How to Advance The Ethereum Ecosystem as a Non-Developer - Justin Leroux

all right moving into our next contributor we have justin from grit plus who is going to talk to us about how to advance the ethereum community as a non-dev so for all those that are out there that are wondering like well how do i fit in what am i supposed to do this is the talk for you so justin you ready i'm ready all right man take it okay um so i'm justin larue from hardware wallet manufacturer grid plus and i'm not a developer but i do work full time in the space and i've volunteered and contributed in other ways so i kind of want to extend a welcome to the ethereum community to all the people who want to become part of it and get involved who are also not technical like i am and show the different paths that you can take um so i'll share a little bit about my experience and i want to help point you in the right direction it's not going to be an exhaustive talk it's not a technical one it should be just sort of a jumping off point for additional things for everyone to consider if they want to get more involved and you're already here watching these denver streams so you're already on your way so after all it's wonderful technical talks this week this is going to be a little bit more off the cuff some might allege that means i'm a little underprepared but i would say i want this to be conversational so hit me with your questions on on twitch and i'll try and work in answers as i go if i overlook anything or there's anything else you're curious about let me know so let's dig into it so why is this important to me um i became obsessed with ethereum in 2016 and it was one of those things that seemed unrelated to my daily life and my background um but it was really just captivating for me so i kept finding ways to get involved first you know going to a local meetup seemed like such a surreal thing um and then it kind of grew from there so what i do at grid plus is i do business development i do marketing with startups you wear a ton of different hats but what actually kind of inspired this talk uh was volunteer work of mine working on the eth boston hackathon from youth global i was one of the local organizers that put it together and when i initially got involved um you know i didn't know what i was in for uh but you know the people in this space are so welcoming i didn't need to be nervous and you know if you put in the time and effort they're gonna kind of pull you along by the hand and i think you'll find how welcoming everybody is so i had a friend who lived up the street from the venue for eth boston which was in 2019 and he designed video games but he wasn't a programmer and he was like i love ethereum i read about it constantly but like i don't think this is for me i'm not going to sign up i finally convinced him to i hope he's watching today and um a lot of people that are amazing like him were unsure about whether these events are for them and absolutely was so he was a little hesitant at first i saw him during team formation he's looking around he seemed nervous and then i barely saw him for the rest of the hackathon because he was so engrossed in what he was doing his background was in game design and you know balancing things in terms of game theory so he found that he was a natural fit for other people that could implement his ideas on a technical level and so i hope other people make that same leap and find how many opportunities there really are once you just start digging in because developers are the backbone of the space but every successful team needs so much more we need artists web designers translators economists writers game designers project managers especially marketers accountants educators people who can make video content and just anybody who has a passion for the space you can find a way to jump in chances are you have an existing skill today that is applicable so uh in vitalik's talk at the beginning of east denver he referred to it as a duocracy it's a way of showing that you know your pedigree your background your affiliations your education it's not really what matters it's what you accomplish what you contribute and there are no born experts there's no academic path that will guarantee you success working in ethereum or the blockchain space in general for me um you know my prior obsession before ethereum was music and for me what i see with ethereum is like an extension of diy subcultures in particular ones where everyone contributed to something grassroots because that was all you had going on locally you know you didn't have mtv support for the kind of music that you liked you didn't have press so you did everything yourself so i want to compare to that a little bit um all these music subcultures like punk early electronic music hardcore there weren't labels picking these people up and there were people passionate about these things it was deeply meaningful to them so what's the solution if you want this to work you do it all yourself you record your own music you start your own label distribute your own zine make your own t-shirts share your own flyers for shows you put on yourself this one in particular was from where i grew up near where i grew up in central massachusetts in kind of a rural area and you know we weren't that far from boston and new york but it wasn't that exciting so you had to make your own fun you had to make your own art uh and you know some of these bands that played in this high school gym years ago went on to tour the world um because we all started out like this because they couldn't get booked at a real concert hall so everything was done ourselves um and i think ethereum is sort of like a hyper-connected version of this facilitated by the internet the collaborative tools we have now and the nature of free open source software um and that you don't have to be a developer to take advantage of that it just lets people connect from everywhere you don't have to be in a hub so i think you know all metaphors are strained uh for me something that makes sense for um you know the ethereum ecosystem i thought of it as like a punk rock silicon valley everyone can have an impact um your results are what matter your contributions matter um but you don't have to be in the right city you don't have to have an expensive office corporate funding anyone can jump in um so i like this metaphor you know it's about sort of just digging in and having an impact right away without having to go through existing channels because we're making this as we go um so i like to think of how i got involved personally as the kramer method and this is another metaphor like pre-internet music that betrays my age um but i think of this particular seinfeld episode where kramer shows up at an office building and he sneaks in to use the bathroom and then everyone just assumes he works there and he