Alexandra Tinsman for President

Foundation Elections
#1

Over the past few weeks many NEM leaders and community have asked me to consider running for NEM Foundation President, and today I’m happy to say yes, I am running for President of the NEM Foundation.

You can watch my announcement video HERE.

So why am I running?

It’s been two years since the NEM Foundation began. And the industry has changed a lot. With new leadership, it’s an opportunity to update strategy and re-focus on our goals.

So here’s my goal. I am DONE with the sleeping giant.

I have three big changes.

First, we are going to fix and release NEM’s roadmap, including the economy and sustainability.

Second, we are going to shift focus to hiring more core developers and speeding up releases.

Third, we are going to improve the transparency and accountability of the Foundation.

By November 23rd, I’ll share my full Candidate Policy document (along with all other candidates) with my vision for the future of NEM. Then I’ll do an AMA where you can ask questions. You can find the Candidate Policy Documents HERE.

I want to thank the community who has been my guide over the past year and a half on the issues that matter most. I talk to you almost every day in Telegram, Twitter and YouTube. This feedback has been critical to understanding the community’s vision. I am continually inspired by you.

I also want to personally thank Jaguar and the other core devs for giving me insight into how I can best support NEM.

Last, I want to thank every NEM Foundation team member across the globe. You all are amazing and it’s an honor to work alongside you.

And to everyone, you are invited to contact me directly. I reply to all messages. Share your thoughts. And let’s do this together.

Follow Up Questions: (More will be added as the community reaches out to me. Note: I will not discuss what is in my Candidate Policy Document until all Apostilled documents are revealed at the end of November. By adhering to this, it ensures that the strategy the all candidates provide at truly their own and not lifted from another candidate’s strategy plan.)

1. Are you running for President and Vice President? Answer: Originally I had planned to run for both President and VP but I made the final decision to focus on the role of President and therefore never submitted for the role of VP.

Anyone can run for any position. Ideally, the candidates with the most strategic plans should be elected to lead NEM so I encourage all community and team members interested in leading change to do so.

2. Where can I find more about your background? I made this post back in June 2018 in the NEM Forums. My LinkedIn has always been in all my videos. I’ll be doing an AMA after the Candidate Policy Documents are released and am happy to answer additional questions.

3. Will all candidate videos be posted on Inside NEM Twitter? Yes, I will post every candidate video on the Inside NEM Twitter channel. Updated: As of December 3, 2018, I have seen videos from Laura Takenaka, Stephen Chia, Trikar, and Mark Price, Nelson Valero and Jeff McDonald. As more candidates come forward, I am happy to support them as well.

4. Are you an Advisor or involved in any other crypto projects? No, I am not. I have turned down every Advisorship invitation and have no large holdings in any other tokens. I have no side deals nor kickbacks with partners. 100% of my time is spent dedicated to NEM.

5. Can you share more into your goals for 2019? Yes! You can check out my Candidate Policy document HERE and also watch a video I made explaining my top 3 goals/strategies for the NEM Foundation in 2019 HERE.

6. Who would you like to see on the Council in 2019? Now that Candidate Policy Documents have been released, I’ll be highlighting a mix of candidates that I believe will best help NEM move forward (based on their current contributions to NEM, activity in our community, their expertise/business acumen to help shape a more diverse global Council skill set, temperament/ability to work collectively, and also my professional relationship with these candidates.) I believe that NEM owns the community and that every one who votes in this election has the freedom to choose who they feel best represents the values of NEM. I’ll start off with sharing some of my top picks including but not limited to:

  • Jeff McDonald is a top pick for me and I made this video on all the reasons why

  • Steve Li, Head of NEM China, is another candidate I’m endorsing and here’s my video for why you should consider Steve as a Council Member.

  • Laura Takenaka, Head of NEM Thailand. A steady voice in the community, who has been key to helping me navigate partnerships including the United Nations and Kind Heaven, Laura has my vote for Council Member.

  • Hiroshi Koga, Head of NEM Japan.

  • Mark Price, CEO of Devslopes + NEM Consultant.

  • Pedro Gutierrez, Head of NEM LATAM. I’ve watched Pedro grow NEM LATAM and am inspired by his leadership. Here’s a few more reasons why I see Pedro’s expertise as a value to the new Council.

  • Jason Lee, Director for Australia and New Zealand. He’s a solid fit for the position as Secretary and here’s why!

