Ethereum Foundation DevCon, DevConnect, & Beyond! Aya Miyaguchi and Skylar Weaver

hello good morning everyone hey where is your eyes are you standing there okay uh so um this was supposed to be just like a you know like a quick dab corner announcement which could have been done just by a tweet so i'm very grateful for ethember to give us this spot early in the morning but because they gave us this stage and a little bit of time i want to talk a little bit about devcon first they've come to me before even joining the ethereum foundation i was in the crypto industry and then i was going to defcon and the devcon was something very special something that made me you know like feel the uniqueness and the difference of ethereum and i don't know what's they've gone to you but that was difficult to me so this year actually not this year two years ago after we finished devcon 5 osaka devcon that i told our devcon team hey we should really you know like think about the values of devcon and why we need this why the community need this when there are many other amazing community events like east denver happening in the community so they discussed the values of devcon and everything and that you know like what is the uniqueness who is the audience and that also the design and everything that reflects those and hopefully we'll give you that in this next step con the skyler the lead devcon team lead is going to talk a little a little bit about this with me today cool awesome thanks iam um so how many there's a lot of new faces here you're right she's right we could have announced some of the stuff we're gonna announce today just through a tweet but i'm curious how many people here have been to dev con before ethereum foundation dev con raise your hands raise your hands okay how many people have heard of a devacon before heard of devcon okay okay so maybe like half which is i think surprising but also maybe not like there's a lot of new faces here happy to happy to see everybody um and yeah today i guess we want to talk a little bit about what is devcon but before jumping into that maybe like why why we host devcon and and i'd say like i maybe i'm preaching to the choir here but i would say that ethereum is its community right like the community all of you here listening listening right now uh the hackers upstairs building building the next generation of projects building on top of the protocol all of you online right now listening to us like the community is what makes this project tick it's what the ethereum community is what separates it from from i would say other projects that may exist in this space and i would say what's super unique about our community in comparison to other industries is that we are like extremely distributed around the world like that's not news to anybody here most of us have worked i mean especially in these last two years but even aside from a pandemic like this community is by nature super distributed very remote we mostly work with our other colleagues just looking at their headshot maybe their pfp and and we don't really get to interact with them on a day-to-day basis most of the times i'd say in our industry which gives a lot of opportunity and flexibility for us to work and collaborate across the world a lot of different perspectives but there's something innately human with being able to to meet with people in person collaborate uh and meet new people sort of um naturally uh and so again maybe i'm talking to the people here who are all at an in-person event so you guys are already aware so maybe i should be talking to the people up there listening on on the live stream that in-person events are important for our community for collaboration and for progress and so that's one thing that we aim to achieve with devcon the other thing being that it is for the builders so it is for those who are building those who are constructing developing on top of ethereum or using ethereum uh and for for researchers for for for economists for social uh um uh maybe game theorists and designers etc basically everyone except for maybe the traders who are just looking for a number to go up uh is what we try to accommodate and and try to to um to have programming and content for at devcon and so that's a little bit about why we do devcon what it is devcon is essentially like a massive venue thousands of people from around our global community come together reunite collaborate listen to programming or give programming speak about certain things that they're working on it's fairly technical conference and every year it rotates around the globe we try to bring it to different places around the globe to give access to new communities but also to bring our global community to new places around the world to give us news perspectives and to to help spur that community a little bit to grow um and so uh yeah so that's a little bit about what devcon is it's four days a four-day conference but the whole entire week extends to be about 10 days more or less this year there will be an eighth global hackathon beforehand as well as many other events that happen throughout the entire week so we're excited to finally announce some updates with regards to to devcon some long-awaited updates and i'll hand it over to iaf to do so you were very quick um so well in addition to that speaking of other amazing communities events like east denver um that is demcon is kind of like a homecoming event or the week for everyone devcon is an experience and um for example like the organizers of these events they can they can all come together to to they've gone and enjoy the week together instead of like having to worry about or organizing so it's also a way for us for for everyone to say thank you to those organizers once in a year and okay so now we are going to so we already shared that the place do you remember where they're going is happening this year i heard some other cities but yes and one thing you don't know yet is the date it's been very very tough two years we didn't want to post one but we had to and finally we are able to say we've been saying like somewhere around this time but we have the date finally thank you and i guess this is um this is yes david border october 11th to 14th 2022 so we made the decision and this is when you are all getting together we are all getting together all of us organizers of everything and builders and this is it so i hope you're gonna get ready we have some time until october and who knows what is going to happen but we made the decision so we will work toward october and speaking of bogota and skyrim cool so who who here has been to colombia before who has been to colombia there's actually there's a decent number of hands up up in the audience uh i myself actually lived in boca raton for like the last like six months or so um but we chose to bring devakon to bogota uh well first of all like a little bit about bogota is the capital city of colombia it's one of the most popular uh and lively cities in south america it's also fairly easy to get to in terms of flights from around the world and it's full of art full of history full of flavor full of full of experience it's it's a very lively city if you have never been uh and it's it's very fun and so we're excited to to bring devcon to bogota whenever we decide on a location it is extremely difficult there's a lot of good locations around the world to host a devcon and choosing the one that we go with is difficult but we are very very excited about bringing devcon to bogota colombia and the impact it can happen it can have not just on bogota not just on colombia but also all of latin america uh and so aya can talk a little bit more about the the impact that we aim to bring for for latin america in general through devcon so i've been personally been very excited about latin america in general and the reason why is that is but i've been also talking about how to bring ethereum to next billion and next billion meaning so three out of four babies that are born today are from developing countries and that i who we believe those are the next billion users and also next billion builders and so we do we do need to and then there are a lot of communities who are still like under