I think there are a few really critical mistakes to avoid, at any rate:
1. No one speaks for the whole community. Certainly not Bruce Wagner.
2. Keep it simple and NON-TECHNICAL. The idea that you need a class taught by a con artist to learn how to use some new form of money will immediately turn off for anybody with half a brain. You don't need to know anything about wallet encryption, QCodes, hash rates, mining, trading, deflation, or how to avoid scam sites. Just get Bitcoins into peoples' hands to use as currency peer to peer on your iphone.
Things to keep in mind:
* One guy actually using it is more important a thousand people picking up a flyer and throwing it away.
* Hearing about it from your friend, or getting some from your friend, is a net positive. Hearing about it first from a scam artist is a massive fail.
* Circulation of the currency is everything to the uptake. Not trading, not education. Circulation and diffusion.
* The only things new people need to know about Bitcoin right up front are that
1/ we're promoting it for one reason only: No government or corporation can control it.
2/ The banks and financial institutions are afraid of it. It's a currency for the people.
3/ It's anonymous and untraceable like cash.
4/ You can store it on your phone.
5/ Be careful who you give it to. Like cash, you can't get it back.
* There's nothing wrong with MultiBit or BitcoinApp. Startup time needs to be FAST under these conditions. The learning curve needs to be shallow.
* Everyone who understands hash rates or mining already knows about Bitcoin and has an opinion about it. They haven't, so far, been excellent stewards of the currency. NO CLASSES.
* Why not set up a stand where people can drop off canned food and warm clothes and get paid a small amount of BTC, and other people can then buy things for a small BTC or USD donation?
Get a coin or two into the hands of a few hundred people at each event; also, give them something to buy with it. You'll see it start to get traded beyond the original group who had it.
Say NO to seminars, and NO to scam artists like Wagner. And support legitimate businesses who follow the law, but use Bitcoin to subvert corporate controls (like us).
Use BitcoinsForChristmas.com to send coins to anyone you know who's going to a protest. It's a good way to get them up and running FAST. That's is the whole point of the site; to cut through the technical babble and get the blood pumping through this economy. The key here is critical mass, and this is a critical time for reaching it.
I'm not trying to obscure the fact that we have a vested interest in getting that circulation going. But the reason WHY we have that interest is because Bitcoin's interests are our own. The cost of the requisite banking and holds to set up a casino that takes Visa/Mastercard are roughly $250k at a bare minimum; including $50k held indefinitely by the card companies, another $100k to lawyers and crooked gaming commissions, and 7% fees on all the transactions. That's why running an online casino is a game for multi-millionaires and you don't see a lot of startups in this space. We run the most transparent site on the planet, with every single card shoe published automatically and open for statistical analysis. We're 100% legal, incorporated in Costa Rica, and not taking players from countries where it would violate local law. But we still couldn't operate without either giving a majority of control over to corporate investors, just for the privilege of paying massive banking fees, or else by using a decentralized currency like Bitcoin. That's why our interests are in alignment; and whatever you think of gambling, we have a common enemy with OWS, in the massive accumulation of power by a few institutions over where and how we can use our own money. That's why we launched BitcoinsForChristmas and why we want -- and need -- for the currency to become a widely used medium of exchange while remaining independent of any central control, and while not falling victim to scammers and crooks and speculators who will drive people away from it.
/rant
This. As soon as mining and technical stuff gets involved people loose interests. Its fast, efficient, secure and fully digital. people generally need to know very little else.
