Dash Partnership with Transform PR

[InTheWoods]

It's just a thesis - didn't want to hurt anyones feelings.

I have zero interest in discussing this topic any further, it's simply above my pay grade. Let the PR guys take care of the PR, i am doing different things in the meantime

P.S: The part was more of a joke than me being serious about being offended. Don't be so concerned about hurting anyone's feelings and censoring yourself. Above your pay-grade sounds a bit like being in the military. People shouldn't take stuff and themselves too seriously. This forum could use a bit of animation. People don't care just about mining dash or setting up masternodes. The more animated this place becomes the more people will join, contrary to what some control freaks here think.

 

[yidakee]

Evan took it down? What do you mean?

I don't believe those are failed projects at all. If you check out their development feed, they are very much active and lots of code is being created daily. I believe they are working on cool things, all these 3 projects. You can make same argument about Dash - it takes whole day to anonymize coins and InstantX can only send a small amount currently. Bitcoin's Coinjoin on websites like blockchain.info takes much less so it's not like Dash is perfect either at this point in time.

This whole ordeal sparked Evans imagination to fix the problems with future budget contracts.

"Took it down" was a figure of speech. When the proposal got "yes" status again, by only a small margin, Evan decided to switch his own votes to "no" and lobbied others to vote "no", and dump that proposal completely. TheDashGuy had zero impact in the outcome.

 

[kot]

InTheWoods
You must be genius of PR if you are able to say whether campaign works or not after 3 weeks from start... This is actually the time spent by Transform PR on the Dash promotion.
We haven't even give them a chance to present a monthly report from the project... Not to say that the results were planned to be achieved in 3 months time frame. The community just voted against it because one person was loud enough and wrote hundreds of posts without any information. Only slander, vulgar language and suggestions about bad intentions of Evan and the core team. I do not like it at all, do you?

You did not like the project - fine. You did not trust the core team - also fine. This is your choice. Now you should expect something better from the people who "offered" No votes and the contract cancellation as a result. I will expect this as a member of this community. I want a better option if this one was so bad.

Tomorrow, when the voting is closed, I am going to present my short report from the project. Based on this data, you may be able to assess the current outcomes of the project. Saying that it did not work after 3 weeks, without any review (and without any trust in words of the core team) was nothing but bad will and bad intentions in my opinion.

 

[InTheWoods]

kot
Where were these accusations posted?

Not trusting the core team? Why jump to such conclusions? The fact that someone makes a mistake doesn't mean he/she makes mistakes all the time. Things are not that black and white.

I was referring to the track record of Terpin PR which is lousy, which is the reason is why I've downvoted this proposal the minute it was released. I wasn't part of the group who changed votes later on.

Is there a contract in place with Terpin PR?

 

[David]

kot
Where were these accusations posted?

Not trusting the core team? Why jump to such conclusions? The fact that someone makes a mistake doesn't mean he/she makes mistakes all the time. Things are not that black and white.

I was referring to the track record of Terpin PR which is lousy, which is the reason is why I've downvoted this proposal the minute it was released. I wasn't part of the group who changed votes later on.

Is there a contract in place with Terpin PR?

There was a contract in place with Terpin PR, as I understand it, but fortunately they were nice enough to let us out of it. Otherwise, our lead developer (Evan), would be spending much of his time and money defending himself from a breach of contract lawsuit rather than building a better budget system and working on Dash Evolution.

To everyone (not directed InTheWoods):

I won't get dragged into a flame war over this, but I will respectfully say the following:

1) Evan, our lead developer, supported Terpin PR and advocated for their continued services to be approved.

2) Daniel, our business developer, did the same.

3) Kot, our project manager, did the same.

4) Tungfa, our PR liasion, did the same.

5) Flare, one of our core developers, did the same.

6) Fernando, our lawyer, did the same.

Now I understand that we are a decentralized project and that the votes of the masternodes outweigh the opinions of the Core Team. That's fine. But the very people who built Dash, and the ones who were in the position to know, repeatedly assured the community that Terpin PR was doing amazing work.

Otoh, who had initially voted against the project because he was skeptical, reevaluated his position and changed his vote because he could see, with publicly available information (in the news section, from our invitation to Satoshi Roundtable, etc.) that Terpin PR was doing great work. Please don't tell me a majority of masternode owners opposed the PR team. Don't hide behind that. Once Otoh recast his votes, there was a 970 vote majority (1601 to 625) in favor of keeping Terpin PR. The only reason the vote ended up not passing was because Evan got fed up at the flip-flopping (probably assuming that World War III would recommence next month), voted against it, and asked Otoh to do the same. Now he's building a better system, which is good (and obviously needed).