discovered in those areas um unless we actually really try to engage with them so that's why that's been one of my personal focus but also something like that can bring like you to to the new experience so that and that's one reason but also there are like i said there are communities and also the countries there are they don't have old systems that they have to break and then rebuild so that's that's actually really good um for example like the regulatory situations they don't have like fixed systems yet and and then so i call it that it's it's kind of like a natural sandbox for people to be able to build and experiment things without you know being restricted so that's very important for ethereum because a lot of things are still at the experimental stage and that's how i believe it's important to you know take a look at those regions and in colombia bogor not just colombia actually going to this is the first step gone in south america and all the all the people in latin america are very excited including we have strong community in argentina so they're going to be like help us build devcon together and then there are other communities like happening and then you hear the news about how crypto is is becoming like you know like the mainstream thing in in many countries around there cool yeah and so talking about like the impact that dev khan can bring choosing a location to bring devcon and not just defcon but the global ethereum community to a certain place uh in in bogota in colombia uh and around we saw a seed for a a a seed of a small community that with a little bit of support could could really um uh grow and so justin's announcing devcon in bogota which has been admittedly like two years ago we've seen multiple individuals groups organizations start to rally around this announcement get excited and start to form their own uh their own meetups or groups basically to spread education around what ethereum is why it's important uh in colombia and beyond and so here we see ethereum colombia ethereum uh ethereum carrier ethereum and also neighboring ethereum caracas has been super active and ethereum lima and others so we're aiming not to just bring devcon to uh to bogata colombia specifically but to latin america as a whole uh and yeah next and lastly i guess what would devcon be without an amazing venue uh so who so those of you who are at devcon uh five in prague how was the wi-fi what wi-fi what wi-fi is what i hear uh so okay we've we one of the one of the criteria for this year's devcon was we want to find an awesome venue and a venue that's state of the art that's new that can fit everybody that everyone can fit in these rooms so that we don't have people uh waiting for elevators to go up and down and so this is what we found with uh the agora venue in bogota so we're super excited to bring everyone there um to a very very new state-of-the-art venue uh and then what's next uh yeah so we're excited to see everybody in bogota uh in october 11th to 14th for devcon but for those of you who are saying that that's a long time away don't you worry we've been working on something new uh um no no no what's so what's okay i'll stop uh dev connect is what we've been working on who here has heard of dev connect cool right on okay so less people have heard of devconnect than devcon but that's fair because this is a new event that we are planning for uh april and what yeah so what devconnect is is is is a little bit different devcon is great great for for cross collaboration of ideas uh between silos dev devcon is um is is basically one massive venue with a bunch of different people and a bunch of different backgrounds and so when you have that you can start to work and learn from different silos but this ethereum community ethereum ecosystem has grown so large so broad that making concrete progress in one specific area one specific domain at a big conference like this or like the others that have happened throughout the ethereum ecosystem is is quite a challenge nowadays it's quite a challenge and so with devconnect what we're aiming to do is foster and encourage these depth-first conversations so these these depth-first discussions and what that means is basically it will be a a week-long event series where there will be many different independent events happening throughout a week in amsterdam in from april 18th to 25th so the events you see here is just a glimpse of the event calendar that we have today uh and all of these events essentially are independent events organized by experts in those domains teams projects uh whatever it may be and the idea is to have attendees that attend these events that are super interested in that topic and so what that means is that you see a bunch of overlapping events you'll come to devconnect you'll have to choose in advance which events you're most interested in attending which topics you're most interested in attending and you'll be able to uh you'll be able to attend these events with like-minded people who are working in similar domains as you uh and throughout the entire week the only thing we the dev connect team are working on and organizing officially is a co-working space that will be open to all but there won't be any programming there it'll just be a place to hang out to collaborate to work etc and all the other events will be programmed individually so that's happening april 18th to 25th this year it's the first time we're doing it uh so hope to see many of you there and i guess how can you get involved so i guess you can attend as attendee and if you want to attend go to devconnect.org look at the various events that you'd like to attend and figure out how they're ticketing it some of these events might be small 25 to 50 person uh events of like a white listed group of experts in this topic or it might be more public of like a small 300 person event where we're application based or tickets are publicly for sale so it's on you to find the events that you're interested in and secure the tickets uh or maybe you are a leader or a um an expert in a certain domain and you see a need to gather others who are also working in this domain together and and collaborate maybe in a day-long workshop or a day-long presentation session or a multi-day uh and so if you're interested in hosting an event what do you need to do just do it just do it that's what's cool about this event is there's no there is permission this more or less there's no white list okay so if you want to host an event just organize the event do it yourself publicize it let us know and if it's ethereum ethos aligned we will happily add it to the calendar and help you guys help you publicize it so that's what we're aiming for with devconnect it's a little bit of a different event devcon is still our main principal event of the year we're excited to meet everyone and see everyone again in in in bogota in october uh but until then we're looking forward to to amsterdam uh as one of our next events and so um we a little bit adding to that at dev connect actually that was requested by our researchers and then since the merge is happening there are a lot of important conversations that need to happen and it's magic of normally like getting together at devcon that they they wanted to create that sooner so that was another reason but so hopefully we will have a lot of a very important meaningful discussion that always make the progress of the platform layer but also maybe more more than that um in the end since you know like this is not a talk talk like i normally do and then you might feel like oh this is this wasn't really entertaining i'm gonna bring someone that is very very important to me and someone who actually um i was tweeting about this but on the way to denver i was cleaning up my phone and i discovered my old notes and i found this first ever i never do this like long message to invite this person to perform at devcon plug and i was probably very desperate um and he has been like like like of course bit of advocator of nfd before anyone was talking about nft since since since the day before and we met at a very tiny nft event in san francisco and and then i really enjoyed having him at devcon flag i'm pretty sure you did too