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Dash Partnership with Transform PR

come on then
spill the beans dude
you mentioned this "insight info" often enough before :wink:

No unfortunately because I'm still invested in other projects that used Terpin in the past and it would damaging to their reputation. Could have same impact on Dash which would be counter productive.
 
sorry but i mean .... no beans ?
what is all that hype than ? insight info here and there, but it is so secret !
come on
and that the new way of communication here , speaking in riddles and giving negative hints but nothing else

lame
:rolleyes:
 
sorry but i mean .... no beans ?
what is all that hype than ? insight info here and there, but it is so secret !
come on
and that the new way of communication here , speaking in riddles and giving negative hints but nothing else

lame
:rolleyes:
What if I were to tell you to trust me on this one same as you've told us to trust you on Terpin doing good things. Why can't it go both ways? Some things should not be said. I've said too much anyways. I'll stay out of this thread.
 
that thing is done anyway
no need to be dragging this further and further and everybody down with it !

done
 
As I am leaving for vacation and consider the project closed, let me share a quick summary of the project activities and numbers:

  1. Project officially started on 11 January 2016 with a kick-off meeting
    • Attendees from Transform PR: Michael Terpin and Erika Zapanta
    • Attendees from Dash Team: Evan Duffield, Daniel Diaz, Robert Wiecko
  2. Project (phase I) end date agreed and set in the project charter document: 13 April 2016
  3. All conditions, objectives, constrains, success criteria and key deliverables of the project were agreed in written in the project charter document (as promised, I have shared the document with Solarminer – he may share his independent opinion about it)
  4. We have agreed on a clear collaboration framework:
    • Weekly operational call between Erika and Robert (except the weeks with other calls and conferences)
    • Bi-weekly status call with all project stakeholders
    • Monthly project review to report and verify the status and measures
      • First review was planned on 16 February 2016
      • Second review was planned on 15 March 2016
      • Phase I / contract review and summary was planned on 12 April 2016
  5. All project risks were document in the project charter. Mitigation actions were planned and executed.
  6. We have been working with Transform PR c.a. 3 weeks before the budget was cancelled (so we have never had a chance to summarize and report even a first month of the cooperation). Outcomes of these 3 weeks are:
    • 17 publications (arranged by Transform PR) in crypto- and finance media + 3 pending stories (including mainstream publication)
      NOTE: These 20 stories have an advertising equivalency (the amount we would have had to for similarly sized advertising in these publications) of nearly $100,000 (this value was provided by Transform PR - I am not able to verify it at the moment), with an aggregate of more than 6.5 million readers
    • 2 new open opportunities for participation in conferences (arranged by Transform PR)
    • 4 meetings between the vendor and the Dash team representatives
      • 2016-01-11 – kick-off meeting;
      • 2016-01-13 –meeting to agree a strategy before the Miami conference;
      • 2016-01-26 – operational meeting
      • 2016-02-02 – bi-weekly status meeting
      • Meeting notes together with the action items shared with the project stakeholders. Action items executed and closed as planned.
    • 1 conference declined by the Dash team due to the Miami preparations collision and short timelines
    • Professional marketing and PR coaching during the Miami event
    • New contacts and connections made thanks to Michael Terpin in Miami
    • Dash price on Poloniex on the day of project kick-off (2016-01-11) was around 0.007BTC, current Dash price (2016-02-05) on Poloniex is 0.011BTC (I am aware of fact that the price changed not only because of this project - it is just one of the measures we have agreed to accept)
    • Dash capitalization changed from 19M USD on the beginning of the project to 26M USD today (I am aware of fact that the capitalization changed not only because of this project - it is just one of the measures we have agreed to accept)
As a PM I consider this project good and effective with valuable results. The vendor was professional and well organized. We were on the right path to achieve and significantly exceed project goals.

My mission is done here. I want to thank everyone who was involved in this project and supported it - it was a real pleasure to work with you .
Kot,

Thanks you for putting time into this summary. There is definitely a lot of work going on with this project. The main thing that we can change on a future project with another PR project is reporting metrics. And I think we can do this without spending additional time to do it.
 
Let's say we use the same metrics for this project. There are 8 on the contract. I will not name them because, this might be the secret sauce.
1. Successful, ongoing goal.
2. This goal has a target. That target has almost been reached. Much faster than anticipated. Very Successful
3. Achieved, but not sustained. Successful.
4. Very successful.
5. Not enough time to complete, but in process. Rate as Successful.
6. Process started, but not completed. Rate this OK.
7. Internal metric - N/A
8. Internal metric - N/A

This took about 10 minutes to find the agreement, research the goals, and make this post. In my opinion, this would have given masternodes some confidence things are working. I think I have some ideas on metrics that you won't need to spend as much time looking up. Like visitors to dash.org or hits on dash videos. Things that can be aggregated for you. We can also compare these types of metrics to before a PR campaign to see if this is general growth or a significant change.