I've said my piece; I'm done with this thread. Say what you will, flame me if you want, but I won't see it.

Cheers.

P.S. I will admit to be wrong about one thing. Not that long ago, I argued that it would be difficult to get people to change their minds on a long-duration project and vote it down if it became necessary to do so. I was obviously sorely mistaken...all it takes is a very vocal, very aggressive minority (only a few people, actually) to unravel any multi-month project.

 

[InTheWoods]

David

It's nice to be able to have a rational discussion without getting emotional. No need to be defensive. Not sure why there's so much emotion going around.

Let's tackle some points specifically like Satoshi Table since you brought it up. If you check the 2015 Satoshi Table event you will see on the guest list a bunch of people that are not exactly the crème de la crème in the crypto space. Dash could have just asked to attend and it wouldn't have been much of a problem. I don't think Terpin did such a marvelous job getting Dash there. Just check the 2015 attendance rooster.

The Satoshi table is not a free event. Entry fee costs money and it ain't exactly cheap. The organizers stand to make a nice chunk of money and this exclusivity thing they want to sell is a good marketing gimmick nothing more. Like I've said - lots of low level devs have attended the previous events. 100 guests is a lot. They are lucky to fill those gaps. I'm thinking Terpin may get paid on both ends here. He gets money to get guests to this Round Table and also gets money from the client who attends the round table. This is probably a very realistic scenario.

So what you are saying is that Evan himself downvoted the proposal because of Dashguy and out of fear of what would happen next month? Not sure this makes any sense. I don't think this was the real reason because it's just weird.

 

[Solarminer]

David
So what you are saying is that Evan himself downvoted the proposal because of Dashguy and out of fear of what would happen next month? Not sure this makes any sense. I don't think this was the real reason because it's just weird.

Actually, I think it just became obvious(to Dash or Terpin) once votes switched that the Terpin agreement was not a binding contract because it was tied to a non-guaranteed funding source. As David mentioned....the vote switching on long term proposals that everyone thought was nearly impossible, happened. And now it looks like we will have a solution for contracts going forward.

The Terpin contract is actually written well with concrete goals. Honestly, if some metric(that isn't showing a list of news stories) could have been communicated weekly in a non-biased way, this would not be an issue at all. Even if the summary was we have 5 goals each month. We met 3 of them. 1 of the goals we really hit it out of the park. The 2 we missed we are adjusting our efforts with x and y. The feedback is that we need xx literature and x to change on the website. Now we have x working on the literature, and y working on the website.

Maybe we have the PR firm guaranty a metric like visitors to dash.org. And we only pay them based on how much they improve visitor count. Wouldn't it be great if we can offer the option for PR firms/individuals to bid for visitor count? Maybe we could find alternative ways to get the same solution with a lower cost. I am only throwing out an idea - not saying Terpin or our PR team isn't doing their job, or even that visitor count is a valid metric.

 

[InTheWoods]

Solarminer

I believe the proposal was downvoted because it was competing for funding with other proposals and it was just 1 or 2 guys with sufficient voting power who did it. I don't think this proves the point that lots of people will return to an older proposal to downvote it.

About metrics - I will say this: "What gets measured gets accomplished."

 

[Solarminer]

Solarminer

I believe the proposal was downvoted because it was competing for funding with other proposals and it was just 1 or 2 guys with sufficient voting power who did it. I don't think this proves the point that lots of people will return to an ongoing proposal to downvote it.

About metrics - I will say this: "What gets measured gets accomplished."

Evan posted on bitcointalk about why they requested the downvote.

 

[InTheWoods]

Evan posted on bitcointalk about why they requested the downvote.

Not sure why isn't the discussion taking place in here. I don't go to that forum. Got a link?

Even if that was the case, it happened because someone like Evan urged people to do it. It's not your typical scenario where people go back to downvote proposals by themselves.

 

[TheDashGuy]

Not sure why isn't the discussion taking place in here. I don't go to that forum. Got a link?