keeps showing up until it's finally revealed he doesn't know what he's doing and his briefcase is just filled with crackers but that was sort of my approach to how i got involved i found this project grid plus i loved it i was fascinated by it and i wanted to read everything and i just kept showing up every day and i never left eventually i pitched the team on hiring me it was a natural fit because i was probably the person who's most familiar with what these guys were building and all these super technical people they weren't necessarily the ones who were most adopted explaining this to external parties they were used to speaking to a developer audience so and also as they transition from a technical endeavor to a consumer-facing one there are so many more roles that are necessary to support this um so this was aside from getting involved and volunteering at hackles with hackathons or as east denver likes to be called a biddlethon this was sort of how i just sort of showed up every day and got involved and i see a similar path for so many people who transition from being occasional reddit posters to ethereum being the focus of their professional lives so enough about me where do you dig in first thing is just try everything about it i try everything don't read about it don't just think about it try it um you know all these big twitter accounts that talk about cryptocurrency and act like they're experts most of them will reveal that they don't really know that much about what they're talking about they're just big content generators and if you actually try everything you'll see what works what doesn't and you'll learn where to dig in and it'll just be sort of evident so if you're an artist dig into the nft space have a portfolio on deck just find what you're passionate about get involved in those communities and don't be a wallflower speak ask questions share what you learn and sharing what you learn i think is the most important thing here i'm going to harp with that a little bit ethereum one thing that's wonderful and unique about this community is the positive some mindset it's not about hoarding information for yourself uh to gain some sort of advantage you know there's so much work to do that ultimately just share what you learn as you go and there's always going to be new things to dig in on new ways that what you're doing is unique so always help others bring them into the fold and we can help grow this a collective endeavor so get involved join these communities and volunteering i think is just one of the most important things and so now we're in you know the era of covid for a little bit longer so you might not be going to hackathons and conferences but there are all kinds of other ways you can jump into non-technical endeavors you can contribute to ethereum.org which is open source you can contribute to information like information resources like ethub these are open source anyone can write anyone can jump in so i think this is actually the most important thing self-publishing um for many people i know you know an insightful medium or reddit post is sort of what opened all these doors for them just getting their thoughts and their perspective out there i know one in particular a friend jake franek from uh went on to be one of the people that ran coinmetrics and it started with a single blog post with his on-chain analysis that sparked a lot of conversations and you see a similar path everywhere a few years ago i noticed this sort of predominant twitter narrative that no one can run an ethereum node and i thought to myself well i'm running two at home i'm not a very technical person i've got parody and death note so i'll write about that and i wrote kind of like a lighthearted medium post about the topic and now like a year and a half later it's still getting tons of views i've gone on to be invited to speak uh further about this and do subsequent pieces um so share what you know what you care about and what you're doing don't worry about the audience fit if you're passionate about it someone else out there is interested and i'm not a particularly technical person and i think in a way that's kind of ideal because if you want to speak to a broad audience you know it's good for them to be able to relate and understand and someone non-technical can probably explain things better than an engineer because they don't see that user experience they don't see the frustrations and everything else that comes with it and you know the other thing is there's just so much noise in this space about investing and trading just share your practical knowledge you've gained along the way if you're unsure about something if you can't find a resource it means someone else is looking for it so do the same just put it out there it doesn't have to be a medium post it can be getting involved in a reddit community a discord twitter whatever venue you can share useful information on to that end though if you want to continue further you know self-publishing alone is not going to pay the rent if you want this to become your career but i would say before you start worrying about that just start contributing and digging in before you worry about monetizing your efforts because whatever you share is going to yield additional opportunities and the thing with that is you know a lot of people they kind of sit on the sidelines waiting to have this perfectly formulated idea something they're doing in isolation but that's not where the magic happens in ethereum it happens through collaboration and one thing i'm going to touch on a little further next is a bounty's hackathons and git coin in particular is an excellent way for people of all sorts to get involved and even help fund your passion projects if they're of use to other people so get coin um this warrants several talks in and of itself but bitcoin is a community built on ethereum infrastructure to facilitate some funding for open source projects you can find bounties that are posted by teams already for contributions whether that be art design code technical writing translations but the other interesting thing is the community grant funding which has become huge and um in that vein if you are working on something that you're passionate about that you feel has utility for the space overall um apply for a grant get involved other people are probably going to be excited about what you're doing and if they like it they'll help funding you even if you don't have a path for monetization just because if it has value as a public good it raises all boats and again i can't emphasize enough that the collaborative nature of ethereum is really where the magic is it's in the community and we've seen all sorts of other projects with deep pockets try to replicate this through spending but it doesn't work that way um you can't just buy an organic grassroots movement so some examples