Like I said before, this agreement was put together with concrete goals. Judging by those goals it did pretty well. But there is really no way to separate those goals from the other activities Dash is doing. The key to this type of project will be choosing metrics that make it easy to differentiate PR activities from the cool features getting added or events that continuously happen in the Dash space.

The reason I am spending time on this is so we can all understand what happened here. It wasn't that anyone wasn't working their tail off. It was just a lack of communicating in a logical way that results were getting accomplished. And as for any company not doing business with us, we can show them what we have fixed with the process so it won't happen again.
 
Hi Solarminer
Thank you for your comments and your time. I will take your suggestions into consideration with the other projects.

With this particular project, I guess that many of involved stakeholders communicated very clearly that the project is going well and results are getting accomplished. This voice was simply not loud enough in comparison to the other voices or it was not so attractive (I do not know). As you also know, there was an intention to share a monthly report from the project progress - this (unfortunately) did not happen due to the project cancellation.
 
Thanks for the final report. Again: Very sad that the core team did not find sufficient trust and support by the majority of the masternode holder in that matter.

I definitely agree with this sentiment.

However, I think it is very important for us to remember that the proposal was still projected to be funded this month. Otoh had changed his vote, and in the end, the proposal easily had enough votes to be funded. I suspect Evan ultimately lobbied against it on the basis of Terpin (presumably) giving us an out already, and because he realized that another budget fight was certain to occur next month. Better to get out while you can than suffer continued embarrassment and another battle in merely a months' time.

In my opinion, what happened was the confluence of five factors, most of which we have learned from:

1) Otoh (400+ "no" votes, equal to an 800+ vote swing if changed to "yes") was not lobbied soon enough. As soon as the team realized that Transform PR was giving excellent results, Otoh should have been contacted and asked to reevaluate. (On the basis of public information only--no "secret sauce" that the community as a whole wasn't entitled to read.) I never considered this, and I'm sure nobody else did either. I think we all pretty much assumed that since the proposal initially passed, and since the Core Team was giving Transform PR glowing reviews, that it was settled. Otoh also happens to be quite busy, so himself probably wasn't closely following things.

2) There was an unusual amount of questioning of this proposal, mostly from honestly concerned community members. The Core Team probably could have reported at least some metrics, but then again, that was always the plan. Unfortunately this wasn't done in time (a week or so before the vote, as Solar suggested). Now everybody has learned from this. There was also a lot of rabble-rousing by TheDashGuy, though I don't know in the end how much it influenced people's votes.

3) There may have been some degree of schadenfreude involved. Some supporters of the Vendor Experience proposal might have changed their votes, thinking "if we can't have ours, you can't have yours." I could be completely wrong, and I am not suggesting in any way that Solarminer, Camosoul, or Oaxaca had any such motives. Some of their supporters might have. Again, I don't know.

4) There was limited budget space and several very desirable projects, such as Anarcapulco, Satoshi Roundtable, and Wifi Portal that may have not been paid if Transform PR had passed. Given the already "low" approval rating of the project (75% versus near unanimity on the others), this was probably seen as low-hanging fruit. Several have commented that they know of people who changed their vote on Transform PR just because there wasn't sufficient budget space (i.e. they supported it, but supported other proposals more). I think if this had been an "ordinary" month without an overly full budget and many competing proposals, there wouldn't have been any real issue. Most people would realize that the *possibility* of money being wasted is better than the *certainty* of money being "burned" (not created, unallocated, or whatever you want to call it...I realize "burned" is not the right term).

5) The budget system has a major design flaw (no "lockable" contract system) that is obvious in retrospect but probably couldn't have been predicted at the time it was implemented. This is being fixed.
 
This is far from desirable. We screwed-up... myself included.

I'm sorry Kot. I'm sorry for complaining. I'm sorry for voting "No". And thank you for what you did. I just didn't know.

Please consider that people in the community have seen scams before, and for this reason they will be cautious. It's just human nature. We just cannot see what you see on a daily basis. This is all pretty new to us. As we go along and build more trust, I'm sure these type of things will happen less.

