Re: The United Humans investment offer

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to provide a few comments and I hope we can then close 
this discussion topic.

First, the group we assembled has been very courageous to venture into 
these dangerous waters of discussing revenue models and monetization. 
We've learned a lot in this process, but clearly we need to fall in 
order to learn how to walk. The entire group deserves kudos for 
participating in this experiment.

Second, there are some lingering negative feelings based on my 
suggestion to Bohdan to tone down the sales pitch, in a private thread. 
However, I must stress that Bohdan was not doing anything wrong here and 
has been a terrific, enthusiastic community member overall. I explained, 
and I will include here (in edited form) because I think it's valuable 
to discuss openly.

    /"Bohdan, my assessment is that you were pitching a bit too hard for
    this standards group. It is a very subtle situation because
    standards groups require a complex transition to monetization. The
    upside here is enormous - Vitalik Buterin and Juan Benet leveraged
    this group to workshop the concepts behind Ethereum and FileCoin.
    However, they were extremely socially adept, whereas your approach
    has been somewhat clumsy. //
    /
    /
    /
    /I hope this feedback will help polish your approach. There are
    roughly 50-70 people that are active in the group, and every single
    one of them wants to send a pitch deck and talk about their
    approach. If everyone did, the entire group would feel like ICO
    spam. Also, right before a standards proposal is accepted and
    released by the W3C, very large companies get involved and community
    spirit can potentially devolve into competitive rancor, to the
    sensitivity to monetization and revenue model generation is
    particularly touchy right now. //
    /
    /
    /
    /Here is an algorithm for the approach: the process for any
    individual participant should be to help contribute to others ideas
    50x more often than asking for help on our ideas, to send white
    papers rather than pitch decks, to listen very carefully for
    negative feedback, to be extra careful in the transition to
    monetization. The selling process is thus extremely subtle, and
    should be very quietly woven into a tapestry of skillful
    collaboration."/

Third, I wanted to point out that I'm not "passing off to volunteers" 
and bailing on my own webinar... I'm trying to bring really smart and 
powerful people to this discussion, and they are the type who prefer to 
lead and teach. The first was a venture capitalist who was managing 
partner at a billion dollar venture fund, which a string of successful 
IPOs he was lead investor in, and the second is a former editor of 
Harvard Business School Press, who has edited a number of bestselling 
business books. My goal has been to bring more energy into this 
standards effort. I recently invited a really smart KYC attorney, Jill 
Williamson, to a recent meeting.

Finally, I wanted to add that shifting this to RWOT is the exact right 
thing to do. Then groups of aligned people can work on papers and 
proposals offline, in smaller teams that will be more effective than 
trying to mix everyone together.

Anyway, I hope that with this serving as a write up of the results of 
the experiment, we can put this matter to rest for now.

Wishing all of you a happy holiday season!

