Project:Bitcoin/Bitcoin Weekend 2011/Planning

Crew

• find video person
• get video from Catherine (she won't be able to Skype in)
• 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

Hello all,

as indicated a few days ago we're planning a Bitcoin event at the London Hackspace on 24/25 Sept 2011. We already have an amazing roaster of contributions lined up. Everyone's 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.

We're now ready to announce details.

It's 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 Bitcoin community grew it has become harder to separate hype from fact, charlatans from helpful guides. We will attempt to bring clarity, and to critique the Bitcoin system and community with a sober attitude. Though it's also worth pointing out that any social experiment worth having requires a fair amount of anarchy, playfulness, and suspension of disbelief...

The event will happen over a weekend:

• Saturday, 24 Sept 2011 from 14:00-18:00 we will have talks and discussions.
• Sunday, 25 Sept 2011 from 14:00-18:00 we will have workshops.

Thanks to the London Hackspace 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) the London Hackspace draws a passionate crowd of specialists and hackers of all kinds of interesting backgrounds.

Details and schedule: http://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/Project:Bitcoin/Bitcoin_Weekend_2011

Registration: https://bitcoinweekend.eventbrite.com/

A preview of the current schedule:

Saturday:

• Keynote and a technical talk by Amir Taaki
• "How bitcoin works" video by John Baker
• Information bazaar by Jamileh Taaki
• Mining talk by Vladimir Marchenko
• Legal talk by Jason Chia
• Economics talk by Gary Mulder, with a few economists in attendance
• Roundtable and discussions throughout the day

Sunday:

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

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
• ...