Crypto currencies are all about high decentralization. As time goes on, more and more people involved in Bitcoin realize the assignment of power to a central 'authority' is perceived to be a 'very bad thing' as it relates to direction and consensus building within the market.
Simply put, the foundation shouldn't exists in its current form. A handful of Bitcoin entrepreneurs doesn't represent the interests of ALL MANKIND'S need for various levels of computed trust. In effect, a foundation's job would simply be pushing a PR agenda for the movement. You don't need to waste effort or, more importantly, time in electing a board to go hire a PR firm.
My plan is to put together a basic marketing plan, go peddle it to a few top PR firms, and then let them take it and run with it. Because it's Bitcoin, the marketing campaign can be crowdsourced, even to the point the ads themselves contain QR codes for keeping the ads running. Imagine a Bart splash campaign at all the stations, with QR codes to track the funding and length of time they run. You could check on the funds and donate if you wanted to keep it going.
Anyway, it's all about marketing in the new economy. We don't need a foundation. We need traditional marketing and, frankly, some crisis marketing thrown in for good measure.
As long as Gavin holds the key to the 'panic button' for the entire network (which I don't think is necessarily the worst choice), he will have slightly more power over the direction of bitcoin than anyone else.
It's a key built in to the network that essentially gives him the power to broadcast a special alert signal to the network. I'm not actually sure if most clients are equipped to interpret these signals now, though.
edit: I should clarify it's built into the original satoshi client, not necessarily 'the network' and certainly not the blockchain. Someone on bitcointalk explained it as "part of the peer to peer overlay and not part of the blockchain. You can find this public key in the source code of the official client if you look."
> and then let them take it and run with it...the marketing campaign can be crowdsourced
Marketing will get done regardless of whether there is someone at the top or not. I didn't rant on in my post about decentralization of power just to put myself or someone else at the top. I'm talking about taking a methodology of raising interest and making it a global effort.
Whether that can be done or not is TBD, but I'm going to give it a whirl and see what happens.
Crisis marketing is just regular marketing with intent. I agree that it will be difficult to build a distributed marketing campaign, but that's why the ad people need to be on it.
That's what this election was supposed to be about - fixing the issue of people with checkered backgrounds leading the Foundation. Clearly it failed, and people are rightly exasperated with it.
Simply put, the foundation shouldn't exists in its current form. A handful of Bitcoin entrepreneurs doesn't represent the interests of ALL MANKIND'S need for various levels of computed trust. In effect, a foundation's job would simply be pushing a PR agenda for the movement. You don't need to waste effort or, more importantly, time in electing a board to go hire a PR firm.
My plan is to put together a basic marketing plan, go peddle it to a few top PR firms, and then let them take it and run with it. Because it's Bitcoin, the marketing campaign can be crowdsourced, even to the point the ads themselves contain QR codes for keeping the ads running. Imagine a Bart splash campaign at all the stations, with QR codes to track the funding and length of time they run. You could check on the funds and donate if you wanted to keep it going.
Anyway, it's all about marketing in the new economy. We don't need a foundation. We need traditional marketing and, frankly, some crisis marketing thrown in for good measure.