I think we can learn a few very important lessons here:

1. Masternode owners should trust the "project managers" of proposals more.

2. I could highly suggest that, based on what happened here, it might be a better idea to give more frequent updates, instead of monthly, maybe bi-weekly?

The best way forward would be to simply try this again. I mean, right now we can fight and point fingers and let the whole thing fall down, or, how about, we admit our mistakes, course correct like the Advanced Dash Rocket we are, supply an new budget proposal for next month, either just continue with Michael Terpin (send him some rare wine from France, include the cost in the proposal. I'm sure he's got a heart), or, if that fails, plan B, find a new PR agency.

Just marching forward and course correcting as we go is probably our best course of action. Just keep it going. The structure of Dash is great, solid and it is very marketable. I'm pretty sure we can fix this, one way or the other. It does not have to be sad.
 
I definitely agree with this sentiment.

However, I think it is very important for us to remember that the proposal was still projected to be funded this month. Otoh had changed his vote, and in the end, the proposal easily had enough votes to be funded. I suspect Evan ultimately lobbied against it on the basis of Terpin (presumably) giving us an out already, and because he realized that another budget fight was certain to occur next month. Better to get out while you can than suffer continued embarrassment and another battle in merely a months' time.

In my opinion, what happened was the confluence of five factors, most of which we have learned from:

1) Otoh (400+ "no" votes, equal to an 800+ vote swing if changed to "yes") was not lobbied soon enough. As soon as the team realized that Transform PR was giving excellent results, Otoh should have been contacted and asked to reevaluate. (On the basis of public information only--no "secret sauce" that the community as a whole wasn't entitled to read.) I never considered this, and I'm sure nobody else did either. I think we all pretty much assumed that since the proposal initially passed, and since the Core Team was giving Transform PR glowing reviews, that it was settled. Otoh also happens to be quite busy, so himself probably wasn't closely following things.

2) There was an unusual amount of questioning of this proposal, mostly from honestly concerned community members. The Core Team probably could have reported at least some metrics, but then again, that was always the plan. Unfortunately this wasn't done in time (a week or so before the vote, as Solar suggested). Now everybody has learned from this. There was also a lot of rabble-rousing by TheDashGuy, though I don't know in the end how much it influenced people's votes.

3) There may have been some degree of schadenfreude involved. Some supporters of the Vendor Experience proposal might have changed their votes, thinking "if we can't have ours, you can't have yours." I could be completely wrong, and I am not suggesting in any way that Solarminer, Camosoul, or Oaxaca had any such motives. Some of their supporters might have. Again, I don't know.

4) There was limited budget space and several very desirable projects, such as Anarcapulco, Satoshi Roundtable, and Wifi Portal that may have not been paid if Transform PR had passed. Given the already "low" approval rating of the project (75% versus near unanimity on the others), this was probably seen as low-hanging fruit. Several have commented that they know of people who changed their vote on Transform PR just because there wasn't sufficient budget space (i.e. they supported it, but supported other proposals more). I think if this had been an "ordinary" month without an overly full budget and many competing proposals, there wouldn't have been any real issue. Most people would realize that the *possibility* of money being wasted is better than the *certainty* of money being "burned" (not created, unallocated, or whatever you want to call it...I realize "burned" is not the right term).

5) The budget system has a major design flaw (no "lockable" contract system) that is obvious in retrospect but probably couldn't have been predicted at the time it was implemented. This is being fixed.
Very good post, thanks for that.

After the smoke has cleared I may even have to reasses my statement: maybe my perceived lack of trust and support was superior swarm intelligence in the end - and the voting system did exactly what it was designed to do: provide governance and guidance.

I do not know Michael Terpin and/or Transform PR, and did not read any stories or rumors - it's simply unfeasable to know everything. But given Transform PR was not the right choice (for whatever reasons) the masternode vote was simply right.

Nevertheless I still have 100% trust that kot, being a experienced project manager, would have noticed any shortcomings in the delivery. We are no kids, not throwing around with money and not having a clue how business works. The core team is in fact a very good melange of experts, any company would be blessed having such a staff.

And yes, you are right: there is a missing feature at the moment, something we did not think about: contracts.

For me this whole topic comes to a tie: mistakes were made on both (all) sides, but I am confident that we are mature enough to take these as opportunities to improve, not as a stigma of failure - this is my true believe and what drives me, being a quality manager.

Holger
 
you are totally right flare !!
I think the paranoia went both ways and in the end the voting system really worked as hoped for !
I think both sides / parties / opinions /.... really learned their lesson here (I definitely did) , it got messy , we are used to that , but eventually the code prevailed !
pretty amazing I have to say
 
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