buster said: 1) It was not 'unfortunate' as you say that Transform PR was voted out. The masternode owners spoke up and the core team should respect that vote and keep personal bias out of public expense reports. Click to expand...

How long did they perform services for us? 1 month? 2 months? 3 months? Click to expand...

Was the intention to always pay the 675 Dash to Transform PR in addition to the 3300 Dash they were supposed to get? Or did the 675 Dash only get paid once the Transform PR proposal was voted out of the system? Had the transform PR budget continued would the 675 dash still have been paid to TPR in addition to the 3300 Dash? Click to expand...

3) Below you will see two people getting paid or reimbursed for costs accrued for big events. I would like all of you out there reading this to ask yourself a couple questions. Was it more effective to pay Juan 140 Dash $800 to do a huge speech and interview numerous people while representing DASH at Anarchapulco, or sending tungfa to Miami? for $1971? I personally witnessed the effectiveness of Juan's efforts, we all did because he posted results all over these forums and other social media outlets. What were the results of Tungfa's efforts in Miami? Was it really necessary to send him? Was this a vacation or was this something that the people running the public awareness fund thought would be effective? Also you phrase this as Reimbursement. Was the plane ticket and hotel purchased with the intentions of getting paid back or were they purchased before hand, and then somebody realized that they could pay him back from public awareness funds? Click to expand...

I'm glad you found the report helpful. To respond to the concern, I understand where you are coming from, and I actually disagree that opinions have no place in any report to the community. To clarify my statement, I do think that the community's wishes were respected. After voting the project in and initiating it, the community voted it out and the project was shuttered. I think the "unfortunate" parts were that 1) we weren't able to report the first month's results before it was voted down, and 2) we breached a contract with a third party (fortunately they agreed to release us from our contract). I think it appropriate to point out in reports where I think we performed poorly and where I think we executed well, and why. I think I could have been clearer about why I think the defunding was unfortunate above.They performed services for approximately one month. The contract officially started on January 11th, 2016, but much of the planning activities were actually performed before the contract was officially signed. By February 5th the project had essentially already been shut down and a report was issued here: https://dashtalk.org/threads/transform-pr-project-closure-report.7962/ The contract was actually $6,000 per month. Part was to be paid out of the Public Awareness budget. The January budget proposal details can be found at the following link and states "This proposal is only asking for partial funding of 1100 DASH for 3 months to complete the required budget as the currently existing PR budget will now be mostly dedicated to this program with Michael for the next 3 months and will cover most of the expenses".I appreciate and understand the message that we need to be mindful of travel costs, and are open to feedback (supportive or otherwise) on how we are doing. That's the whole point of being transparent. I would point out a couple of additional pieces of information on this situation that is relevant:1) The conference attendance itself was only one benefit of having tungfa attend. We also benefited from the rare opportunity to meet in person as a team to have meetings in the mornings and evenings, to discuss roadmaps, coordinate strategy, etc. Much of the current strategy and focus was developed through brainstorming and working dinners, etc during those three days.2) Many members of the core team attended the conference and paid their own way to get there. Those that lived in Florida were able to attend for minimal personal cost. I personally paid my own hotel and flights. We could have chosen to supplement a small portion of everyone's flight and hotel instead of directing our support completely toward tungfa attending. I volunteered to attend at my own expense to allow budget to be directed elsewhere, otherwise he would not have been able to make it. These decisions were made beforehand to directly answer your question. This was NOT a situation where tungfa realized after the fact that he might be able to get reimbursed. I used the word "reimbursed" because that is exactly what it was. Dash did not buy the plane tickets and hotels directly... it simply paid back the individuals that paid directly for those items on their own.3) Days were very long and we worked hard while there. I assure you this was anything but a "vacation". We all paid our own meals out, ground transportation, and incidental expenses. So this was far from a boondoggle.4) I believe we needed everyone that came, if not more. Our booth was busy from the start to the end of the conference and I personally watched as patrons that we could have engaged walked past because we were too busy.5) Tunfa's flight was the cheapest option vs. sending kot or flare from Europe, so we were mindful of the costs and prioritized. It would have been great to use as an opportunity to get the whole core team together at once, but that proved cost prohibitive.6) I don't think the right lens to view this is "was xxxx's presentation a better use of funds than yyyy"? There will always be some investments that provide lots of value and some that provide less. It will be very hard to match the effectiveness of spending 140 Dash on Juan's presentation. For 140 Dash, we couldn't even afford to send one person to Miami, let alone obtain a booth for two days. That doesn't mean it wasn't an effective use of funds. There will always be only one use of funds that ended up with the title of "most effective" (and maybe in 2016 Juan ends up with that title). Holding all other expenses to that standard is illogical.I hope that additional context and thoughts are helpful. We look forward to additional feedback.EDIT: calling Minotaur for any corrections to the above information. I would like him to confirm my understanding before considering this absolutely correct.