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Core Team Marketing / Conferences / Travel (December)

glennaustin

Active member
Dash Core Group December 1st Funding Proposals
DCG is submitting 2 funding proposals for the December 1st budget cycle:
1) DCG Compensation: $477,000 (https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/core-team-compensation-december.41795/)
2) DCG Marketing: $92,500

This Proposal
This is cross-posted at https://www.dashcentral.org/p/coreteammarketing1218

What does this proposal fund?
This proposal funds expenses related to conferences, internal meetings that require face-to-face interaction, and external events for the next 3-4 months for Dash Core Group team members. Included in this proposal are minor expenses frequently associated with T&E related to conferences including merchandise, tools, meetings rooms, business cards, etc.

Background
Dash Core Group engages in a number of activities that generate travel expenses including conference appearances, DCG internal events and meetings with potential and current partners, regulators, media, etc.

Conferences
DCG staff attend a number of conferences during the year. Conferences provide sources of new business development and marketing opportunities, allow DCG team members to represent the Dash network through speaking opportunities, provide media interview opportunities, and enable us to stay current with trends in the industry. In the past we took a two-pronged approach to conferences by speaking at select conferences, and attending more critical conferences via sponsorships. We’ve found this to be an effective means of gaining the most exposure in blockchain and payments related events at a reasonable cost.

Free Conferences
We continue to receive a large number of invitations to speak at conferences without sponsorship requirements, which enables us to restrict our attendance to events that may aid in executing our strategy, and incur only travel expenses for most events. We don’t attend all the free conferences we are invited to since many conferences don’t directly benefit the Dash network and we want to control costs associated with travel. Examples of recent free opportunities are:
  • CannacordGenuity Blockchain Symposium
  • The Blockchain Futurist Conference in Toronto
  • The Texas Bitcoin Conference
  • The Crypto Summit in Zurich
  • The upcoming Shift Money in Zagreb
  • The upcoming WebSummit in Lisbon
Sponsored Conferences:
A few months ago, due to the bear market in the price of Dash, we suspended sponsoring conferences and have focused exclusively on conferences that are free to attend. In parallel we have attended previously committed and paid for conference sponsorships (in Q3-Q4, only Money 2020 USA).

Internal events
Dash Core Group has a distributed workforce that is spread throughout the world. This gives DCG certain unique advantages:
  1. Allows us to hire talent from a global pool of available talent
  2. Enables us to reduce costs by hiring contractors who are located in cheaper markets than the ones we would otherwise hire based on our areas of operation.
  3. Avoids the cost of office space and infrastructure (e.g., phones, internet) for the majority of our workforce
  4. Promotes DCG ability to attract a diverse contractor base globally
However, one of the disadvantages of being distributed is the limited opportunity for face-to-face time for staff. In order to advance the projects we have in flight, there is a need for periodic face-to-face interaction, especially for our software developers. As an example, DCG recently held a developers workshop in Portugal to ensure developers are in sync on the priorities for the next several months of planned development. This was a highly structured workshop with presentations from each of the team leads, and specific goals and objectives to advance the next several releases.

Other T&E
Another expense stemming from DCG’s distributed model is travel required for day-to-day operations to meet with partners, regulators, media, vendors, etc.

How do we know you are spending our funds wisely?
Our travel policy and arrangements are austere and all team members try to save money for the company whenever possible. These savings include frequently staying at a co-worker’s or friend’s home while travelling, booking non-hotel (e.g., AirBnB-type) accommodations when there is cost benefit, refraining from booking expensive flights if alternatives are available, and postponing or canceling travel plans if the need is not urgent or the benefit isn’t immediate. We also utilize a booking engine which ensures enforcement of company travel policies. Due to this mindful attitude towards the funds the Dash Network entrusts DCG with, our travel costs are ~$20,000/month and we plan to reduce this further over the coming months. However, at times, this cost may increase if there are internal meetings/alignments that need to take place to advance a project. For example, we anticipate holding another developers workshop this December which would entail increased travel costs for that particular month.

If we don’t spend the entire balance of the received funds by the end of Q1 2019 we plan on contributing the funds towards the Dash Conference which we are tentatively planning in late Q1 2019.

If you have any questions, please direct them to @fernando in this Dash Forum post to ensure we are notified of your request.

Requested funding is as follows for the December 1st budget cycle:
· 600 Dash for Travel and Conferences ($92,500 USD @ $154.00 per Dash)
· 5.00 Dash proposal reimbursement
Total: 605 Dash

Note: Should any funding remain, we will apply it toward future marketing/conferences/travel expenses.

Manually vote YES on this proposal:
dash-cli gobject vote-many b3d481bce88cee5e5fb31da73f79b7af6556f5a089236310b058be51e4b5bc1a funding yes

OR from the qt console:

gobject vote-many b3d481bce88cee5e5fb31da73f79b7af6556f5a089236310b058be51e4b5bc1a funding yes

Manually vote NO on this proposal:
dash-cli gobject vote-many b3d481bce88cee5e5fb31da73f79b7af6556f5a089236310b058be51e4b5bc1a funding no

OR from the qt console:

gobject vote-many b3d481bce88cee5e5fb31da73f79b7af6556f5a089236310b058be51e4b5bc1a funding no
 
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