Hi everyone!
I just want to say two quick things about the project:
1)
Wow!2) Whoa, slow down, hold your horses, first things first!
You don't know me because I was in the throes of caffeine withdrawal and missed the meetup. Still feeling kinda slow, really, hope it goes away...
So I missed the first, most important, most basic element of the project: what kind of organization are we talking about?
Is this supposed to be a startup, a charity, a co-op? This has an impact on
everything, from who owns what to who is responsible for accidents/thievery right down to producing tax reports at the end of the fiscal year. I haven't seen anyone mention this at all, all I know is that Jake.Hobson is donating (probably in fact loaning
) his building... But since apparently Brunic says Jake.Hobson 'accepted' a name, it means he's actually more of a CEO.
So which is it, a startup, a co-op, an educational institution? This is
very important since it dictates the goals of the enterprise, who participates, and why! How many people really want to remain volunteers when the subject is MONEY?
It must be explicitly stated RIGHT AWAY to avoid any trouble down the road... which might be as soon as next weekend if someone gets hurt cleaning up the place, or even if someone's feelings get hurt because their name wasn't accepted... You really can't mess with things as evanescent as Intellectual Property in this field of work. Also since cryptocoins are in a legal grey area, and the obvious goal of this organization is to make them more acceptable, we cannot operate in a grey area ourselves.
So... spill the beans please.
If you can't do it publicly, at least in pm's.
Speaking of the name, may I suggest "La petite bite coin"? (Pardon my French
) No? Awww... I was hoping for something clever that also ties back to Quebec's heritage, something along the lines of 'The Hudson's Bitcoin Company'. Trading posts (comptoirs) were the financial lifeblood of Canada's development, much like Bitcoin is the early system for a new economy... Oh well. I'll just have to wait and see.
Projects/endeavours:1) No matter what shape the organization takes, it seems clear to me that the first project to work on in the hackerspace is an ATM. First because if you want to exchange money it means you need a full time employee that isn't bothered with having thousands in cash. And cash exchanges are well-known to have unsavory characters hanging about them, while an ATM feels much safer and anonymous. I've actually started looking around for an old ATM to strip and reuse but it's probably not a one-man job considering how heavy they are.
This is also an essential element to get BTC/LTC accepted and bypass some of the potential legal hurdles of BTC/CAD exchanges. Whilst currently the Can. Gov. seems happy to allow these trades as long as you declare your capital gains, banks are being overly cautious (like BMO shutting down accounts). We need to bypass banks completely.
2) The second (and more fundamental, grass-roots project) should be to get local shops to accept LTC as forms of payments. Can you buy Ex Centris tickets in BTC? Why not?!? What about fries or coffee at the snack bar next door? Let's make it easy for them, teach them how, loan/sell hardware if necessary, even sell local wi-fi for BTC...
This means that yes, a shop on the first floor is interesting, but it should AVOID COMPETING IN ALL WAYS with local stores. Therefore not a straightforward coffee shop or whatever.
The museum/school approach might seem interesting at first glance but really, who is going to be so bored in Montreal as to decide to walk into a museum of things on the internet and have to learn stuff?
That's going to be a very minor thing, imho.
BUT THERE IS A VERY INTERESTING APPROACH (imho again
) WE MIGHT TAKE that would make it all
KICK ASS:
Bitcoin is the first truly international, border-free, currency. Make the place not just a store, but an international center. THE International Center for CryptoStudies.
Sell stuff you can only buy with bitcoins/LTC... Help people invest in BTC/LTC markets! Import that weird hat made by a woman who lives on a pile of refuse in Bangladesh and who lives on a microloan from a Goodwill foundation! You can think of this 'store' as the first branch in an international bitcoin market. Sell local maple syrup for Bitcoins to Japan's BTC store!
Because honestly who is going to buy a Bitcoin t-shirt except a miner? Who can already buy that t-shirt himself because he knows all about the Internet?
Also sell physical copies of digital media... For example sure, you can download a lot of music for free from the Net, but what if you have a fave Glitch-style or circuit-bending artist, and there's autographed CD's in the store? (see also 2nd floor uses, maybe we can attract digital divas or personalities for private shows, say, I dunno, Felicia Day or get Kevin Rose drunk to talk about BTC
)
It would be pretty cool to be able to walk into a store, select a startup from a list of approved project (with possible local representative from the 3rd floor), crowdfund it right away with BTC and come back to the store later for the 'reward' when the project launches (like for example you financed Ouya and can come pick up the console at the store, maybe get some support there too)
In other words, the twisted idea is not to try to get Bitcoins on the map, it's to get Montréal on the map with Bitcoins!
3) This International approach creates a sensible and useful need for the 2nd floor: The 'International' part of the center.
This floor could be a hub for information on hot international issues where Cryptocoins could and may make an impact, such as the Taksim square in Turkey, Cyprus, alternative technologies, conspiracies et al. Live Skype video of protests anyone?
A good place for the media to get information and sound bytes, it should be kept stocked with fresh data of all sorts and one or two few politics/economics students of course.
There should be a giant screen TV (garbage dived for, of course) on at all time with politics/international/financial news. In fact a very cool twist would be to get a "Junk Raiders"-type TV show to build the place.
Now, unfortunately with the free coffee and doughnuts this would probably attract a lot of 99%-ers (may I say 'carrés rouges'?
) who, traditionally, don't have money of their own so they would be loss-leaders of sorts and hard to throw out in the evening but they probably make excellent vectors for the Bitcoin creed... Also, some of them might be women.
Get some wallets on these poor peoples' iPhone, guys!
Make it cool enough and this could become a mecca of the tech space in MTL.
(Don't know how local Google feels about Kevin Rose showing up though, just ranting here. Might be trouble if Google starts their own coin clone
)
It would also function as a local EFF/legal info center. I don't know that there's a very active EFF-style organization in Montreal but I believe it is a necessity. Get some IP lawyers to do some pro-bono work? See how the open source side lives?
I'm sure I could get some of my peeps from open source involved...
The difficulty is, of course, to remain neutral, but if we have a clear charter (our stated goal being to make BTC/LTC easier to use and support justified legal claims from our government) we should be able to manage...
Oh yes and it's not just limited to politics/economics, when I say things like alternative technologies there's a need to make some of the odder ideas from the Net more easily available. Cryptocoins is a good example, but there's things like 3D printing which could be shared, studying the impact of that on Quebec's society, educate people about Buckminster Fuller's other ideas, help people with solar/hydro/power independence, explain the scams, conspiracies and quack technologies out there (hm, might get a grant for that)...
4) Third floor is the hackerspace. Off limits to mortals. Now, there's already a hackerspace in Montreal and I don't know that it's very viable (never been there). It's certain that Bitcoiners are a much smaller subgroup of hackers so that means it's not self-sustaining. But the suggested rate is 50$ a month... So this all goes back to what type of organisation it is. Who pays for electricity? I had in mind the idea of making the hackerspace a co-op (till launches) where you can be a member if you contribute any sort of hashrate to the hackerspace's pool (or equivalent in $). Simple and easy - and no stupid hot giant farm in the middle of the hackerspace itself!
Although if there's a few miners around for demonstration purposes they could be turned into a kick-ass arcade at will.
I'm sure you can come up with great project ideas in the hackerspace but if you need help I've been leading tech startups for a decade and I have a lot of free time on my hands for the moment.
Anyway just a few random thoughts... If I could implement just a few of them I'd feel so enriched!
Hope this helps!
PS: I'm curious, how many in this thread are english-only speakers?
PPS: I'm probably going to edit and repost this to my own blog.
--PLC