Even if that was the case, it happened because someone like Evan urged people to do it. It's not your typical scenario where people go back to downvote proposals by themselves.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421615.new#new

It's back a few pages though, ill find it after I get done defending myself if you still need it.

 

[kot]

Solarminer - thanks for good suggestions.
About the weekly metrics reporting - this has no sense and it is simply impossible for me. Weekly time frame is too short to measure anything in case of PR campaign (this is not a production line). Therefore we have agreed on monthly reporting.
It is impossible to me, because I coordinate 3 projects in my daily job and even more here. If I would have to do the weekly reporting for everything, my work would be only collecting data for reports and reporting.

 

[Solarminer]

Solarminer - thanks for good suggestions.
About the weekly metrics reporting - this has no sense and it is simply impossible for me. Weekly time frame is too short to measure anything in case of PR campaign (this is not a production line). Therefore we have agreed on monthly reporting.
It is impossible to me, because I coordinate 3 projects in my daily job and even more here. If I would have to do the weekly reporting for everything, my work would be only collecting data for reports and reporting.

Well in this scenario, the best option would be to provide reports 1 week before a vote. That could still be monthly, just the first report would be 1 week early. I am not asking for a detailed report, just a unbiased review with metrics used in setting up the agreement with the PR company. Enough information to go from a faith based vote to a fact and logic based vote.

Hopefully, we will have a contract budget in place so a rush to that first 3 week report isn't there....but if we want to work with the system we have, then the solution above may work.

 

[kot]

Well... you are probably right. Unfortunately it is too late.
I was was assuming in my naivety that the community is responsible enough to understand that the contract once approved needs to be continued, if we want to be considered serious and professional partner. I also thought that there is a good portion of trust in good intentions and professionalism of the core team.
As you could see from my profile, I do not spend too much time on the forums - I simply have no time for this (and I do not consider it very productive time in my role). I can use my time to write hundreds of posts or to deliver solutions and services for Dash. I have chosen the second option.
Unfortunately, it looks like the person who is no more than 2 months with us and wrote hundreds of offending posts presents more value and is more reliable to the community. I respect this choice. I hope that this person will offer a proposal with at least the same value, impact and the same quality of work. As a community we have what we have chosen and what we deserve.

In my personal opinion, I seriously doubt that we will be able to get any serious and professional company to work with us after this irresponsible action. Who would want to do business with such partner??? Only desperate I guess... Let's see what future gives us.

So, Mr TheDashGuy - you still did not convinced me and did not offer anything to the community. We are waiting.

 

[kot]

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 .

 

[InTheWoods]

In my personal opinion, I seriously doubt that we will be able to get any serious and professional company to work with us after this irresponsible action. Who would want to do business with such partner??? Only desperate I guess... Let's see what future gives us.

Terpin PR wasn't a serious and professional company by any stretch. I can reveal some sordid details of how Terpin's PR operates based on past experiences but no point doing that since it would be counter productive.

Are you willing to back that up with some Dash? I wager 100 DASH we can get whatever agency we want as long as we have the funding. PR agencies are hungry for cash especially in this current environment where world economy is going down the drain. Beggars can't be choosers.

Are you ready to wager 100 Dash on that cos I am?

 

[flare]

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

[...]

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 .

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.

 

[tungfa]

Terpin PR wasn't a serious and professional company by any stretch. I can reveal some sordid details of how Terpin's PR operates based on past experiences but no point doing that since it would be counter productive.

Are you willing to back that up with some Dash? I wager 100 DASH we can get whatever agency we want as long as we have the funding. PR agencies are hungry for cash especially in this current environment where world economy is going down the drain. Beggars can't be choosers.

Are you ready to wager 100 Dash on that cos I am?

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

 

[tungfa]

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 .

Tx for the work you put into this kot, and all others involved

 

[flare]

Terpin PR wasn't a serious and professional company by any stretch. I can reveal some sordid details of how Terpin's PR operates based on past experiences but no point doing that since it would be counter productive.

Are you willing to back that up with some Dash? I wager 100 DASH we can get whatever agency we want as long as we have the funding. PR agencies are hungry for cash especially in this current environment where world economy is going down the drain. Beggars can't be choosers.

Are you ready to wager 100 Dash on that cos I am?

You sound like you have worked with them before - any details? What KPIs did you agree on that were not met?

It's up to the community to prepare the next PR budget proposal, we are at rest for the moment. If you have a better alternative and the resources to drive this subproject: Go ahead.