Moses




On 12/21/18 7:19 AM, Sam Chase wrote:
> I deeply apologize this was meant to be a private email to both Bohdan and Moses.
> I hope everyone has an amazing holiday, I am grateful for the discourse of this group.
>
> Wishing you all the very best!!
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Dec 21, 2018, at 7:13 AM, Sam Chase <samantha@venn.agency> wrote:
>>
>> Hi guys,
>>
>> First, happy holidays and I appreciate this discourse.
>>
>> I have two things I’d like to clear up:
>>
>> Bohdan, my issue with your email(s) to the group is nothing to do with UH and everything to do with your disregard for the purpose of the mailing list. You have defiantly ignored multiple people trying to explain why your approach, not your idea-is flawed and frustrating. It’s disrespectful to pitch ANYTHING to the group and I will be bringing it up with leadership.
>>
>> Moses, you started the monetization discussion. The only reason I volunteered to host the discussion was to steer the group away from the dangerous and careless language being used. That language continued even after multiple discussions about its lack of tact. You started and initiated and quite adamantly when it’s the end of the year and the group has more than enough on it’s plate.
>>
>> You speak eloquently of the problems facing us a commons and the challenges ahead in making SSI sustainable. But then you speak clumsily and without adjustments after critique of your words and continue to push this outward while passing it off to volunteers. Not taking ownership for initiatives you suggest for the community and then piling on someone else about their lack of tact isn’t tactful either.
>> You left the webinar you suggested 20 minutes in and found a volunteer to do the next one. Where is the accountability?
>>
>>
>> Bohdan and Moses, thank-you for this discussion and I look forward to discussing these ideas you both shared at RWoT; and I am grateful to be working with you further on emerging technical standards with the w3C.
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>>> On Dec 21, 2018, at 6:41 AM, Bohdan Andriyiv <bohdan.andriyiv@validbook.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear chairs, and CCG community,
>>>
>>> I think we as a community should be able to discuss new projects that are based on the specifications that we develop here (especially, if these projects are open source and philanthropic in nature).
>>> The whole point in making these specifications is to do great things with them. How can we create great things if we are not allowed to talk about them with each other, find like minded people, experts in SSI, DIDs, VCs etc?
>>> I do not think these discussions would overwhelm our forum. If they do, we can think about tags to use in email subjects for example - [spec], [proposal], [spam].
>>> If we cannot do these discussions in this mailing list we should have another forum where such discussions can happen. If we decide to go this route I am volunteering to communicate with w3c to open and administer such mailing list.
>>>
>>> Regarding this specific thread:
>>> The reason for the initial email of this thread was to publicly announce about The United Humans seed offer, and if some members of the community find the idea of the UH interesting, to publicly discuss it _with those people_. I was in particular interested to have discussion about technologies that makes UH possible - simplified undirected web-of-trust, verifiable credentials with human readable verifiable layer (using Resource Integrity Proofs), as well as many technological, social and economical implications of the UH. It is really frustrating when the person who did not spend time to understand the idea and for whom I struggle to find artifacts or conversations that can be considered as interesting contributions to the specifications or community, gets to hijack and shutdown the conversation. My opinion is that if you are not interested in the topic simply ignore it, if you think it really distracts, spams, or scams the community, after checking that this is actually true raise your concerns in direct, but polite manner.
>>>
>>> Anyway, anyone who is interested to discuss the idea of The United Humans organization please contact me. I think we will create the public forum to have public conversations about it.
>>>
>>> Also, I plan to present the UH idea and in particular its Web-of-Trust on the next RWOT conference. Rebooted Web-of-Trust (undirected, based on VC's with human readable visual verifiable layer) is one of the core things that makes possible The United Humans organization.
>>>
>>> -Bohdan
>>>
>>>
>>> ---- On Thu, 20 Dec 2018 23:05:22 +0200 Kim Hamilton Duffy <kim@learningmachine.com> wrote ----
>>>> Dear CCG community,On behalf of the chairs, I'd like to clarify that CCG's focus is emerging technical standards -- not business models. We recognize the importance of the latter discussions, but CCG forums (including calls and mailing lists) are not the place for these to happen. Specific concerns are:it distracts from the large amount of technical work we need to do
>>>> it risks compromising the (perceived) integrity of the group
>>>> it has an extremely divisive impact, which we've witnessed on numerous occasions
>>>> We have the following recommendations:For this specific thread: Any parties with further discussion should follow up outside of the CCG mailing list
>>>> In general:
>>>> Avoid discussion of business models or investment solicitations on the CCG mailing list
>>>> Rebooting Web of Trust community provides a better forum for discussion of business models
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for understanding,Kim, on behalf of chairs
>>>> On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 9:32 AM Bohdan Andriyiv <bohdan.andriyiv@validbook.org> wrote:
>>>> -- 
>>>> Kim Hamilton DuffyCTO & Principal Architect Learning MachineCo-chair W3C Credentials Community Group        kim@learningmachine.com
>>>>
>>>> Please, see updated The United Humans pitch deck. On slide 11, a typo in the amount of presale Kudos was made. It should have been 285 Bln, not 274 Bln. Please, use the corrected pitch deck in the attachment.
>>>>
>>>> -Bohdan
>>>>
>>>> ---- On Thu, 13 Dec 2018 20:25:17 +0200 Bohdan Andriyiv <bohdan.andriyiv@validbook.org> wrote ----
>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>
>>>>> I am raising seed funds to establish The United Humans organization.
>>>>>
>>>>> The purpose of The United Humans organization is to create and maintain the set of core cooperation tools and services,
>>>>> that enable human digital sovereignty, protect human rights and well-being, make human cooperation more effective, transparent and reliable.
>>>>>
>>>>> More details are in the attached pitch deck.
>>>>>
>>>>> -Bohdan
>>>>>

-- 

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