script: incorporate suggestions

1 files changed, 45 insertions, 101 deletions

diff --git a/presentations/pitch-ubs/pitch5m-script.txt b/presentations/pitch-ubs/pitch5m-script.txt
index b0f68d4..b01ef71 100644
--- a/presentations/pitch-ubs/pitch5m-script.txt
+++ b/presentations/pitch-ubs/pitch5m-script.txt
@@ -1,74 +1,47 @@
 We are developing Taler, a privacy-preserving payment solution.
 
-Taler is safe and convenient for customers and stores.  It is easy to deduct
-taxes from Taler payments, so it will be favored by governments and beneficial
-to society.
+Our system is based on blind signatures, which has been considered *the*
+correct way to do payments in the expert community for the past 30 years.  This
+approach had some practical problems in the past, but our team has made a
+breakthrough that actually makes it practical.
 
-You should think of Taler as Cash for the digital world.  Let's see how it
-would work.
+You should think of Taler as Cash for the digital world.
 
-# Dold: We said we're doing the computer purchase story,
-# Dold: but I think the pregnancy story grabs more attention.
-# Dold: The refund is included later.
+It's secure and convenient for customers and stores, but it is also easy to
+deduct taxes from Taler payments, so it will be favored by governments and
+beneficial to society in general.
 
-# Dold: We really need a nice graphical representation for the Taler wallet.
+Let's see how it works for a customer.
 
-# -- customer story --
+Sarah needs to buy a pregnancy test.  A few days ago, she topped up the Taler
+wallet on her smartphone with 200EUR.  She could have done that with online
+banking or an ATM terminal that supports Taler.
 
-Sarah needs to buy a pregnancy test.  A few days ago, she topped up her Taler
-wallet with 200EUR, by going to an ATM that allows her to withdraw Talers
-instead of bank notes.
-
-Instead of her old leather wallet, she uses an NFC token as her digital wallet.
-We call this NFC token her Taler wallet, but there are also other ways to store
-your Talers, for example on your smart phone.
-
-# Dold: Do we need this?
-If there hadn't been any ATM for Talers close to Sarah, she would've used
-online banking to top up her digital wallet.
-
-# Dold:  Is this the right place to say it?  I think
-# Dold:  this info needs to be in the pitch, but where?
 The money in Sarah's Taler wallet represents her local currency, there is no
 separate currency like we would have with Bitcoins.
 
-But back to her situation; she's a bit embarassed about it, so she goes to a
-store in another part of town and grabs a pregnancy test there.  On checkout,
-she holds her Taler wallet against a Taler checkout terminal and presses a
-button on her wallet.  This authorizes the payment.
+But back to Sarah's situation; she's a bit embarassed about it, so she goes to a
+store in another part of town and picks up a pregnancy test there.  At the
+checkout counter, she just holds her phone against the Taler payment terminal
+and taps a button on it.  This authorizes the payment.
 
 She does not need to identify herself, and the wallet will not give out any
 information about Sarah, it'll just authorize the spending of digital cash
 tokens stored inside the wallet.  That's one of the things that make Taler
 different from most other digital payment systems.
 
-# Dold:  Okay, maybe too much detail,
-#        but it's a transition to the next part.
-After using the test in the next public bathroom, she is very
-relieved that it is negative.
-
-Sarah is more relaxed on her way home, and when she sees a pair of earrings that
-her friend could really like, she buys them with her Taler wallet.
-
-Sarah doesn't have to worry about the receipt, if her friend doesn't like the
-earrings, she can always go back and use her Taler wallet to prove to the store
-that she bought the earrings.
-
-# Dold: Necessary?
-The store doesn't need to worry either, because Taler uses strong
-cryptography to prove this.
-
-# -- journalist story --
+So Sarah does not need to think about the privacy implications of her
+purchases, which makes her comfortable enough to use the same payment system
+with everything she would buy.
 
-So we've seen that Taler is really useful for customers.  But what
-about the other side of the story?
+Now that was Taler from the perspective of a customer.  Let's see how it would
+be useful for a merchant.
 
