Blockchain: Money conference in London (6-7 NOV 2016)

[kot]

Dear Community Members,

We have received and invitation to participate Blockchain: Money conference in London. The conference takes place on 6th and 7th of November 2016.
Here is the link to the website: https://conference.bitcoin.com/
and link to the sponsorship brochure: https://dashpay.atlassian.net/wiki/download/attachments/43778137/BM_Sponsorship_02-08-16.pdf?api=v2

The prices of exhibitor packages are as follows:
- standard exhibitor package: £7,500
- premiere exhibitor package: £10,000
We would also have a speaker slot secured for both conferences, as part of our package.

Additional costs for flights, hotels, transport and conference materials for 2 people (e.g. me and Holger) would be around $3,000 (raw estimate).
As the conference is organized by the same crew as Miami event and I have managed to negotiate 20% discout on both conferences (Miami will take place in January 2017). Based on the numbers above, the total cost of the conference (after conversion and discount) would be around:
- $11,000 for the standard exhibitor package and speaker slot, or
- $13,500 for the premiere exhibitor package and speaker slot (probably better option).

Based on our exeprience, these conferences do help a lot to promote Dash and doing a show in London is good to promote in Europe. Considering the fact that the conference takes place in one of the financial centers of the world (City of London), it might be very attractive proposition.

I would like to ask for your opinion - do you find it attractive and good option to promote Dash? Should we submit the proposal to the budgeting system and go to London?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Link to the proposal in the budgeting system: https://dashcentral.org/p/london-conf-nov-2016
Kindly please vote on the proposal.
Thank you.

 

[halso]

Yes! Go for it. You have my votes. This is exactly the sort of exposure dash needs.

 

[bhkien]

YES

 

[splawik21]

Definitely yes, London is one of the places Europe count with.
My votes on it. Go and get it guys.

 

[TroyDASH]

How did you decide on you and Holger being the ones to potentially go, as opposed to other core team members?

 

[kot]

1. There is a prefix "e.g." before the names - there was no decision being made
2. From the team only Andy, Holger, Fernando and me live relatively close to London (so the cost of flight is low). Fernando can't participate, Andy prefers don't go public.

 

[GrandMasterDash]

I'm getting tired of these conferences with very little of anything tangible to show for them. Right now I am more interested in seeing substance to existing proposals and development.

 

[David]

Absolutely kot, you have my votes! Amazing opportunity to get some exposure. I'm sure there will be naysayers, but I'd like to encourage everyone to remember: we could have the best cryptocurrency in the world, but if nobody knows about it, it will never gain value.

Does it do anybody any good if a recluse cures cancer and never tells anybody about it?

 

[GrandMasterDash]

Kot asked for feedback, I gave MY opinion and others decided to chip in and disagree or label it as trolling... what's up with you guys, I didn't ask your opinion on my opinion, I was giving MY feedback to the OP. But since we're in battle mode and you feel my opinion is open for debate, perhaps someone can list all the TANGIBLE things that dash has achieved in the past six months. There are no lamassu's near me, let alone offering dash. I don't see any new direct fiat to dash options. I'm still waiting for Spectrocoin and others. But I did see the price drop when all these ATM and legal proposals came out. I did see the price drop when dash got banned from Apple's app store.

 

[HinnomTX]

Absolutely, you have my votes!

 

[qwizzie]

You would have my votes, it would be nice though if one of those speakers is Evan (even if that means a somewhat higher budget proposal). Or is it Evan as speaker + 2 other team members joining him for the trip ? That would be okay with me.

 

[TheDashGuy]

Whoa whoa whoa.

$15,000 basically? For what? How many people are going to be there? What other companies? What is the planned course of action for this conference? How is it going to be any sort of a success when it costs an incredible amount and doesn't even tell you how many people are coming....

Also, how do we know for 100% fact this will be worth $15,000? Because as we all know, the past few conferences have been a blunder and a waste seeing as the people doing the presentations, are anything but presenters.


Also, I would prefer if @Evan stopped going to these to be completely to be honest, his people skills are quite lacking, so is his presentation skills. Same goes for @daniel these guys are not the type of folks we need to be giving presentations, they only go to "secure" partnerships, which was ended up netting us alot of nothing.

We honestly could spend this amount on advertising and bring in more that way than giving some speech at $15,000 conference with very few people actually listening. No DashNDrink either? Whats the point?

I strongly urge the nodes to reconsider their voting based on past events that have had very little impact, and most of the impact was via the DashnDrink machine anyways...


We need to stop just spending the budget on big ticket items like this just because "we can". PLEASE. These types of expenditures are not needed 4x a year. We don't even have full-time marketers for godsakes and you guys want to drop $15,000 on this? For +5 forum members? Please explain this, I'm VERY curious as to how you expect this conference to pay off.

 

[kot]

You would have my votes, it would be nice though if one of those speakers is Evan (even if that means a somewhat higher budget proposal). Or is it Evan as speaker + 2 other team members joining him for the trip ? That would be okay with me.

Evan is speaking on another event (laBITconf) at almost the same time (4-5 Nov).

 

[alex-ru]

Whoa whoa whoa.

