[Music]
right so how to sell ideas is
fundamentally about why to sell ideas
right it's very easy to talk about the
how but if you don't know why you're
doing it there are a whole bunch of
different ways of selling ideas some of
which are completely evil like lying to
people and telling them it's going to be
great
and some of which are extremely ethical
like the scientific method which is
almost entirely about selling
discoveries right getting other people
invested enough in your experiment to
repeat it is the hard problem in science
right doing the experiment that's a hard
problem but once you've done it getting
people to replicate getting people to
accept it getting people to publish very
difficult so the why totally changes the
available how the more ethical the how
is the more you could take a kind of
High root path and for something like
ethereum H any um lie that is
communicated to people will turn in huge
distortions of the specification because
the desire for the users to have certain
features they've been led to believe
will exist will completely clashed with
technical possibility the closer you are
to truth in marketing the more
deliverable the product becomes so what
I'm basically suggesting is that we have
a deep integration between the ends and
the means does does that make sense this
notion that you want to join uh a system
which is true at every level um is just
vastly easier to build in a system that
has to lie about what it is at some
level and this is actually a core
competitive advantage of free software
projects and projects that bring Liberty
and Liberation to people over projects
which are proprietary closed and have a
whole bunch of ulterior motives like for
example Twitter right the F this
fundamental rule that if you're not
paying for it you're the you're actually
the product no longer applies when you
begin to deal with
Foss so um now I'm going to tell you how
open source ruined my
life I invented this which is in fact a
shed right but it's the world's cheapest
and easiest build shed because the walls
are a whole sheet of 4x8 or 1.2x 2.4 M
material just as it comes off the truck
the roof pieces are half a sheet so as a
result you you could take pallets of
this material which is just plywood
hundreds of tons of the stuff cut half
of it in half screw the thing together
with deck screws and you have emergency
housing this one is in Haiti just a
prototype um so after I invented this
thing I had to go off and tell people
that we could do something we hadn't
done before which was for less than the
price of a refugee tent we could provide
reasonably solid semi-permanent housing
and it's a lot less like per Refugee per
year it's somewhere between 1110th and
1/5th of the price of a tent and they
last a long time if you're in a dry
climate and you keep the thing painted
it could be 20 years for a few hundred
of plywood so once you've got a piece of
news like that you're now in the
marketing business whether you like it
or not I fortunately figured this out
pretty early 2003 like wow my next 10
years is going to be about learning how
to sell ideas because if I turn this
into a product I'm going to get
completely bound up into the capitalist
disc SCE around product which is
entirely about lying to people so that
you can get enough money to get
something done but the thing that you
get done is never quite what you said
you do this is an intense problem around
NOS they call it donor driven Aid so you
raise a bunch of money uh telling people
that you're going to go and fix AIDS in
Africa and then you turn up and you do
2% of what you said you would do and
because nobody really wants to think
about AIDS in Africa nobody pays
attention and this is how you get the
kind of monstrous long running stable
corruption which is so much a part of
what we're trying to fix right the
transparency is eaten away at every
level and then the delivery becomes
corrupt as a
result um once you start trying to
achieve social change through kind of
technological means or technosocial
means everything that you do becomes
exponentially more difficult people hold
you to an extremely high ethical
standard every decision you make has to
be considered against long-term
ramifications um if you're in the
business of trying to change the world
everything you do is on the end of this
kind of you're like 10 km long lever or
even a 10,000 km long lever and as you
pull the future changes tiny little
early decisions that were made for
example in the design of Wikipedia have
turned out to completely dominate the
long-term technical evolution of the
platform the fact that there is no
proper uh defined syntax or semantics
for the markup language in Wikipedia
makes it almost impossible to P content
out of it into anything else media Wiki
is basically a rat hole for because they
never cleaned up the parsers amazing
long-term implications from a trivial
technical decision that was made over
one Summer by somebody writing a
PHP so um changing behavior is the name
of the game right we talk about user
adoption we talk about getting
developers but what we're talking about
is getting individual human beings to
change their mind about what they'll do
I'm going to do this rather than that
and that decision point is really the
function of all of our work you got
single individual that you've never met
and probably never will to go click
rather than click and that decision then
ramifies through everything they do
after that trivial examples Firefox or
Chrome the button you pick supports
