Memo for: Information

Subject: Tortoise Campfire Chatroom Overview (ver 1.0)

Author: Ken Long

Date: Jan 15, 2014

  1. Purpose of the chatroom:

a) to provide real-time discussions and information exchange among traders focusing on intraday and swing trade systems through a Tortoise-style lens

b)To engage in professionally developing discussions, exploring ideas through dialogue

c)To maintain an online trading journal for case studies of typical trades in practice

  1. Admin:

a)Part of Tortoise Silver & Gold subscription service

b)Open to seminar attendees on an unlimited free trial basis

c)Guests can be nominated by any member

  1. Location:

a)Campfire:

b)Live trading room:

c)Closed Trade Journal:

d)Searching the archives:

  1. Vision of the community:From Day 1 we have operated with this vision. We want the community to be:
  1. Voluntary: people that we know are interested in our kinds of trading would be invited and offered a free unlimited trial, and would self -select as subscribers if they decided the group added value. The unlimited free trial is a compelling force for good and relieves me of the need to be a marketer. Value will be discovered by participants and no selling is involved.
  2. Participatory: each member is invited to participate as they feel moved to do so. There will be no pressure to talk, contribute or attend. Transcripts must be available so that people from different time zones can participate in a conversation distributed through time and location and topic.
  3. Friendly: A moderator (Ken) will be able to enforce standards of acceptable public behavior. The intent is to let the community find its own level of acceptable discourse, but in general it must pass muster with my mom. We will not say or do anything our moms wouldn’t approve of.
  4. Humble: we will try to maintain a spirit of humble cooperation, acknowledging the market is not only unknown, it may very well be unknowable. We will approach it and in our discussions acknowledge that trading is like sneaking up on a semi-sleeping grizzly.
  5. Energetic: the environment must offer enough reliable, frequent value to be a place where people are eager to participate on an intraday basis through weekly basis or it will die of its own weight and irrelevance.
  6. A place for reflection: we must have ways not only to trade intraday in fast moving markets but have the ability to conduct and review thoughtful reflection
  7. A gathering place for community ideas: we want to be a place that people naturally think of to share their new ideas, lessons learned and insights
  8. Efficient: the community site must be simple and intuitive to operate and maintain, and allow for multiple modes of communication so that it is a one stop shop for community information sharing needs.
  9. Effective: Value must be added through the process of sharing, reflection, discussion and information storage. People will be encouraged, furthermore on how they derive value, so that others will be encouraged to try it.
  10. Self-funding: If the community is a true value add, then participants will be willing to pay a fair price for the value they receive.
  11. Flexible: the community solution must support multiple modes of discourse, allow for storage, have the possibility of multiple sub-groups and self-directed work group areas. It must have security, privacy, storage, transcripts, images, text and multiple modes of formatting. It must also be scalable as the community grows.
  12. Web-enabled: It absolutely must be accessible through the web, through multiple end user devices in order to be useful to travelers
  13. Low maintenance: it must have a simple robust architecture and simple tools for routine administration. Individual members must be able to configure the environment to their preferred work mode.
  14. Support world wide access and time zones: there must be no limitations for members access based on geography or time of day (This quickly became synonymous with the Web-based criteria).
  15. User-driven: the community of practice must be able to drive the direction, mode and content of discourse. It will not be imposed from above.
  16. My role will be as a content provider, administrator, marketer, editor, coach, trader and as a community guide/architect. I want to exercise minimum control for maximum positive effect and provide a rich development environment for truly gifted and creative traders.

Learning and modifications: a discussion of our observations so far

  1. One of our most important discussions has been to decide when we need to establish new rooms to handle specific threaded discussions and take those discussions outside of the main conversation room. Sometimes the technical details get in the way of the conduct of daily trading.
  1. We have developed a core set of permanent rooms that are aligned with current user interests and we supplement those with virtual rooms on a temporary basis to handle specific topics that go beyond the scope of the main conversation. If these conversations turn out to have some enduring interest, then we will create a permanent room for them and probably open a new project management area inside Basecamp.
  1. It turns out that we have several layers of participants. Their skill sets range from very competent, professional money managers who form the inner ring of our discussions to interested traders with something to say, to relatively new traders who are simply interested in observing and learning from the discussion of the members in the inner circles. The environment is flexible and supportive to meet the needs of all three subgroups. This was an important part of our design criteria and we are very pleased with the way this dynamic is unfolding.
  1. One of the most important features of this rich development environment is the ability to maintain the threaded archives complete with image files that casher all of the previous discussions. These are available for members to review at their leisure regardless of their time zone or content. This is an important part of our value add proposition.
  1. By taking care to establish a file naming protocol, I am able to use my contributions in the daily chat rooms to build my educational seminar presentations with real-life case studies that are easily retrieved from my hard drive or from the chat round.
  1. I have even been able to use the live chat room as a part of my educational seminar discussion. We develop daily trading plans during the day and in the evening in preparation for tomorrow's market. By showing this process in my educational seminar and opening a live window during the conduct of the seminar, I am able to give a live demonstration of the value add proposition. We have made money for students and chat members alike simply in the process of displaying the capabilities of the environment. This is a very powerful selling point.