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Proposal: Dash Offices at ASU's SkySong Innovation Center

Ryan Taylor

Well-known member
Foundation Member
This is a cross-post from www.dashcentral.org/p/offic-skysong-201701

We are extremely excited to announce our intention to locate Dash into class A office space. The proposed space is much more than an office location - it is at SkySong, the Arizona State University Innovation Center. This proposal will fund a month-to-month lease at SkySong beginning February 1st.

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SkySong is a 1.2 million square foot mixed-use live/work/play facility associated with Arizona State University and located in Scottsdale, Arizona. It is operated as a non-profit incubator for innovation and technology, ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Its non-profit status enables SkySong to charge tenants well below market rates. The facility is in high demand, and all SkySong buildings are near full occupancy, so being accepted to receive space in the facility is recognition in itself of how far our project has come. In fact, we have secured the very last available “premium office” in the facility (more detail below).

We believe there are several advantages to obtaining office space at this time. First, as development ramps up on Evolution, we anticipate productivity gains from having some members of the development team on-site to work directly with Evan. Second, we feel that a professional environment in which to receive visitors, host events, and run our infrastructure will add credibility and legitimacy to our project with prospective business partners.

We also believe that SkySong, in particular, is an ideal location for us, because it provides a number of other advantages that are difficult to replicate with other locations. First, SkySong provides the flexibility of month-to-month leases. Second, SkySong is committed to work with Dash to connect us with other occupants of the facility with whom we might collaborate such as Ticketmaster, PayPal, and Groupon. Third, SkySong can be instrumental in providing tenants access to the resources available through Arizona State University and other economic development programs that can meaningfully assist the project. I cannot overstate the potential importance of the relationship between SkySong and ASU, and we intend to fully explore the potential to collaborate with the university.

Arizona State University is one of America’s premier research-focused universities. In fact, it is the top producer of Fulbright scholars among research universities and is ranked #1 by U.S. News and World Report among the Most Innovative Schools in America in both 2015 and 2016 – beating out #2 Stanford and #3 MIT. It truly is an environment ripe to support an innovative project like Dash.

Potential areas for collaboration with ASU could include:
  • Identifying highly qualified interns and graduates for employment in the areas of computer science, applied mathematics, cryptography, economics, and business
  • Collaborating on research into various aspects of the network such as economics, fee pricing, X11 entropy, governance effectiveness, legal questions, security, block reward allocation optimization, and decentralized technology optimization (e.g., APIs and data storage)
  • Introducing blockchain, cryptocurrency, and Dash into the ASU curriculum

The facility and its amenities are impressive. Our lease will provide the following:
  1. A “premium office” in a LEED Silver Certification (class A) building which can accommodate up to three workstations or two workstations and a visitor meeting table
  2. Locking glass door, and locking filing cabinets
  3. Two dedicated phone lines and voicemail system
  4. Gigabit Ethernet connectivity
  5. Mail services
  6. Complementary conference room access
  7. 24/7 access to the building
  8. Complementary copier and printer (up to a monthly limit)
  9. On-site dataroom and hosting of critical servers
  10. Kitchen facilities including coffee machines
  11. Shared reception area with sign-in and waiting area
  12. Free shuttle service between ASU’s main campus (2 miles away) and SkySong
  13. Free access to a 385 capacity conference facility on site – great for hosting the first Dash conference in the future
Initially, Evan and I will begin operating from the new office. SkySong also enables inexpensive expansion to accommodate on-site interns and full-time developers. Individual dedicated workstations and non-dedicated hoteling space is readily available starting at $150 per month per employee. These spaces are located directly adjacent to the office space.

You can read more about the facility on the SkySong website. www.skysong.com

Costs:

The “premium” office costs $2,000 per month, and is all-inclusive, including phone, utilities, (uncovered) parking, furniture, and conference space. The only other expense is that the lease requires us to hold general liability insurance. We are working on obtaining pricing through the Dash Foundation, but the required insurance amount should be less than $50 per month.

Requested funding is as follows for the January 4th budget cycle:
Total: 209.43 Dash

Note: Should any funding remain, we will apply it toward future rent payments.

Manually vote YES on this proposal:
dash-cli mnbudget vote-many 9da6b655cd0a7cdb7c8b848092e37afc16a8d0918ce081f3cf9f938f57e5761e yes
OR from the qt console:
mnbudget vote-many 9da6b655cd0a7cdb7c8b848092e37afc16a8d0918ce081f3cf9f938f57e5761e yes

Manually vote NO on this proposal:
dash-cli mnbudget vote-many 9da6b655cd0a7cdb7c8b848092e37afc16a8d0918ce081f3cf9f938f57e5761e no
OR from the qt console:
mnbudget vote-many 9da6b655cd0a7cdb7c8b848092e37afc16a8d0918ce081f3cf9f938f57e5761e no
 
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Very cool and not too much for everything you get. You got my votes!

"Free access to a 385 capacity conference facility on site – great for hosting the first Dash conference in the future"
Nice
 
Yep, I reread two times to be sure what I saw :rolleyes:
This sounds very cool and an excellent opportunity to stay between the smartest brains in area.
Definitely worth its money IMO.
Votes on it from my side as well.
 
Awesome price for value. If we could colocate at least a few people of the people working on dash it would bring huge benefits. I'm all for it. Just please make sure to make it public who are we paying the slots for.
 
Awww, I was hoping the first Dash conference would be in Vegas ;).
 
Awesome price for value. If we could colocate at least a few people of the people working on dash it would bring huge benefits. I'm all for it. Just please make sure to make it public who are we paying the slots for.

I missed it the first time around, but 2 of our top people, Evan and Ryan will be manning the place. Hopefully they'll add a couple of grad students or graduates eventually? They can expand as needed there too.

But what is really sending chills down my back is that I can see this being a model for expansion, brain draining (into Dash) etc... I'm sure there are similar opportunities in other states and countries to this model. Wherever some of our top brass live, they might find an interesting opportunity such as this one (I won't suggest it will have the same opportunities, but now I can see a reason for having offices. (where as I was in trust mode before :p)

Offices located well act as recruitment centers, planning centers, community centers, networking centers. I honestly didn't realize that until this proposal was put up. I honestly thought the boys wanted a desk and chair away from home (which they deserve, but still...??!!!) LOL. Glad I kept my mouth (mostly) shut when this came up before.

I seriously learn so much from this project. I never really knew how much was involved in a start-up company, and this project has given me quite an education!

On a happy note, we just got a popup trailer, my son has his drivers license now, and I should be free to take time off. So when there is a conference, I seriously hope I can be there! But...er... Arizona, um... please make it spring or fall and not Summer, I'll die! LOL
 
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