either an ecosystem which is entirely
about monitoring you to sell your data
or an ecosystem which is struggling
extremely hard to provide a better
alternative and those tiny decisions all
the stuff we were hearing about in terms
of uh interface design all of these kind
of micro decisions you know have this
consistency of purpose right all the way
through we're steering people towards
making a better world by changing their
behavior uh that is the very first hexar
built in 2003 uh it does resemble a dog
shed but it's actually quite big
inside um as the design went uh viral as
it spread from mouth to mouth and ear to
to ear lots of variations occurred these
huge ones over here I don't even know
what this big one over there is like I
no what that is I've never heard of the
people that built it people started
building big deployments oh this is a
Burning Man by the way um you can see
this enormous Dome every triangle on
that Dome is half a sheet of 4x8 so 30
sheets of 4x8 and a saw real housing 45
sare M 450 ft people love these
things right Shiny Happy People love
that
picture so one of the core of lessons
about how to sell ideas is that ideas
are bigger than products right a product
is kind of a transactional exchange
between two people you give me some
resources I'll give you a thing and the
thing is a relatively confined thing
things don't have a future they don't
tell stories they're fixed in time in
space ideas on the other hand Ripple
through reality right you know the idea
of hypertext it sure took a long time
before it became a real thing right but
at this point there's probably never
going to be an ident identifiable human
culture without hypertext in the same
way that there's probably never going to
be a human culture without the knot or
without shoes the idea gets bound into
the culture and I think that the
blockchain is kind of like that right
it's a thing which has locked itself
into the culture as an idea and then
every round of activity around that is
basically another evolution of the ideas
it kind of rolls forward into the
culture one of the critical differences
between ideas and products is that ideas
are not monopolies
so once you have an idea that's in
general currency even if there's a
temporary Monopoly or a temporary cartel
it will always break down and new forms
of the idea will come up somewhere else
with other things attached or other
things removed so at no point are we
binding people into some kind of
monopolistic ecosystem even given things
like meta's law because we're spreading
an idea first and foremost right a
pendon ledger something that gives you
this you know complete certainty about
the past turns out to be something
that's widely applicable I don't think
anybody believes that we are never going
to see another blockchain after
ethereum
right right yeah I it's lovely but the
idea is free the instantiations you know
each come with their own uh prices so I
want to talk about a little bit about
how ideas go go into culture um years
and years and years and years ago a
bunch of my friends got very serious
about the IDE idea that we might see
failed States in Europe um the number
one predictor that we made of collapsing
institutions would be that the Greek
medical system would be the first thing
in Europe to collapse which turns out to
be pretty close to what happened we also
predicted a farri swing that would
potentially bring down the Greek
government this is in 2009 so a decent
amount of head and one of the terms that
we came up with was this thing called
the black elephant and the black
elephant was the elephant in the room
that everybody will ignore right up
until the point where the thing goes on
the r page and destroys everything and
once that happens everybody will say oh
that was a Black Swan we could never
have seen it coming right can anybody
think of some black
elephants name GL Waring global warming
right the biggest treasuries yes
treasuries potentially right so 2009
2010 the black rhetoric thing was it was
INF Fringe culture it was in the dark
Mountain movement in the UK H it was
online there was a hashtag on Twitter
that was kind of a big deal nothing
happened slowly slowly slowly just a
couple of days ago Thomas bloody
Friedman does a bloody uphead about
black elephants in the New York
Times so from inception to that term is
now locked into Global
use 5
years right the
idea slowly crapped into culture because
it was a good idea because it was a
strong explanatory model for what what
we saw around us us it spread and it
spread and it spread and it spread and
this is that term jumping the chasm
right it's gone from being small
communities early adopters underground
discourse to you can say the word black
elephant in pretty much any context in
the general discourse now and you could
point to Freedman oh yeah black elephant
you know you you read about that right
and I don't think it's going to become
quite the same kind of deal as Black
Swan because it's much less kind of
psychologically comfortable but that is
an example of an idea being sold
right it's gone out at this point nobody
even remembers who came up with the term
right whether or not anybody will ever
remember the group in London that came
up with it is an open question maybe
they will maybe they won't um but once
the idea is locked into culture it's
there for
Keeps and another example resilience
Maps so this is a thing that you use for
Designing in HEX here at refugee camp
and it's a simple simple simple map of
what keeps you alive um why are we not