-Sam is a journalist.  He was recently fired from his
-ad-supported online publisher, since more and more people
-are using adblock, and the publisher had to downsize.
+Sam is a journalist.  He was recently laid off from his ad-supported online
+publisher, since more and more people started using adblock, and the publisher
+had to downsize.
 
-Sam hears about Taler.  He installs a plugin for his Wordpress website.
-(Wordpress is a really popular software to manage blogs.).
+So Sam discovers Taler and installs a Taler plugin for his Blog.
 
 Now Sam's previous readers can go to Sam's blog and make a small payment
 directly to Sam, let's say 5ct, for every article they want to read.
@@ -77,68 +50,39 @@ When Sam writes about sensitive topics, his readers don't have to worry about
 his Blog showing up in their credit card payment history, since the payments
 are anonymous.
 
-# Dold:  Maybe we should leave out the usual terminology
-#        with mint/merchant in the talk, it'd take time to
-#        explain and isn't common.
 At the end of the month, Sam gets the accumulated payments from the Taler
 payment processor.  The fees he has to pay are small, since the micropayments
 are accumulated.
 
-Sam is so happy about his experience with Taler that he writes a blogpost about
-it, and some of his reader also try Taler.
-
-# -- summary, potential and plans --
+Sam is so happy about his experience with Taler that he writes a free article
+about it, and even more people can discover Taler.
 
 These stories gave you an idea of why the world really needs Taler.
 
-Let's see how our team wants to make this happen, and how far we are along the way.
+Let's see how our team is making this happen, and how far we are along the way.
 
-The theory and cryptography behind Taler is worked out.  Our team
-has members at well-known research institutions in France and Germany.
-All protocols are documented as an open standard.
+The theory and cryptography behind Taler is completely worked out.  Our team
+has members at well-known research institutions in France and Germany.  All
+the protocols we use are documented in an open standard.
 
-# Dold: Yes, stallman would hate 'open source' here ... not
-# sure if they know who Richard is ...
-Many in the privacy and network security community support our project,
-and Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of the free software foundation actively promotes it.
+Many in the privacy and network security community support our project, and Dr.
+Richard Stallman, founder of the free software foundation, actively promotes it.
 
-# Dold: Is this true?
 We have prototypes of the core components of the systems, and we are in
-discussions with various hardware design companies building NFC devices
-and also point-of-sale system vendors.
-# Dold: We should mention a more detailed timeline, when
-#       we want to have all the non-hardware technical stuff done.
-# Dold: We should mention nana here.
-Our connections to activists and journalists, who urgently need something
-like Taler, will help us to gain the critical mass for wide adoption.
-
-Our business would receive fees for operating components of the
-system, as well as offer support for integration into online/offline stores.
-
-We want to start with online payments, and later expand
-to offline solutions using NFC.
-
-# Dold: Anything else we need from them?
-However, we still need help on the legal, regulatory and operational
-aspects, this is something where we are trying to engage existing
-banks like UBS with their domain expertise.
-
-[end slide with names, institution logos]
-
-# Dold: If it fits in here, maybe some VERY short summary of why Taler is
-#       awesome?
-
-# ------
+discussions with various hardware design companies building NFC devices and
+also point-of-sale system vendors.
 
-# Dold: Mention how many people have worked on taler?
+Our connections to activists and
+journalists, who urgently need something like Taler, will help us to gain the
+critical mass for wide adoption.
 
-# Dold: We HAVE to mention bitcoin somewhere, I'm not sure where it fits in.
+Our business would receive fees for operating components of the system, as well
+as offer support for integration into online/offline stores.
 
-# Ben: I like the pregnancy story line.
-# Ben: Should you indeed mention bitcoin? if there is room for questions, this will surely be raised as one of them
+We want to start with online payments, and later expand to offline solutions
+using NFC.
 
-# Dold:  Do we have/need some hard numbers on the users
-# that e.g. paypal has?  UBS emphasized that they want numbers ...
+However, we still need help on the legal, regulatory and operational aspects.
+This is something where we would really like to draw upon the expertise of
+established banks like UBS.
 
-# Dold: Estimate of the size of our team / time we can spend on it.
-# Dold: If not for the slides, at least for the questions.