was made for the Dash equivalent of $6000, and for a short time period, I can see that being ok. But if it were a year long contract, I'd question that, because we're obviously paying for growth, and expect growth from them, thus the price would essentially rise. This isn't all bad. Many CEOs etc... get partly paid in stock, so that if they do a good job, their stock will rise in value, and thus you'd hope they put all their efforts into the job.

RE: what she would be allowed to talk about, personally, I'd like for her to be able to talk about other things, and how they might integrate with Dash or how Dash might fill a roll in other projects. I sometimes wonder about AA (He who must not be spelled) and if he has his hands tied. His seemingly inability to talk about anything but Bitcoin makes him seem like he has a leash around his neck or something. I don't want Amanda to sound like she has a leash, personally. (OK boys, take that picture out of your heads, I know it's there!)

I suspect, if given the freedom to judge for herself, that she would do well, but there would be slip-ups that will cause community members to get up in arms as has happened before. The question is, will the more relaxed and open communication that allowing her to judge for herself project a more open and confidant project? I suspect so. But if that's the route we go, we must agree to take any objections to things that are said in the future into constructive criticism and open discussion, here, on the forums. As long as Amanda agrees to keep Dash in a good light, and bring her criticisms of the project to the community, here, as a community member, not out in "public" (though the forums are public) that would be good enough for me.

I think we could make quite a statement with a public spokes person, who isn't constrained as if we bought her soul, but can truly be an ambassador of Dash to the world. I think letting her bet on Dash doing well is a great incentive (her proposal of 29? Dash/month) and a long term contract can benefit us both ways.

So, that's how I feel about those two points. Speak about Dash in good faith, and commit to a long term contract so as to incentivize her good and enthusiastic work, because I think it will make her look more like a Dash Enthusiast and less like a person who sold her soul to Dash. Also, like I said above, I think it will look better on Dash to have a spokes person who can be open and talk about other projects and how Dash compares. I don't think we have anything to worry about :)

Finally, how much should she be making in dollar equivalent before she has to pay for her own trips? I have no idea, but personally I would say if Dash increased in value to over $10,000/mo (a decent salary in the USA) and if our budget is stressed, we might ask her to help out.

So anyway, these are my opinions, I'm looking forward to other opinions and in seeing if the community likes this idea or not. So please post, let us know your ideas!

Especially let us know if you would like to see this happen. It's kind of been my hope, that we could get someone like Amanda to work for us, and wow, she's open to it, so I'm hoping you all feel positive about this as well!
 
Switching over from a general crypto channel to a DASH channel would be a pretty significant shift. It's great that Amanda would be willing to do this. Is there even enough DASH content/news to justify a dedicated channel that puts out a new video every day?
I don't like the idea of a 12-month agreement though especially if it is not linked to USD. And the fact that it is impossible to guarantee a 12-month agreement when the nature of the budget system means the masternodes would be able to fire her at any time. If I were Amanda I would be cautious about changing the entire direction of the channel when the masternodes can just back out after 2 months, or over-budget causing some budget items to go unfunded.
All that said, I think if we are careful about how we do this and plan well, it might be able to work. Let's just not rush it and make sure to hash it out...
 
Speak about Dash in good faith, and commit to a long term contract so as to incentivize her good and enthusiastic work, because I think it will make her look more like a Dash Enthusiast and less like a person who sold her soul to Dash.

I think this is an important point. Amanda should not appear like a Dash fanatic. By the way I'd miss the Daily Decrypt if it had to stop. (Would another host be possible?)

Anyway, this is a great possible proposal, and an even greater pre-proposal discussion.
 
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"Independent Amanda" has much more possibilities to help Dash than "100% paid Amanda"... It's similar to "hidden PR is always more powerful than obvious paid PR". Please think about it...

But it doesn't mean we shouldn't find all possible ways of cooperation with her (step-by-step)...

It'll be interesting to know Amanda's vision about the best ways to promote Dash, her "promotion plan" and so on... - before contracting (short-terms first, then [maybe] long-terms...) - there is no need to hurry...
 
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Do we have a break down of what the current public-awareness proposal (2156 DASH per month) is spent on and could Amanda be paid through this budget instead of creating a new proposal?

I think Amanda would be a great ambassador for DASH. Bitcoin has Andreas, who connects well with the geeks in the Crypto Community. I think Amanda would connect with the global audience we are looking to attract. I don't think we should pass up on this golden opportunity.

If this goes to a proposal it would have my vote.
 