dying of cold in here well there's a
building there are clothes there's an
electrical grid so clothes individual
building shared in group electrical grid
shared at the nation state level the
further you go out from the center the
bigger the uh size of the entity that's
doing the sharing and the supporting
very
simple right idea creeps out that's
where it was first presented right
that's the audience look at these people
right
now uh a movement called St activism has
taken up this idea and a whole bunch of
associated stuff uh mainstream in the
art World um things like the goth
Institute supporting it it's a real
thing uh government of Spain uses it in
their pandemic flu Planet so it's become
semi-official it's used in the US as
well go back on so that notion that
these ideas kind of start small they
start in little places and then get
pushed out and pushed out and pushed out
that process is a process that we're
kind of in the middle of now right much
as this is a very impressive room of
people much as a ton of Bitcoin was
raised to finance this whole thing we
are still a very very small Edge culture
right I mean bitcoin's market cap is on
the order of what $4 billion right now
something like that which is Tiny right
I mean if you actually look at what $4
billion company looks like they're not
actually all that remarkable there are a
lot of them around so so getting from
where we are now into a position where
we have real impact not just a ton of
people are using it but a ton of people
are using it in ways which achieve the
long-term goals of the
organization right that is a series of
multipliers Factor 10 growth four five 6
eight
times right over and over and over again
it has to not just double it has to go
up to 5 of
10 so could I have a quick show of hands
who's seen this thing
thing terrifying right so this is a
model from the States called the Rogers
diffusion of innovation curve and it's
basically measuring the number of people
that have taken up an idea over time so
as you go right on the graph more and
more and more people adopt the idea you
get to a kind of peak adoption rate as
you go from early adopter to early
majority and then once you're at late
majority the adoption slows up again
until you get right down to this long
tail which is largely made of old people
that will never adopt your new
technology um this is a couple of years
old so it's got Twitter as being an
early adopter thing Twitter is now early
majority um Facebook is now late
majority everything's actually kind of
moved left a little bit uh sorry moved
um anyway you know what I'm saying so
right now this is where we are right we
are so far out that way right that there
are on the order of 50, people that if
you sat them down could give you a semi
decent explanation of what Bitcoin or
ethereum is right here's a whiteboard
tell me what a blockchain is that number
is minute right and we can talk about
how for example
tcpip is equally hard to explain still
relatively small numbers of people vast
numbers of people are able to use it but
actually most of those people understand
Concepts like connected to the
internet right they have this kind of
notion that you could be connected to
the Wi-Fi but if the Wi-Fi isn't
connected to the internet it's not going
to work they've got some basic notion
about things like packet loss maybe
there are terms that they've heard
there's a sort of gradual creeping out
right that gradual creeping out hasn't
even begun to start for the stuff that
we're talking about right there is no
gradual creeping out of things like
blockchain forking that is not the kind
of thing that people are able to discuss
at a casual level blockchain for no idea
what you talking about is that bad right
so out here right you have a very
different set of problems to the
problems of ordinary
marketing right ordinary sales ordinary
marketing you've got a few people who
are doing it in this kind of Innovator
category or maybe one step out from the
innovators it's a tenth of a percent of
the population 10% of the population
globally is 70 million
users right
so we are so far out along that bell
curve what we're really looking at doing
is spreading right the way down this
blue line as quickly as we can until
you've got a few tens of millions of
people that are familiar enough with the
basic concepts to be able to tell
whether something is good for them or
bad for them to get them into a position
where they can reason about the
proposition well enough to understand
whether they want it and that's a very
important step a lot of times we put
technology in front of people and we ask
whether they like it or not but they
actually don't feel empowered to make
the decision because they don't
understand the impact well enough to
decide whether they want it and when
that happens some people say hey let's
do it and that's your kind of early
adopters or your innovators the rest of
the population it's like let's wait and
see what happens to those guys you know
kind of like penguins in the Arctic
where they kind of let somebody go
swimming to see whether there's problem
right it's the same kind of behavior so
for us lowering the background level of
fear on un certainty and doubt about
everything cryptocurrency related
everything blockchain related everything
about this kind of paradigmatic shift in
the way the computers work all of those
kind of processes um are about making
people more and more comfortable to make
decisions because until they feel
comfortable to make a decision they
can't say yes they won't click on the