  • Ricardo “Trikar” Medrano, Head of NEM Hong Kong. Trikar has demonstrated his ability to effectively work across our global teams and also our community. He’s a good choice to consider for the upcoming Council and here’s why.

  • Bartiomiej “Tony” Sanak, NEM Influencer + Developer. He is one of the most passionate and prolific community contributers to NEM. I believe he would push the new Council to be more accountable and cognizant of the community/developer’s perspective. Here’s a short video on why I believe he should be elected.

  • Kimble Ngo, Head of NEM Vietnam.

Note: Additional endorsement videos will be made as I continue to research more on the other candidate backgrounds. And again, I have faith in our community’s ability to pick the right mix of candidates THEY want to see lead NEM in the coming years.

Sample Endorsements

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22 Likes
#2

Could you please elaborate on how you are going to improve transparency and accountability?

1 Like
#3

Yes, I am happy to. This will be included in the Candidate Policy doc that is released at the end of November. Thanks for your patience.

3 Likes
#5

Hi Alex thanks for running!

I like your 3 point focus.

Really hope you thoroughly address the transparency/accountability of the Foundation especially with the budgeting/funds. This will bolster community support and trust in the NF the most I believe. To see a working budget, funds on hand, when XEM is sold, blockchain centre costs, etc … it seems the NEM community is mostly in the dark about all this.

All the best!

4 Likes
#6

GO ALEX. WE NEED CHANGE.
Good luck.

2 Likes
#7

Alex will be getting my pick too.

2 Likes
#8

  1. What is your position on the current election process and using PoI for elections like this?

  2. What is your position on making processes, decisions and information more transparent for the community? (Council decisions, who voted on what, Foundation Charter, roadmaps, etc.)

  3. What is your position on the foundation’s outside communication?

6 Likes
#9

Hey Mexxer,

  1. Voting should have been POI and it’s clear that I’m not the only one who supports this view.
  2. The NEM Foundation serves the community and has a responsibility to the community to be transparent. Every Council meeting should release a public version of the notes. While sensitive details should be kept confidential, there should always be a public record of who attended the meeting, main topics discussed, and which Council members cast votes.
  3. Ineffective. It’s time to change that.
9 Likes
#10

Thanks @Inside_NEM (aka Alex) appreciate your response and glad you support PoI and a more open foundation

1 Like
#11

Would you support for a complete audit of NEM foundation accounts to understand the burn rate and operational expense and to analyze the funds utilization ?

1 Like
#12

Yes, I would support an audit. To be clear, the Council has done audits, knows regional burn rates, and how much funding is available as it stands today. The challenge has actually been getting quarterly regional budgets finalized, approved and funded in a timely manner. Some of us have (or had) a small amount of seed money to set up expanding regional entities - but nothing more. This delay has resulted in losing global talent, prohibiting progress, stressing out staff attempting to pay for teams out of their own pockets and has undermined our ability to move NEM forward. At the same time, no budget can be approved without a comprehensive strategy, transparency in where funds would go or projected burn rate. A new budgeting template
was rolled out at the beginning of Q4. Only a few actually submitted their Q4 budget - North America was one of them. Now there is a back up delay in getting budgets approved for Q4 (in mid-Nov) so the end result is a standstill and growing resentment. We have funds for many years to come. Governance is the issue.

5 Likes
#13

Thank you for a clear answer. I genuinely want you to win. :slight_smile: Cheers

1 Like
#14

As a corporate finance guy, I would say that budget submission must be handed in on time in any case, and be punishable if they are not.

1 Like
#16

:+1:

1 Like
#17

Hey Biocrypt! I wanted to circle back on your ask around transparency and accountability. I made a new video that highlights my top 3 strategies for the NEM Foundation in 2019 and how transparency plays a part in this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6wpS7bZ3Ns I’ll also be sharing additional content in the coming week. Let me know if you have any specific questions on this - thanks!

1 Like
#18

I seen your video and I do not think a catapult road map (pretty much rule of thumb) amounts to a whole pile of beans.
You think we are all sitting here to hear the announcement of a very rudimentary sketch that in reality holds nothing but a mud map that should have been scribbled up 12 months ago?

How long will it take you to scratch up a real action plan?

Dan

1 Like
#19

Hi Dan,
Thanks for your feedback and my apologies for the delay in response. I was on a plane coming back from Taiwan to USA (without WI-FI) so I’ve been out of the communication loop in the last day or so. This was a great question. You are right. We need to pull the trigger and move forward. It’s not just me that would make these decisions, it’s getting consensus from our new Council and sharing the outcome. That said, it’s my goal to provide strong leadership in this area.