$15,000 basically? For what? How many people are going to be there? What other companies? What is the planned course of action for this conference? How is it going to be any sort of a success when it costs an incredible amount and doesn't even tell you how many people are coming....

Also, how do we know for 100% fact this will be worth $15,000? Because as we all know, the past few conferences have been a blunder and a waste seeing as the people doing the presentations, are anything but presenters.


Also, I would prefer if @Evan stopped going to these to be completely to be honest, his people skills are quite lacking, so is his presentation skills. Same goes for @daniel these guys are not the type of folks we need to be giving presentations, they only go to "secure" partnerships, which was ended up netting us alot of nothing.

We honestly could spend this amount on advertising and bring in more that way than giving some speech at $15,000 conference with very few people actually listening. No DashNDrink either? Whats the point?

I strongly urge the nodes to reconsider their voting based on past events that have had very little impact, and most of the impact was via the DashnDrink machine anyways...


We need to stop just spending the budget on big ticket items like this just because "we can". PLEASE. These types of expenditures are not needed 4x a year. We don't even have full-time marketers for godsakes and you guys want to drop $15,000 on this? For +5 forum members? Please explain this, I'm VERY curious as to how you expect this conference to pay off.

I agree that this kind of events can't be "profitable" in terms of "direct" ROI, in principle. But they can be quite effective as a training for our people.
If we want Dash to be a strong project - we need a strong team behind it - we have to coach our people, encourage them to dedicate their efforts to the project, to let them grow (instead of the hiring of not interested external "experts").
And I think participation in such events is expensive but effective way to let our team members to become real professionals. For example - during next years Dash representatives will be invited to represent Dash in top investment funds, TV-shows, huge events. And to have proper trained representatives in right moment - we should let our team members to start trainings and practicing ASAP.

IMO.

 

[Solarminer]

You don't need to spend $15k to train speakers. Have them take classes or just do local meetups that are free.

What is our target audience? Bitcoiners? So we have like .01% of the population that already know crypto learning about Dash.

How about going to shows with technology? Internet of things, automation, wireless tech. These would be much better options to get new people into Dash AND get developers that know how to make things work. We are not bitcoin....we can do real instant payments - find the shows that could use it.

 

[TheDashGuy]

I agree that this kind of events can't be "profitable" in terms of "direct" ROI, in principle. But they can be quite effective as a training for our people.
If we want Dash to be a strong project - we need a strong team behind it - we have to coach our people, encourage them to dedicate their efforts to the project, to let them grow (instead of the hiring of not interested external "experts").
And I think participation in such events is expensive but effective way to let our team members to become real professionals. For example - during next years Dash representatives will be invited to represent Dash in top investment funds, TV-shows, huge events. And to have proper trained representatives in right moment - we should let our team members to start trainings and practicing ASAP.

IMO.

See but would a CFO approve this? Hell no! The video graphics guy, sure thing. But a CFO being trying to make the most of the budget so it can grow faster? Hell no he wouldn't!

 

[GrandMasterDash]

I agree that this kind of events can't be "profitable" in terms of "direct" ROI, in principle. But they can be quite effective as a training for our people.
If we want Dash to be a strong project - we need a strong team behind it - we have to coach our people, encourage them to dedicate their efforts to the project, to let them grow (instead of the hiring of not interested external "experts").
And I think participation in such events is expensive but effective way to let our team members to become real professionals. For example - during next years Dash representatives will be invited to represent Dash in top investment funds, TV-shows, huge events. And to have proper trained representatives in right moment - we should let our team members to start trainings and practicing ASAP.

IMO.

Okay, fine, let's see a proposal for training members in networking, presentations, public speaking etc. I'll vote yes for that. After a while, we'd be able to make our own in-house training programme tailored to our needs.

 

[TroyDASH]

I agree that this kind of events can't be "profitable" in terms of "direct" ROI, in principle. But they can be quite effective as a training for our people.
If we want Dash to be a strong project - we need a strong team behind it - we have to coach our people, encourage them to dedicate their efforts to the project, to let them grow (instead of the hiring of not interested external "experts").
And I think participation in such events is expensive but effective way to let our team members to become real professionals. For example - during next years Dash representatives will be invited to represent Dash in top investment funds, TV-shows, huge events. And to have proper trained representatives in right moment - we should let our team members to start trainings and practicing ASAP.

IMO.

There are a thousand less expensive ways to get training in how to network and how to do public speaking and interviews effectively. Maybe there are good reasons to support this proposal, but that ain't one of them, IMO

 

[alex-ru]

You don't need to spend $15k to train speakers. Have them take classes or just do local meetups that are free.

See but would a CFO approve this? Hell no!

Okay, fine, let's see a proposal for training members in networking, presentations, public speaking etc.

There are a thousand less expensive ways to get training in how to network and how to do public speaking and interviews effectively.

A purely rhetorical question (don't want to argue about it): How many of you (critics) ready to go on a cheap acting classes and then regularly (better on full time basis) organize free Dash-meetups in cities of your country?

 

[TheDashGuy]

A purely rhetorical question (don't want to argue about it): How many of you (critics) ready to go on a cheap acting classes and then regularly (better on full time basis) organize free Dash-meetups in cities of your country?

I'm glad we could discuss the facts and numbers.