that i think everyone should look at that i i find inspiring and i think are really exciting everyone knows unit swap it's just this tremendous force in the ecosystem now but you should go back and read hayden's first post about his experience being a non-developer and just sort of hacking around on this after he lost his job his first job out of college it is absolutely essential reading so he had a good network already he knew carl flores who pushed him to experiment with smart contracts make a website um but you know you also have the opportunity to plug into people through events like this and this network exists for everybody but he launched uniswap to very little fanfare people didn't really get it it was a very simple implementation he said he had 200 followers on twitter at the time and no one really cared i was actually one of the first people to deploy a uniswap v1 contract for the grid token and at the time it seemed like this weird esoteric thing um i didn't quite get how ams worked but i tried it and that experience was valuable and now it's sort of surreal that um this little you know kind of homebrew project has grown into something that uh is doing more volume than massive centralized exchanges like gemini coinbase and it's just really a testament to the power of ethereum and what you can do with these tools another interesting one was ether and eric connor had tried a few things before he and anthony cesano founded ether because they were basically sick of talking about the same things and typing them out over and over again on twitter and they're like we just need a good reference for this and they'd ask you know who has this material what do we point people to and there wasn't anything so they built it and they made it open source anyone can write anyone can contribute um and it's also just ballooned into this huge thing for both of them with the podcast additional content and they've done a lot to help educate and provide reference material for people and it's just another project that starts with a conversation a small seed something that you see is missing and organically because other people felt the same way or were looking for the same thing it grew to be so much more so what's next i can't emphasize enough get involved now talk to people uh put yourself out there uh i always see it in person hackathons there's sort of um people milling about on the sides you know it's hard to go and introduce yourself right now in the current climate you know virtual events make that a little bit easier so get involved don't just think about it don't think about this perfect idea you might put out some day share your ideas contribute a little bit talk with people it's the most important thing and if you're watching this you're already on that path collaborate community and pitching in is just the most important thing and that's where your small efforts come together with those from others and real magic happens um pitch in be proactive and contribute to projects you already love without the idea of like angling for a job or worrying about how you're going to segue from what you're doing now to something new just put one foot in front of the other and you're going to find it happens because there's so much opportunity there's so much work to do all these brilliant technical people they need so much support to make their products thrive it's very rare that you can just put a technical tool out there and be wildly successful you've just got to you know have all these people supporting you whether it's people writing about what you're doing sharing this information just there's so many ways to pitch in so to that end i see some questions coming in on twitch and i'm just checking the notes if anyone has any questions they want to pass up i'll try and get to those now just checking on how much time i have left one minute remaining okay skimming back there was one earlier about what does a project manager do in the ethereum ecosystem uh working with engineers planning an organization and allowing people to just focus on their core competencies and what they do best that is so critical as a project grows i feel that's really important and engineers when they start out they don't think about these support roles but it is so important to be able to let people focus on what they do best in their existing skill sets so yeah absolutely project managers it's like it seems like a random bureaucratic thing but it's so important any skill you have today you can jump in there is a need for it you just need to dig start contributing and you'll find out how um any others are overlooked i'm just checking on time [Music] yeah we've got one asking about your twitter handle yep yep 0x midnight one other interesting thing i'm sharing them the twitch chat right now um one other idea don't be shy about putting your own name out there i used to use all different pseudonyms one on every platform because i was really worried about um you know security this being cryptocurrency you know putting my own name out there it did get to be an issue when i started going to hackathons i started getting more involved and i had to explain i was rock lobster or cool pineapple or any one of these silly pseudonyms it's fun and there's nothing wrong with staying anonymous on twitter that also awards you some cool opportunities but yeah put your name out there um i think that's actually useful all right i think i'm good thanks so much for the opportunity you are good thank you for that in fact i'll just reiterate this whole talk is really important to understand that crypto isn't just about developers i mean at some point once the frameworks are built and standards are set and things are adopted think five years into the future most i think most roles are going to be moving out of the technical world i think most of it builds into the sort of application layer product managers i mean i can't tell you how important product managers are when it comes to executing on a project especially coming out of a hackathon so i yeah thank you very much for the insight in sharing that 0x midnight thanks john and i also just want to say one last thing i've been part of every denver starting out as the wallflower then watching the talks coming back every year it's so cool to be a part of it and be on the other side and i hope i see a lot of other people who are watching this for the first time today come back to me in a year and show me how they got involved please come say hi yeah exactly and so go to opolist.opolis.com that's the the free job board utility for jobs in the space he's absolutely right you'd be surprised at how many designers and product managers and non-technical devs that are non-technicals that are needed in this space community leads oh my goodness like yes so come check it out thanks justin all right thank you so much you got it