NEM Foundation Update: March 2019 (Part II)

Dear community,

We would like to provide a list of updates based on the confirmation of funding of 25 million XEM, as well as an update on our transformation initiative.

Translations

Chinese - here
Spanish - here
Russian - here
Japanese - here
Italian - here

Moving forward with updates on NEM Labs

Based on the announcement from the Core Team - Update from the NEM Core Team on funding proposals for the NEM Foundation & NEM Labs; we appreciate the transparency of the Core Team in sharing their reasons for not approving the NEM Labs funding proposal. We support the recommendation that the NEM Labs team rework their proposal and submit it under the NEM Foundation Service Provider (contractor) program. We are already working with affected NEM Labs employees to apply for positions within the NEM Foundation in order to continue their contributions on growing the NEM ecosystem.

Hiring will begin within the new structure

We will be updating the NEM.io website and forums to start to begin hiring strategic team members for NEM Foundation. Hiring and interviews for all open roles are expected to begin on 1 April 2019.

Confirmation of Agatha Priscillia as the Chief Financial Officer

Agatha already has her support staff and has been an instrumental player in our audits and payment of outstanding expenses. She has more than 20 years in the finance industry and will be working with the Executive Committee and Council in the financial transition into the new structure.

Confirmation of Karen Cohen as the Interim Head of Human Resources and Operations

Karen Cohen has experience working for the consulting firm McKinsey as well as various HR and Operations roles in the blockchain industry. She is the State President of Victoria for the Australian Digital Commerce Association and Board Member of Blockchain Australia and runs Women in Blockchain Melbourne.

Confirmation of Jasmine Ng as the CEO of the NEM Blockchain Center and Business Development Director of South East Asia

Jasmine comes with extensive experience in banking and digital transformation. She will be leading the turnaround of the NEM Blockchain Center into a profit-making entity. Jasmine was formerly the Head of Strategic Digital Alliances for the largest bank in Malaysia.

The departure of Hiroki Koga

We regret to announce that Hiroki Koga has tendered his resignation as a NEM Foundation Council Member. We thank Koga-san for all of his hard work with NEM Japan and the Council and we wish him the best in all his future endeavors. We ask that the community respect his decision and grant him privacy during this time of transition. We deeply appreciate the support of the Japanese community and ask for their ongoing patience during this transition.

We recognise the important contributions of the Japanese community and are committed to open dialogue between the Japanese community and NEM Foundation, therefore, Rio Kondo has been appointed as a dedicated Project Manager to support Japanese communications and provide feedback from the Japanese community to the Council.

Progress update: Integration of NEM with Ledger

NEM Foundation is working with contributors to the NEM ecosystem and research is ongoing about a NEM integration with Ledger. Ledger is a hardware wallet with more than 1.5 million units sold across 165 countries. We will be providing progressive updates on this soon.

Progress update: NEM Foundation Catapult Roadmap

We are committed to publishing a roadmap by NEM Foundation by the end Q1 2019 (31 March 2019). The first draft has been reviewed by selected community members and we continue to work with the Core Devs for the final submission of the NEM Foundation roadmap. Progress is being made with the Project Management Committee (PMC) and we will be updating the community with a public NEM Foundation roadmap within the next 2 weeks.

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I want to personally share my thoughts with the Japan community. I have deep respect and love for the Japanese community. When the new Council took office, one of the first things I did was add translation and communication support to the Council so that every person (regardless of region) would be adequately supported so we could lead with transparency and mutual respect for the diverse cultural perspectives in the group. The Council has met twice a week since mid-December. We’ve had many hardships thrown at us and we overcame each challenge. I am proud of Hiroki and proud of our team’s ability to be agile with all the change. In the coming months, we will add in new Council members—but we will not rush this decision. We are discussing how this should best be managed and have been chatting with lawyers, core devs and team members. Until then, Rio was brought in during this transition so he could help support us to be better aware of Japan’s concerns, feedback as well as the good news coming from Japan. We sincerely appreciate all the contributions of the Japanese community and will do the best we can to help Japan now and in the future.

日本のコミュニティの皆さまへ
直接お伝えしたいことがあります。私は日本コミュニティに対する深い敬意と愛情があります。新組織の評議会が設立されてすぐ、財団より透明かつ各国に公平なコミュニケーションを出せる様に通訳としてサポート体制を導入しました。評議会は12月中旬より毎週2回も評議をして、数多くの難問を解決してきています。私は古賀氏含め全評議員のこれまでの対応をとても誇らしく思っています。ここから数ヶ月間に渡り評議員を追加しますが、急ぐ必要はないとも考えています。新たに評議員を追加するプロセスは弁護士、コアデベとチームメンバーにより協議を進めています。Rio氏は日本のコミュニティからのフィードバックや懸念事項を財団に伝える役割を果たすために採用されました。私たちは、日本コミュニティから貢献を心から感謝しています。今後も日本コミュニティをサポートするために最善を尽くしますので、よろしくお願い申し上げます。

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It’s also important to recognize the 3 new leaders (who happen to be women) that will help us begin to transform the NEM Foundation to be fiscally responsible + hyper-focused on Catapult.

  • In her role as CFO, Agatha will ensure the Foundation funds are responsibly managed and that they map to KPIs.

  • In her role as CEO of the NEM Blockchain Center and Business Development Director, Jasmine has already successfully brought in 5+ paid consulting projects while spearheading a new vision for the Malaysia Hub.

  • In her role as Interim Head of Human Resources, Karen has been leading HR efforts to ensure all the many team members around the world are properly supported as we evolve to become a stronger, more effective, and better Foundation.

We know change is hard but our plans/teams have been strategically put in place to ensure success. As always, we appreciate your support. Thank you.

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yeah the change is always difficult to accept, but anyway there are always good sides of it as well :wink:

Bringing Karen on is a great call - for those of you who don’t know she is a very well respected and active member of the crypto community here in Melbourne - lovingly referred to as Blockmum :slight_smile: Only good things will come from this placement!

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Thank you Hiroki Koga.
You have Visited me Three Times.
For the first time, I did not even see you just because my child had a cold.
It is a pity that I could not respond to your enthusiasm.

I hope to talk with you someday about the future of NEM again.

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And we shall focus on the good side of things, thanks @goupfaster

100%. Karen has been fantastic in driving the transformation process from a HR perspective. She has an able to team to support her out of Melbourne too.

Thank you @TakaNobu for your kind words. We wish Koga-san the best in what he does and I hope that both of you will get to meet some day!

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