button to download until they know what
it is they're getting
into so processes for doing this firstly
like it or not we are all in sales right
I was an engineer I was working on
cryptocurrency stuff 2 2001 I was
designing a stock market that ran using
an append only general ledger but it was
centralized tons and tons and tons of
digital signatures lots of round Robins
um I deleted for my prototypes for
reasons I don't discuss very much once I
was out of crypto I began to understand
the world in a different way right
crypto trains you to think about things
in a way which is very much about
narrowing of access to information and
it's in many ways the opposite mindset
to sales so there's quite a substantial
kind of psychological jump from saying
right these are the things we want
everyone to know these are the things we
want nobody except authorized people to
know and training The Reflex of getting
out of secrecy culture and saying yeah
come on have one look it's amazing see
this it's quite a substantial step all
of us are in a position where we're
Gathering and raising support for the
project whether it's hiring whether it's
recruiting people to work on the open
source code base in the areas which are
not currently being covered by the team
whether it's journalists whether it's uh
investors who we want to get funding
daps every single person in the
institution has contact with people who
are outside of the institution all of
that God help us is
sales right that step of realizing that
we're all attempting to increase the
number of people thinking about this
stuff and using it by a factor of 10 and
we want those people to increase it by
another factor of 10 and those people to
increase it by another factor of 10 five
or six times before we even get started
right we all have to be in a position
where we are constantly communicating
the vision to people in a language that
gets us the next factor of 10 jump does
this sort of make sense as a model right
quite aggressive quite ambitious but not
at all
unreasonable so first thing make sure
you understand what it is that you're
proposing to to people if you're
inviting somebody to come and actually
write code with you make sure you
understand what it is that you need them
to do not just at a technical sense but
why it is they should be feel motivated
to do this right why is it you know for
you to sit down and do this with me well
because all the way back up the chain
we've got a bunch of Big Ideas that we
want to implement and you're building a
brick in that road right but you have to
understand what the offer is before
anybody can accept it and that's quite
tricky because until you can repeat it
to yourself it's quite difficult to
really understand what the offer is
practice explaining it to people like
you so if I'm explaining this stuff to
another you know mid 40s former
programmer that's really pretty easy oh
you remember back in the day I remember
back in the day very simple if I'm
communicating that to somebody that's
unlike me it's a much more difficult
cell so practice on your
friends this is not just kind of cult
leaders ship tactics although it might
be um practice on your friends because
it minimizes the incidental complexity
of the communication process right if
you're communicating with somebody same
culture same age same technical skills
and you're having the conversation for
the first time there are no extra
barriers to the communication there
there's just you and them having a
conversation about a thing in a space
that you both well understand and can
see and Define practice it until it's
easy might take four or five conv ation
but without that practice it's very
difficult to start talking to people
that are not like
you and as you get to this kind of third
step you begin to say right I'm going to
try telling this story to somebody who's
older to somebody who's younger to
somebody who is non-technical to people
who have a completely different
political understanding of the world to
people from a different culture
different country try and go across one
barrier at a time this time I'm going to
try and communicate across an age
barrier this time I'm going to try and
communicate across a professional
barrier and as you do that what you're
going to notice is that people have
different questions they have different
understandings of the world they have
their own story about your
story and getting a sense of how
radically different different people's
understanding of the world is is one of
the hardest parts about doing this kind
of strategic
Communications because getting everybody
that is like us on board is relatively
easy and relatively useless it will get
us a a fair bit down that blue line but
it will leave us so attached to that
story that we won't be able to jump
across and get into the early
majority right even making it to the
first 2% of the
innovators requires a story that
generalizes to the point where one
person in 50 understands exactly what
you're on about it's a big jump and what
hits us hardest is that everybody has
their own world model this is the
hardest thing about Communications uh I
know uh friend of mine who describes
himself as a strategic
listener right and strategic listening
you just sit and you try and understand
exactly how somebody sees the world when
they're not like you and it's not a
quick process you know think of how long
it would take to understand the position
of let's say radical Muslims fighting in
Iraq how many years work is going to
