Difference between revisions of "Project:Bitcoin/Bitcoin Weekend 2011/Planning"

Revision as of 15:41, 12 September 2011

Crew

find video person
find someone who can trade Bitcoins ("we should limit it to below 10 GBP or 2 BTC exchanges".) Potentially: lewis bowker who runs http://londonbitcoinexchange.com/
find merchants (e.g. layer1gfx' Club Mate trade)
find 2-5 people to help run the event: crowd control, Q&A aides, projector, misc org
would be nice to find people who can organise dinner for all contributors (15-20 people)

Invitation

(intro)

We're quite excited about this event; there have been very few Bitcoin contributor meetings so far, even outside the UK. We'll try to record the talks and will make the videos public.

The event itself is free to attend, however you need to register so we know how many people to expect. Make sure to register early; we will make an attempt at managing a waiting list should that become necessary. Attendance will be in the low-dozens rather than hundreds, but (as you may know know) we draw a passionate crowd of specialists and hackers of all kinds of interesting backgrounds.

Details & registration: (link)

Event Page

A weekend of talks, discussions and workshops for Bitcoin contributors, domain experts from a wide range of fields, enthusiasts, and everyone curious about Bitcoin. This is a great chance for everyone to meet new people and learn new things.

We will discuss the code, the infrastructure, the community, the legal and political implications; we will look into the mechanisms of currency systems, security concerns of running Bitcoin infrastructure, and run workshops that show you how to participate.

As the community grew it has become harder to separate hype from fact, charlatans from the smart ones. We will attempt to bring clarity, and to critique the Bitcoin system and community with a sober attitude.

The event will happen over a weekend:

On Saturday, 24 Sept 2011 from 14:00-18:00 we will have talks and discussions
On Sunday, 25 Sept 2011 from 14:00-18:00 we will have a few more talks, but mostly workshops

We ask that you register so we know how many people to expect. The event itself is free to attend.

About Bitcoin

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer digital currency created in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto. Peer-to-peer means that no central authority issues new money or manages transactions—these tasks are carried out collectively by the network. It is also the name of the open source software designed in order to use this currency. The software is a community-driven open source project, released under the MIT license.

Learn more about it here:

Schedule

The schedule still changes frequently, so for now we're merely listing a rough outline. There's a lot of stuff already. We will also have:

Bitcoin cake
A Bitcoin live song performance
A documentary video
Talks, discussions, workshops

Day 0: Saturday

Talks and discussions, 14:00-18:00.

Keynote by Amir Taaki
"How bitcoin works" video by John Baker
Information bazaar by Jamileh Taaki
Technical talk by Amir Taaki
Mining talk by Vladimir Marchenko
Legal talk by Jason Chia
Economics talk by Gary Mulder
Roundtable and discussions throughout the day

Day 1: Sunday

Talks and workshops, 14:00-18:00.

Security talk by Vladimir Marchenko
Practical bitcoin workshop by TBC
Developer workshop - use bitcoin on a simple PHP website by Amir Taaki

Domain Experts

TODO: need to get these signed off first

We're getting contributions to this event by an incredible group of domain experts, and the list keeps growing. Here are a few of them:

Amir Taaki ("genjix") is an open source software developer, co-founder of the Bitcoin Consultancy, the author of libbitcoin, has helped build a few Bitcoin exchanges and is running one himself (Britcoin, the UK's largest exchange.)
Andrew Sissons is ...
Catherine Flick is a researcher in technology ethics at Middlesex University. She started investigating the potential social and ethical impact of Bitcoin, and is currently evaluating a first survey.
Gary Mulder has worked in IT for 20 years with a long-term interest in economics and has taken a recent interest in Bitcoin.
Jamileh Taaki is...
Jason Chia is a member of the Bitcoin Consultancy and a barrister in the UK specialising in corporate law.
John Baker is ...
John Barrdear is ...
Tom Lorber has a BA in economics, worked on the FT's finance newsdesk during the onset of the financial crisis, and is now working as a management consultant.
Vladimir Marchenko is running one of the largest private Bitcoin mining operations in the UK and probably the world, the founder of bitcoin.org.uk, and a distributor and service provider for Bitcoin mining rigs.
...

Contact Us

You can reach the org team in the #bitcoinweekend channel on Freenode.

About the London Hackspace

The London Hackspace is a non-profit hackerspace in North-East London. It was founded in January 2009 and grew incredibly quickly; we now have more than 300 paying members and supporters, even more people visiting casually, a highly active IRC channel and mailing list, a decent amount of manufacturing kit (3D printers, laser cutter, lathes, milling machine etc), and host frequent workshops and talks that are open to the public.

Invitees

I also have a long list of domain experts, people and orgs I'll personally contact. Martind 21:41, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The following groups are either directly involved with Bitcoin, or have members that might be interested:

LHS list & twitter account
UK Hackspaces list
bitcointalk, Bitcoin Forum, r/Bitcoin, #bitcoin, #bitcoin-dev, #bitcoinconsultancy
UK Pirate Party
Open Knowledge Foundation
Dorkbot London
London 2600?
any local merchants accepting Bitcoin, cf. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade
...