How much time, budget should Maidsafe spend on image management?

My original comments were moved and then locked. I’ve been a member of this community for years. I’v e brought in many now disappointed investors. I’m obligated to speak my mind and be critical of the approach taken by Maidsafe in this forum. Remember there are no leaders according to Maidsafe which means we are all equal in leadership. Or are we not? How does the ranking system work? Who makes the rules around here in regard to free speech. Does the community vote to make rules?

The reason I keep voicing my opinion in regaurd to the project’s visibility is that I disagree with the approach. Since there are no leaders I take on this issue myself. When I see a comment that relates to the problem I’m going to voice my opinion about it. Censoring critical voices does nothing to change the approach taken. In fact it highlights the strange nature of the project and how it is being managed. I ask for leadership then I’m told there are no leaders. So okay I’m critical of an approach now the criticism is siloed and locked. How am I to encourage other people who are disappointed with the approach to speak if the topic gets locked and discussion shutdown? Shutting down criticism is in favor of positivity is dishonest. If we only allow positive opinions then we are lying to the public which is wrong.

To answer @JimCollinson question is that once a week 1 hour is dedicated to talking to the public on any media available to the Team. Have engineers volunteer or pick them to share struggles and successes. Ensure there is a link to the weekly updates on any platform the interviews are allows a team member to communicate. Isn’t there one day a week in the work week where there is a free day? Take one hour from one person to expose the project to the world.

If Safe is the equivalent to building a city on Mars then it should stir plenty of excitement from both technical and non-technical people. Technical people with skills that could help will want to join in such an effort. Non-technical people will talk to others and spread links, which contain links to the weekly updates, to the interviews and media talking about the city on Mars being built by a small focused team.

Ok, so you’d want say, 50 hours over the space of a year to dedicate to this sort of thing. And if I told you we already spent considerably more than that doing just what you ask, would you want to increase it? To what?

Perhaps we could go back to when we had a full marketing department, with 2-3 full time staff, and a dedicated PR agency? But that didn’t satisfy you either. And if we did increase back to that spend, it probably wouldn’t satisfy you this time either… because you know what is at the end of most of these relationships and conversations with press, or punters? A question… when will it be finished. When can I use it? How do I try it?

There are a multitude of different ways to go about PR and marketing something, but I can tell you from direct experience in marketing music, marketing tech, and from this very project, that marketing a product with no product, is an order of magnitude more expensive and time consuming. Almost to the point of futility. It’s a bottomless pit.

Have you ever done software development? I sincerely doubt it. Otherwise, you would realise how silly these suggestions are for a small and highly focused dev team at this stage. You also underestimate the amount of time required to publish these things to an acceptable level of quality that wouldn’t receive further criticism from viewers like yourself.

In an attempt to recover from this dumpster fire that now spans multiple topics I can only suggest the following in an attempt to steer your posts on to more constructive criticism – Please make a list of all the things you think the team or the forum needs to do to alleviate your concerns.

Well they do that on this forum every Thursday, and it gets retweeted and tooted on Mastodon and reposted on Facebook. With other media it’s trickier because you have to have a story. A few years ago when crypto was new this was easy. Everyone was super excited about the disruptive potential of this new decentralised thing and the big promises being made, most of which sadly turned out to be hot air at best, and heartless scams at worst.

As true pioneers, MaidSafe got plenty of coverage in the early days, but those days are gone, and the next opportunity will be after delivery of the MVP. If it works out as planned and really is simpler, quicker, more efficient, more private and more equitable than what’s currently available (say Eth, BTC, Monero), then we’ll have entered the next stage of the news cycle. Journos will be interested because they will smell a story, and at that stage it will make sense to push the big red marketing button. It’s all about timing.

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