take somebody to get into a position
where they fully understand the other
person's World model to the point where
they can have a straight conversation
with them right to understand even your
enemies perfectly is a really hard job
and we have to do that because for
example
Regulators look at us and wonder what in
God's name is
that any idea no idea do we need to do
anything about this I have no idea how
we would tell Mr
[Music]
George is there anyone we could ask no I
don't think we know anybody who knows
anything about this right and with Gulfs
of understanding on that scale
the behavior that will occur is
completely
undetermined right they could ignore it
for 50 years they could freak the hell
out no way to know no consistency so
strategic listening to really understand
the world model of everybody around you
is a huge part of learning how to do
strategic Communications and all of our
Communications are strategic because we
are tiny the world is big and we want
them all to move it's all
strategy right the people that you hire
the people that you communicate with on
forums the people who are building it
and hitting bugs any single one of those
could unlock the correct version of the
story or the correct Insight that adds
another Factor 10 to the user
base that adds another Factor 10 to the
size of the open source Community doing
the development work you know if we had
another 900 programmers involved in this
thing in a year that would be really
useful wouldn't it right be like raising
another $200 million
amazing right so examples of great
communication of this type
Caz it just do it to infinity and beyond
do what th Wilt should be the whole of
the wall be the change you want to see
in the world from each according to his
abilities to each according to his
needs right each one of these is a
phrase which has become to a greater or
lesser degree Universal some of these
phrases indicate World models that we
think are acceptable other indicate
World models that are
unacceptable is Coke actually it
no actually I don't think it's even a
very good symbol for it it's a corrosive
sugary beverage um be the change you
want to see in the world that really is
a good one right it is a good one you
have to think really hard if you're
going to argue with that and by the time
you are thinking that hard you're
probably taking a moral position rather
than a self-interested one maybe that's
a good one maybe it's not right so at
some point you get into a position where
if you're messaging is sufficiently
Universal it becomes kind of like this
it doesn't necessarily have a simple
meaning anymore because the phrase is
completely embedded in a matrix of
beliefs history experience uh the whole
social structure that gave rise to the
Innovation all of this stuff gets in
mesed in these phrases in meshed in the
logos think of the Olympic
rings right it triggers a whole bunch of
semantic associations competition
Global Community enormously powerful
athletes you know the history of the
Olympics something about Greece maybe
it's all embedded in that right what
does that ethereum logo actually mean
right now not very much to most people
but to a small community of people it
means this extremely high ideal about
the kind of world that we'd like to live
in how do we teach more people that
that's what that logo means right
strategic communication
every single bug
report has to be handled in a way that
eventually teaches people yeah when you
see that symbol it's a square deal it's
the real deal they're not going to mess
you around it's the right thing to do
and that is something that has to
percolate right through not just the
organization but also the user Community
it's about
values now this is the best book in the
world on strategic Communications right
I apologize for its name I apologize
even more for its content it is
hilariously offensive it's a product of
the 1970s 1960s When It Was Written it's
a bunch of folk tales by an advertising
executive in America called Bob PRK and
Bob pran was an honest advertising
executive who hated lying to the people
that were buying things so it's a whole
bunch of stories about how Bob prakan
sold Things based on telling the truth
and because the book was written on a
bet he had a bet that he could tell
Christian themed advertising book so he
wrote a Christian themed advertising
book and turned it into a best seller
which is kind of an example of the
master of advertising demonstrating his
capability even with a handicap like
that he could produce an amazing
advertising book it's normally sold
under the name prian Testament but if
you're looking for it it's usually
easier to find as Christ was an adman
you can only find it used it's very
scarce get hold of a copy read it pass
it around somebody scan it and make a
PDF I think I think he's
dead so right strategic Communications
in this kind of mode yes it has been
used for advertising but it's also the
core DNA of social change movements
right the free software movement is
essentially a strategic communications
project it's just that one of the
communications that we want from people
is that they emit free code as a
communication right I attach the GPL to
my work that's my communication with the
world so let's wrap this up and go to
the pop fully General eniz communication
Coke is It Be the Change you want to see
in the world rare this is not our goal
if we happen to get one of those that
would be amazing don't count on it don't
necessarily strive for it those things
are literally you know there are four or
