I think what you want to say is that if it is about just claims without substance it would look weak, and you would be absolutely correct, but that wasn’t my point.
What I was trying to point out is not about making the whole presentation shorter, but about condensing the scope of the project as an introduction.
The introduction is just to hook their interest. As David said in some other thread, starting from showing the vision would have helped to frame the information that came afterwards.
Slides could be structured around these questions:
What is it?
What does it solve?
Why is it relevant?
How is it done?
Who is it making it?
That basically answers everything you need to know.
I’ll just say that the Maidsafe team is great. All individuals. Well recruited. They all fit with the personality of the firm. All very important assets. They progress made to date is phenomenal and I am sure everyone in team is inclined and motivated by the overall purpose of this project. But since I am an early investor in maidsafe coins, i am just giving my outside opinion (in all my comments, suggestions) just to overall help the project because I truly believe that perception is equally imp.
The Web summit was not bad. I think it went well. But I think my above 3 suggestions are purely from marketing/perception standpoint. The product being worked on is great. But it needs to be communicated to the world appropriately to gain interest, curiosity, confidence, etc etc. That should be on Maidsafe’s priority list equally as proceeding with development. No one said it is going to be easy but we need to make it happen till the last go. 2-3 more years, we will be all set. Just keep going.
I’m still watching presentations from the DWebSummit and there are some really great people, projects and ideas there.
Here’s a lightening talk by @noffle who I know though his with in Scuttlebutt.
He’s showing a dat based offline-first secure, decentralised, anonymous chat called cabal. I really like this talk because he’s a good presenter as well as having values and skills which are in tune with this community and the SAFEnetwork.
What kind of developer is more hardcore than a Safe Network developer? Are there any other crypto+dweb+immortalization+email+chat+video+music+compute-garbage=safe projects out there working diligently for 10+ years towards one common vision? That is as hard core as it gets.
Real humans that are good with a whiteboard are far more interesting than flashy powerpoint slides. Although a few assisting graphics are nice, and the ones that were shown were simple to understand and helpful. I’m not quite sure why some people thought the talks went rough. Considering the room and the audience it seemed just fine and well done to me. Cozy, like a fireside chat for devs. Good job Team!
That’s what sent me to Scotland in April with only a pocket full of safecoins.
As someone who has taught at university and also operated in business, you have to know your audience. And cater to them. You have to find that space where your own preferences and those of your audience intersect.
In these kinds of settings, you have little time to convey your message and keep the audience’s interest. By the time you are breaking out your cray/marker, their attention has already diverted to the competitor. Often, people will make their decision within the first 5 minutes of engagement. Completely different dynamics from when talking to the already converted (e.g., team members) or the compelled (e.g., students) or the unicorn who has the time, patience and intelligence to adapt to your preference.
The better technology does not always win. The tech and business space is littered with the skeletons of many companies that refused to learn and adapt to that reality. Time to market matters. How you explain matters. How you handle constructive feedback matters.
Couldn’t agree more. I’d also add you have to adapt to the restrictions imposed by the venue and the event organiser. Long slots for presentations are nice if you can get them but increasingly rare, so you need to have a presentation prepared for every occasion.
Excellent post. While it’s difficult to define who the audience is in this crowded and noisy space.
I completely agree with this and feel this could be a reality if fresh and objective outside views are not considered. A decade of staring at the same screen does have a affect on “vision”.
No mention of Maidsafe, but I enjoyed this write up. Found this rather poignant.
Charles asked about Ted [Nelson’s] Xanadu project, the perpetually-in-progress origin of hypertext and precursor to Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). One question that stood out was that of being burdened by a good idea. There is a certain weight in feeling the responsibility to execute. To solve problems.
There are plenty of people who care about online privacy (maybe 40% in Europe) a smaller percentage who do any thing meaningful about it (maybe 15%) and a tiny number who are looking at technical solutions beyond DuckDuckGo and ad blockers. I think a lot of people working on decentralized tech realise that privacy/security alone isn’t going to provide the tipping point (Maidsafe have been saying that for some time). People have heard that message now and either accept it or ignore it. What’s needed is something new that can’t be done on the clearnet and history shows that will probably be around entertainment, personalisation or porn. The $6 billion question is what that will be - ideas on a postcard please. My personal hunch is that it’ll be something rooted in identity.
I appreciate David Rosenthal’s sober take on the challenge of beating the incumbents (he’s very very down on cryptos and micropayments, coming at it from a more traditional angle) DSHR's Blog: What Does The Decentralized Web Need?
On the marketing side I think Maidsafe are doing much better in producing stuff for techies now - the Parsec explanations are excellent. I wonder if we could do something completely non-techie to attract the attention of the uninterested masses? Here’s a Microsoft blockchain explainer that barely mentions hashing, blocks, nodes, PoW, bitcoin or any of that stuff, just saying that when you have to deal with evil aliens it’s best not to rely on trust - which is their simple message to businesses with supply chains.