I'm interested to see how this pans out, i agree that this should either wait till we have longterm contracts code-ready or
after it is debated and confirmed this can be paid from the public awereness budget.
 
TanteStefana - thank you for your response! A few (more) of my thoughts:

I want to make clear that I'm supportive of multi-month contracts in general; in fact, I would argue that they are necessary for any corporation - decentralized or not. I just want to make sure our budget proposal system can handle them properly before we enter into any more. We can't have a repeat of the Terpin contract, where two parties made a good faith agreement and then it wasn't honored. Likewise, we can't have a situation where Dash is locked into an agreement that is not being honored by the other party. I think we need to have a way to lock into a multi-month agreement, yet also have a way to get out of the contract in extenuating (and clearly defined) circumstances. For example, perhaps there needs to be a larger than 10% vote to approve a multi-month contract, but then also a way to end it early if necessary - perhaps with an even larger vote percentage. So it might be 20% approval for starting a multi-month contract, and then a 40% approval to end it early. (This mechanism would need to be written into any agreement, of course).

I also personally think we should encourage all agreements to be denominated by Dash, if possible. One of the big challenges with cryptocurrencies is that everything is pegged to fiat, so it is hard to incorporate them into every-day use. If the Dash project can't peg to Dash, then who will? And I don't have any problems with a multi-month contract greatly benefitting a contractor with the rise of Dash, as a rising tide lifts all ships. So if Dash were $100 apiece, and Amanda was making the equivalent of $29,800/month, good for her! She took the risk, she should get the reward! (And also, if it crashes to $1 apiece, then she has to bear that as well). If Dash rises that much, we'll have plenty in the budget to use for new ventures.
 
+1 or Like or Whatever !

Please hire Amanda !

There are a lot of events that no one represents us there.
I would love to see Amanda representing us , she is cute and lovable and she surly will attract people to come and join

I think she can open the door to non geek people to access directly to dash (especially when evolution will evolve )
and she can keep working in Daily Decrypt as her side job with dash as her permanent sponsor

i vote yes !

(Sorry for my bad English)

Actually, thinking about this, if she kept the Daily Decrypt up, and let us sponsor her, and if she did some speaking engagements for us, I don't think it has to be such a conflict of interest for her Daily Decrypt show. And, I think it would show our confidence that we can talk about any other project out there, and compare/contrast against them, knowing we're better, or if something great comes along, we can also add it to our Dash project if it fits us.

Lets not become "Dash Maximalists" We don't need to, we're unique and great, and any competition is simply a challenge to our team. A challenge to be evaluated and included in our project if warranted.

Anyway, I hope we can work this out, I'm such a big fan of Amanda's!
 
TanteStefana - thank you for your response! A few (more) of my thoughts:

I want to make clear that I'm supportive of multi-month contracts in general; in fact, I would argue that they are necessary for any corporation - decentralized or not. I just want to make sure our budget proposal system can handle them properly before we enter into any more. We can't have a repeat of the Terpin contract, where two parties made a good faith agreement and then it wasn't honored. Likewise, we can't have a situation where Dash is locked into an agreement that is not being honored by the other party. I think we need to have a way to lock into a multi-month agreement, yet also have a way to get out of the contract in extenuating (and clearly defined) circumstances. For example, perhaps there needs to be a larger than 10% vote to approve a multi-month contract, but then also a way to end it early if necessary - perhaps with an even larger vote percentage. So it might be 20% approval for starting a multi-month contract, and then a 40% approval to end it early. (This mechanism would need to be written into any agreement, of course).

I also personally think we should encourage all agreements to be denominated by Dash, if possible. One of the big challenges with cryptocurrencies is that everything is pegged to fiat, so it is hard to incorporate them into every-day use. If the Dash project can't peg to Dash, then who will? And I don't have any problems with a multi-month contract greatly benefitting a contractor with the rise of Dash, as a rising tide lifts all ships. So if Dash were $100 apiece, and Amanda was making the equivalent of $29,800/month, good for her! She took the risk, she should get the reward! (And also, if it crashes to $1 apiece, then she has to bear that as well). If Dash rises that much, we'll have plenty in the budget to use for new ventures.