five dozen of them in the culture at any
given time they're they're not common
All You Need Is Love who's going to say
something is
perfect getting into a position where
you've got 10 people to understand what
it is that you mean when you say
ethereum is not an intractable problem
because you can start with the people
who are like you and you can learn how
to communicate with them and if you do
it right they can learn how to
communicate with their friends and
gradually gradually gradually gradually
the stuff will begin to move as time
passes the message changes and becomes
more adaptive you hit a new community of
users for them it's about convenience
rather than privacy for these guys over
here it's about security rather than
convenience everybody retells the story
in a slightly different way the story
becomes kind of fractal
every time you get a new version of the
message that pushes you further down
into uh wider groups you get into a
position where a new kind of people
become engaged for example Twitter in
America divides into two camps there's
white Twitter and there's black Twitter
exactly the same technology black
teenagers have a completely different
set of social protocols that they
express through Twitter and it's a huge
part of the Twitter user base at some
point there there was a bridge where
Twitter went from being you know the
darling of the do world to some black
kid sitting there on a feature phone
going like oh I see what you do with
this and off it goes in a whole new
Direction and if you do the social
network analysis you can see it's two
completely different sets of people
following each
other right now ethereum right ethereum
is an agnostic technology at pretty
fundamental level but what if we
discovered that it became enormously
popular for people who do things like
play chess because you to put every move
into a blockchain to make sure that
people aren't screwing each other on the
forums you could get I don't know 10 15
20 million users that way and they might
not be particularly useful politically
for the long-term agenda but what would
we do if we suddenly discovered that
ethereum became that chess thing because
chess people turned out to be the main
users you have to say that's amazing and
then continue to
build and we don't know the environment
that we're operating and where that jump
might be we kind of think Finance I
wonder if it's not going to turn out to
be web hosting you know the first big
win could turn out to be almost anything
so we have to stay alert to this notion
that it's people that aren't like us
that represent the next jump because
we've already gotten a pretty good job
of the immediate set of people that are
similar and it's all about adding more
and more and more difference and
diversity to the project particularly in
the user base but you can't reach the
users without the developers and the
whole thing becomes this quest for a
broader and broader and broader
inclusivity so so that we can actually
get the growth that we're looking for
does this sort of make sense as a model
right little ambitious little strange
this is the
notion so two final points because we're
doing something that we actually believe
in as we actually uh have these
conversations with people what's
happening is we're showing them a piece
of our world model This is How I Live
this is what I actually believe this is
what we want to do about the world and
its condition and that directness of
communication is what makes this an
honest
project you're not selling something
because typically we think of selling is
being associated with lying you're not
selling something by telling people
something which is not true you're
showing them an idea or a perspective or
a world model which is useful to them in
a way that their current world model
doesn't let them Reach they adopt a
little piece of your perspective because
your perspective shows them something
they didn't have before and that is a
very very simple approach to two people
talking and one person
allowing the other person to see
something they hadn't seen before yeah
yeah there's a shortcut over here you're
just going to go over the humpback
bridge and then take a left takes you
right down to the station that's great
you never go the old way again oh you're
transferring money to India oh there's a
better way of doing that let me tell you
and after that jump happens different
game right have you tried doing it on a
blockchain different
game all of this stuff is how we build
the strength that comes with having a
genuinely diverse community
and that is how we're going to get the
growth it's an entire section of people
at a time it's not that we spread all
the way down through one horizontal and
then jump to another horizontal it's
that we spread to a whole bunch of
different verticals and race off in
different directions and we can only do
that by building this enormously broad
base um oh final pie so to get effective
collaboration people need to either
shared experiences or shared
expectations shared experiences history
shared expectations project future
either one will work it's easiest to
spread this stuff in the places where
there's shared uh shared experience
which is the Bitcoin Community shared
expectation who are the people that
expect the world to work in the way that
ethereum makes it work and if we can
identify who those people are that's a
community of people for whom ethereum
looks like their future Ah that's
exactly what I always wanted give that
to
me so um that's it thank you very much
oh