Story of Devcon

Devcon Improvement Proposals (DIPs)
1

I want to produce a short documentary about Devcon.

What

We‘ll be interviewing people about their experience at Devcon, why they are there, the community and culture surrounding Ethereum, and how things have changed from Devcon 0 to Devcon 7 Bangkok. Besides Devcon itself, we‘ll also be talking about early presentations and promises, comparing it to where we are today.

We plan on recording footage around the venue and interviews for a few hours per day, then edit it down into a 20-30min documentary that tries to explain the culture and impact of Devcon as well as Ethereum as a whole.

The Ask

Must have:

  • 2x media pass tickets

Good to have:

  • A nice permanent recording area with plants
  • Permission to use past content such as recording & photos
  • Lighting & tripod (or smol budget to rent)

Anything unclear? How can we make this better? Interested in getting involved?
All feedback and suggestions more than welcome!

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2

hey Peth sounds cool – do you have any examples of past similar documentaries you could share ?

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3

Hey, sorry for the delay!

No past examples unfortunately, this will be the second time we ever did something like that (the first currently being recorded).

Other things so far:

Tl;dr we‘ve been producing content (audio podcasts & newsletter) for 4 years, but only just getting into video production now. We‘re pretty serious about it tho pretty much made it our full time thing.

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4

Thanks - looks nice!
Can you submit a formalt DIP here: GitHub - efdevcon/DIPs: The Devcon Improvement Proposal repository - we should be able to get this going.

5

Heyhey!

I think I owe some updates here…

Tl;dr - we pivoted our documentary from being a “Story of Devcon” to being “Built on Ethereum”. Before doing so, I had a call with Ligi, after which I thought we had the green light for doing so. Upon seeing Ligi‘s response to my tweet today, it seems we had a misunderstanding.

I wish one of us had recorded the call to see what actually happened, but I think at this point it matters less than explaining why we wanted to do what we did, and what‘s next.

Story of Devcon > Built on Ethereum

The original idea was to record a short documentary about Devcon itself. But as we were brainstorming it further in preparation to go there, the more obvious it became to us that “The Story of Devcon” is actually “The Story of Ethereum” & “the story of why & what people are building on Ethereum and how Ethereum can impact the world with all the cool stuff being built”.

Thus, “Story of Devcon” became “Built on Ethereum” - a documentary about dApps & usecases built on Ethereum.

When looking at the original post here, I‘d argue that even though the framing has changed a lot, the overall idea wasn‘t that huge of a pivot.

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A bit of drama

Finding dApps & dApp builders on Devcon proved to be more difficult than we thought, so we made a sign & started shitposting in order to surface more dApp builders, so we can interview them.

Apparently I also misunderstood what Devcon was about, and not having many dApps or dApp builders was fully intentional.

My post about not finding many dApps on Devcon:

My response on being told I don‘t get Devcon:

Overall

The criticism isn‘t really for Devcon nor Ethereum, but ecosystem as a whole. Ethereum has by far the most dApps & established usecases than any other L1.

In the end, we did find 50+ awesome people to interview. The topics will cover anything from DeFi & ReFi, to DeSci, DAOs and real world usecases.

The message of the documentary will be overwhelmingly positive and it won‘t say anything bad about Devcon itself.

Finally…

Apologies to everyone we annoyed, and special apology to @ligi who approved our initial proposal for “The Story of Devcon”.

I still fully stand by my claim that we thought we had green light for this pivot, but I‘m also willing to retroactively pay for our Devcon tickets if the team thinks we misused our media passes.

If you want to read more about the documentary, here‘s this document that explains it in more detail. In case you don‘t hate us & want to support the production, you can do so here.

6

Thanks for the update! Yeah - there was a misunderstanding - but you have to break an egg to make an omelet …

We have different visions and views on what DEVCon is, can be, should be. - and that’s OK. We got a lot of positive feedback for DEVCon - this makes your critique stand out. We always try to improve - hence we look closely at negative feedback - but IMHO this one is not really actionable. More stage time for dApps → means less stage time for other stuff.
But there are other ways for dApps to participate - and a lot did - e.g. via DIP’s - and a lot did this year:

  • zkPassoport & Anon Aadhaar to get builder discounts
  • zuPass for ticketing and activations on top
  • fileverse for collaboration
  • meercat for Q/A
  • treasure hunt
  • kiwi news
  • …

PS: will you release the raw footage?

7

100% think “more stage for dApps = less stage time for infra” would be worth it overall…

I know you personally disagree, and maybe most of the Devcon team does, but hope you will still consider polling Devcon attendees to see what the wider community thinks. Our criticism really seems to have resonated strongly, and also wasn‘t only our own (eg. here & here, also resonated).

So on our end, maybe we misunderstood Devcon - but also, maybe Devcon should change by 10% or so, to accommodate wishes of the wider community which seems to agree that we‘re overindexing on infra… But you wouldn‘t know that if there weren‘t a few people willing to criticize.

Other ways it was useful:

  • It surfaced a bunch of cool people which we then interviewed
  • It will improve the overall documentary, which is about how Ethereum is being used, and how it may be used in the future
  • Garnered attention which will ultimately make more people see these usecases & things that are built or being built on Ethereum

Most importantly:

Forward

We didn‘t plan on releasing any raw footage, but we could upload it & send it to you if you want.

Also want to make it clear that “no dapps on devcon” or anything like that, won‘t make it to the final cut. Tho i think it served multiple purposes - the documentary itself will not be criticizing Devcon, which we really did thoroughly enjoy! :slight_smile:

Apologies for the mess & hope its useful in some way. Also again, really hope you will poll the attendees.