The Catapult roadmap is important because it articulates the future of the NEM Foundation. Meaning, the features that are outlined in the roadmap need to align with the anticipated needs to support the future partnerships and most importantly the stability of the Foundation. There’s A LOT that goes into this.

Back in September, I began reviewing the Catapult roadmap and asked questions to the team contributing to the doc (mainly Kristof, Aleix, Jeff, Paul R, Nate from TB and core devs.) My takeaway from reading the Catapult roadmap doc was that the NF really needs a CTO to help shape strategy from the enterprise point of view. Kristof was trying to hire someone but it’s taken longer than he had hoped to fill this position. We pride ourselves on being a company focused on building world-class tools for enterprises to use but the roadmap (in its current form) wasn’t something that any company CTO or Project Manager would be able to take action on. We also have a tech working group that for months has been outlining needs and features but this can only go so far without the right technical leadership.

The short answer is that we need to release the latest draft of the roadmap we have in Q1 2019, hire a CTO, and hire project managers. The disconnect here is that the devs don’t directly interact with the businesses developing on NEM. These business needs should be factored into the feature set. So releasing our draft would help give our partners and community a chance to be a part of the discussion. This is my goal for Q1.

In addition to this, the North America team has commissioned a third-party to help give insight into how well current practices ensure the sustainability of the Foundation, and under what circumstances
could its solvency be at risk. This study won’t be complete until end-January. There is also interest in improvements to our economic system tuning and new economy features that could improve or even rebuild the entire tokenomic system in future iterations of our tech. This study is needed to help support the Catapult roadmap by providing better clarity into our sustainability.

We’ve been working on our market strategy questions for what is needed for the next 2 years and providing real answers to what features will help us drive demand for XEM to become the best in the category.

For example, every exchange that carries XEM will have developers that need to learn how to transition over to public Catapult. So all of this is more than just writing code. It’s having a launch strategy, migration plan, and defining future milestones. This requires the right skills in team members to help us execute.

I’ll share a more detailed plan on this soon. Thanks for asking hard questions. We need more of them.

-Alex

4 Likes
#20

As always solid answers.

Interesting about the CTO, I would have thought there would maybe have been a lot of people that would wanted to fill this post, from the existing Nembers pool, but I guess they might have to much on their plates currently or it never got to point where the post was advertised or opened up, due to other reasons ?

CTO in this case would be a hard match to find, you are not just looking for a technical sound architecture person, but one with some level of leadership, business and soft skills combine with personal characteristic that are some what aligned with NEM’s (The communities) vision, mission, philosophy.
Did we previously have a CTO or was it a dual role share by a couple of people ?
I thought the Devs, combined with the President and Vice filled up this role ?

Is there a break down some where of NEM foundation funding available ? Would be interesting to see how much there is to work with currently and if there was/is a planned breakdown on how this was going to be utilized in the upcoming years or so ?

Anyways, one can see you have come a long way with learning as much as you can in this space Alex. Like a sponge. soaking up water.

2 Likes
#21

Thanks for the feedback, Josia.

Kristof had made a previous offer to someone to oversee Center of Excellence (in a role similar to CTO) but the candidate declined so we’re back to square one. We’ve never had a CTO - which is part of the problem. The closest we had to a CTO was Albert Castellana (who left the Council earlier this year and now works at Radix leading their product development.)

It’s unrealistic for us to expect the role of CTO to be filled by the NF President, VP and core devs. Clearly, this wasn’t effective so far. Considerations:
1.) The role of the core devs was never to lead NF strategy. That’s one of the reasons they work for Tech Bureau, not the NEM Foundation. Their role is to create the code aligning with the NF’s vision.
2.) We’ve suffered from a lack of having a supporting VP when Jeff stepped down earlier this year. It’s been insane to see Kristof stretched thin as interim President with no VP. He did the best he could considering what he was handed and I sincerely appreciate his contributions.
3.) A CTO should be focused on one goal - our tech.

All funds for NF are currently managed internally by the Council. The Council/core devs have the burn rate and breakdown by regions. What is missing, however, is the 2019 - 2020 yearly regional budgets. The current process has been to submit quarterly budgets. Most regions just submitted their bare-bones budgets for Q1 as of a few days ago. It’s a painful process and will need to be immediately tackled by the new Council and new ExCo.

-Alex

5 Likes
#22

Was Paul Rieger in talks regarding the CTO-Role?

3 Likes