MaidSafe Dev Update - January 11, 2018

This is a fan profile promoting Safe network community discussions on the Steemit platform.
Please see the original post and the subsequent community discussion on:
https://safenetforum.org/t/maidsafe-marketing-strategy-h1-2018/20333 feel free to join us!

There are lots of great ideas coming directly from the community on the Forum about how you would like to see MaidSafe engage with marketing during the course of this year. In order to pull that conversation together, we wanted to outline very broadly the key objectives for us in order to give everyone visibility of our thinking. The starting point for the first half of 2018 is the following:

MaidSafeCoin / Safecoin
The last year has been crazy in crypto land. Valuations have rocketed, often without seeing any obvious reason for the spike. Whilst we’re fortunate to work daily on a project that attracts so many who view profit as secondary to the positive improvements in society that the SAFE Network will deliver, the price and standing of MaidSafeCoin (MAID) today does matter. Like every project, we’d like nothing more than for our supporters, many of whom have stuck with us for a lifetime (in crypto terms) to be rewarded for their hard work and patience. But, in addition, there’s no doubt that a rising price in MAID will be one of the most effective ways of capturing interest.

We want to continue to grow the community - attracting developers and also those with less technical backgrounds - as this continues to be one of our most valuable assets.

Consequently, we need to get MAID listed on more exchanges. Discussions are ongoing and will continue. We hope to be able to announce some news soon. However, due to the overall explosion of interest across the scene, many of you will understand just how much work is facing the exchanges today. We’ll update you as soon as we have definite news but this is a continuing theme this year.

In addition, this year we will be bringing the focus more strongly onto Safecoin itself. Unless you’re a day trader who is focused solely on short-term speculation, it’s important that everyone who either has or is buying MAID understands the value and benefits of Safecoin once it launches on the network and the tokens are exchanged.

Messaging around SAFE Network
Our focus will be on publicising the key benefits of the Network (in addition to the usual messages of privacy, security and freedom) in H1 2018 across a variety of mediums (articles, interviews, talks, meetups).

Very broadly speaking, these will revolve around the following messages:

No blockchain - and so no problems of scalability (unlike blockchain-based networks, e.g. Bitcoin and Ethereum) and increased privacy
Proof-of-resource is more eco-friendly than Proof-of-work
No transaction fees
Near instantaneous confirmation of transactions
Confirmation at network speed using Close Group Consensus
Multi-layered encryption on SAFE - compared to the lack of encryption with Bitcoin
Farming will be more inclusive than mining (able to be carried out on individual’s mobiles etc)
In more general terms, we will be pushing the ‘SAFE Network’ brand, as opposed to the MaidSafe company branding. Although we can see both sides of the argument, MaidSafe (the company) will ultimately just be one of many companies that is working on building applications on top of the Network once it is launched and autonomous. We need to ensure that newcomers (who will vastly exceed the current community on launch) identify with the SAFE Network.

Any confusion that existing people have over MaidSafeCoin including the word MaidSafe should disappear upon the launch of Safecoin. In the meantime, our marketing materials will continue to reinforce the Network’s connection with MaidSafeCoin across many different areas.

Community Engagement Project
We have already kicked off the Community Engagement Program and, as per the Weekly Dev Update, we’re looking forward to seeing voting open tomorrow on the first proposal for the animated Safecoin video RFP. We’ll tweak a few parts of the process moving forwards and we’re also working on finding a solution to address the current transaction costs on the Bitcoin network which will make it easier for community members to support the projects that they like with donations. As a result, over the course of the next few months, we’re looking forward to seeing more projects get proposed, funded and delivered under this process.

SAFE Network Academy
It’s crucial that we make it as easy as possible for people to find out what they need to relating to the project. Many simply don’t have the time to engage with the Forum etc in the early stages of investigation. A big thrust this year will therefore come in the form of pulling all of the disparate pieces of knowledge together into a format that’s readily accessible.

One of the key parts of this will be the SAFE Network Academy. This initiative will involve the community but with the close involvement of MaidSafe (at least initially) in order to ensure that the materials contain the most up-to-date material at all times. This is such a key area for us all, that the plan is not to launch something that is perfect from day one but instead tackles the biggest questions that newcomers face.

Platforms
With extra resource and the amazing continued support of the community, we’re now expanding our online presence in a more measured way. We plan to review and report on metrics about community growth more regularly moving forwards.

For everyone’s benefit, however, our focus is on the following:

Website redesign of www.maidsafe.net in Q1
SAFE Network Forum: the default platform for discussion (run and owned by community members)
Reddit (r/safenetwork): the primary focus for Q1 2018 (run and owned by community members)
Twitter (@maidsafe): please support us here as far as possible via likes/retweets - using the #safenetwork hashtag is really useful for the community to ensure we’re all sharing effectively
In addition, we have community members working hard at the Telegram group and the SAFE Network Slack. We’re also discussing various options for video updates moving forwards and increasing the quantity of blogs and other written content. We’ll share further thinking on this (and other platforms) very shortly.

Roadmap
Undoubtedly one of the biggest questions that we all receive! As you know, we have a very basic roadmap on the current website1. For newcomers (and to paraphrase a comment from the Forum this week), the challenge that we face here is that the Network can’t launch until all the testing is finished - and we can’t make that estimation until the tests are carried out…

We’re going to look at how we can make this clearer on the new website for newcomers with more detail and we’ll then share this across the various platforms.

Community events, conferences, meetups
One of our challenges has always been running events too far in advance of the launch of the Network. However, it does make sense to put the foundations in place now in order to give people the ability to find SAFE Network advocates around the world as the interest continues to build.

With a little more resource this year, we’ll be increasing our visibility. As always, we’d love to see members of the community pulling together events around the world which we will support as far as possible. Often this involves paying for the meetup.com registration and a few t-shirts but please contact @dugcampbell directly if you want to discuss further. There will be a more detailed post outlining our current thinking here in the not-too-distant future. Likewise, if there are events that you believe that we should be at, please let us know. Provided we have the budget and the resource, we will do our best to be there.

Hopefully this gives a little more information about our plans over the next couple of months. We’ve shared what we are able to at this point in time but of course everything remains open to feedback. Thanks to each of you again in the community, however you’re engaging with the project in advance for your support remotely. It really couldn’t work without you. Here’s to a great 2018!