Well, I agree 100%
I mean, obviously she's giving us a really low price to work for us, because she thinks the value will go up substantially, eventually making it worth her while to dedicate 100% of her time on Dash. And of course, that would also be the carrot on the stick to keep her motivated to do her best (which I think she'd do anyway, but still, gotta think of it that way)

But I wouldn't want to exclude "denominated in fiat" budgets. They are stable and are likely to be more advantageous for general services such as if we end up buying fancy, expensive backup servers somewhere. Even if they accepted dash, we shouldn't pay more than what the fiat price is as it doesn't really help to "motivate" the rental of a server :)

We need to work out all the wrinkles we're finding in the system and include as many types of contracts as we can :) If these "equal to fiat equivalent" contracts could be executed via a type of smart contract, all the better!

But yes, if we can pay all our contracts out in Dash instead of changing it out to fiat, that would be really awesome!
 
TanteStefana - thank you for your response! A few (more) of my thoughts:

I want to make clear that I'm supportive of multi-month contracts in general; in fact, I would argue that they are necessary for any corporation - decentralized or not. I just want to make sure our budget proposal system can handle them properly before we enter into any more. We can't have a repeat of the Terpin contract, where two parties made a good faith agreement and then it wasn't honored. Likewise, we can't have a situation where Dash is locked into an agreement that is not being honored by the other party. I think we need to have a way to lock into a multi-month agreement, yet also have a way to get out of the contract in extenuating (and clearly defined) circumstances. For example, perhaps there needs to be a larger than 10% vote to approve a multi-month contract, but then also a way to end it early if necessary - perhaps with an even larger vote percentage. So it might be 20% approval for starting a multi-month contract, and then a 40% approval to end it early. (This mechanism would need to be written into any agreement, of course).

I also personally think we should encourage all agreements to be denominated by Dash, if possible. One of the big challenges with cryptocurrencies is that everything is pegged to fiat, so it is hard to incorporate them into every-day use. If the Dash project can't peg to Dash, then who will? And I don't have any problems with a multi-month contract greatly benefitting a contractor with the rise of Dash, as a rising tide lifts all ships. So if Dash were $100 apiece, and Amanda was making the equivalent of $29,800/month, good for her! She took the risk, she should get the reward! (And also, if it crashes to $1 apiece, then she has to bear that as well). If Dash rises that much, we'll have plenty in the budget to use for new ventures.

Great point on Dash needing the ability to get out of a contract if the other party isn't performing. Your idea of a very high threshold for this is quite interesting!

A couple of other ideas;

1) Could the system be built in such a way that the person who issues the proposal (and only that person) can "unlock" the contract and then ask the MNs to disapprove it? Maybe some sort of a message signed by the proposer's wallet from which the 5 Dash originated?

2) Could some sort of "donate to budget system" feature be built in? Suppose we have a case like Transform PR, where a Core Team member actually receives the funds and then channels them to the actual vendor. In that case, the person who is serving as the intermediary (and who presumably signed the contract) could take the necessary "real world" actions to get out of the contract, and simply donate back any money that the network pays out as part of the contract.

I'm not sure this would work, and I don't know if it would be possible to code. Just a couple of possibilities in addition to the excellent one you presented.
 
I am curious what the legal implications of long term contracts are. If DASH violates a contract or if the contractor violates a contract, how is that enforceable? You can't sue the entire network, and the network can't sue a contractor. You could do it through a middleman like Evan was with Transform-PR, but then the middleman assumes a lot of risk.
 
Final thought is, if Amanda could be considered more a "core team" member being paid out of the promotional budget, it would be nice to have her clearly positioned as a supporter not just a hired mouth piece :)

I am curious what the legal implications of long term contracts are. If DASH violates a contract or if the contractor violates a contract, how is that enforceable? You can't sue the entire network, and the network can't sue a contractor. You could do it through a middleman like Evan was with Transform-PR, but then the middleman assumes a lot of risk.

As far as contracts go, this is truly new territory. Are we on our own, like the wild west (that'd actually be nice, because we'd know where we stand) or will governments and municipalities get involved (real can of worms) It would be nice if we can prove we can settle disputes within our "world community" and not have to touch established judicial systems. The more we rely on established judicial systems, the more they will demand control over the system (or taxing, or reporting, etc...) I like keeping taxes simple. Anytime I cash out to fiat, it's taxable as income of some sort, fine. But in the crypto world, we should keep governments out of it. That's one of the reasons for the reputation system. So that we have a verifiable reputation system as far as crypto community goes, and it doesn't matter where in the world you live. But otherwise, you kind of have to take risks and understand that. It's amazing how few broken contracts there are in the dark-web sites. Their biggest problem by far is when they're targeted by law enforcement.

Not condoning illegal stuff (I don't actually care) but you'd think these people would be dishonest, but by far, they're not. It's very interesting :)
 
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