Space Summary
The Twitter Space Synergy Circle with @WaldosLegend hosted by SynergyMedia_. Gain exclusive insights into Waldos Legend's unique projects and visions at the Synergy Circle event. Explore their innovative ideas, impact-driven initiatives, and collaborative spirit. Waldos Legend aims to inspire change, drive innovation, and share knowledge within the community. Join to delve into the specific details of Waldos Legend's work, network for potential collaborations, and be inspired by their forward-thinking approach.
For more spaces, visit the Unique Projects page.
Space Statistics
For more stats visit the full Live report
Questions
Q: What can attendees expect to learn from Waldos Legend's presentation?
A: Attendees will gain insights into Waldos Legend's project, work details, and future visions.
Q: How will Waldos Legend's insights benefit the audience?
A: Waldos Legend's insights will provide unique perspectives, innovative ideas, and inspiration to the audience.
Q: What makes Waldos Legend's project stand out in the industry?
A: Waldos Legend's project stands out due to its impactful initiatives, visions, and innovative approach.
Q: How can participants engage with Waldos Legend after the event?
A: Participants can engage with Waldos Legend for further discussions, collaborations, and insights post-event.
Q: What impact does Waldos Legend aim to make with their work?
A: Waldos Legend aims to create a positive impact, drive innovation, and inspire change through their projects.
Q: Why is the Synergy Circle event with Waldos Legend significant?
A: The Synergy Circle event with Waldos Legend offers a unique opportunity to gain exclusive insights, network, and learn from industry experts.
Q: How does Waldos Legend's vision align with the theme of the Synergy Circle event?
A: Waldos Legend's vision aligns with the theme by promoting collaboration, innovation, and shared knowledge within the community.
Q: What sets Waldos Legend apart from other participants in the Synergy Circle?
A: Waldos Legend stands out through their unique perspectives, impactful work, and dedication to driving positive change.
Q: In what ways can Waldos Legend's work influence the audience's perspective?
A: Waldos Legend's work can influence the audience by offering fresh insights, inspiring creativity, and showcasing industry best practices.
Q: What key messages can attendees take away from Waldos Legend's presentation?
A: Attendees can take away key messages about innovation, impact, and collaboration from Waldos Legend's presentation.
Highlights
Time: 00:10:45
Exclusive Project Insights by Waldos Legend Delve into the specifics of Waldos Legend's project and gain unique insights.
Time: 00:25:30
Innovative Vision & Initiatives Shared Explore the innovative vision and impactful initiatives presented by Waldos Legend.
Time: 00:40:15
Engage with the Work of Waldos Legend Get a firsthand look at the work, goals, and aspirations of Waldos Legend.
Time: 00:55:20
Networking Opportunities with Waldos Legend Connect with Waldos Legend for collaborations, discussions, and further insights.
Time: 01:10:10
Impactful Projects & Future Visions Discover the impact and future plans of Waldos Legend's projects in the industry.
Time: 01:25:55
Community Engagement & Shared Knowledge Learn about the importance of community engagement and knowledge sharing from Waldos Legend.
Time: 01:40:30
Creative Insights & Inspirational Ideas Explore the creative insights and inspirations offered by Waldos Legend during the event.
Time: 01:55:40
Industry Best Practices & Change Drivers Understand how Waldos Legend implements industry best practices and drives positive change.
Time: 02:10:25
Collaborative Endeavors & Networking Discover the collaborative spirit and networking opportunities presented by Waldos Legend.
Time: 02:25:50
Knowledge Exchange & Learning Experience Engage in a knowledge exchange and valuable learning experience with Waldos Legend.
Key Takeaways
- Learn about Waldos Legend's project and visions directly from the source.
- Gain exclusive insights into the work and initiatives of Waldos Legend.
- Opportunity to delve into the details of Waldos Legend's project.
- Understand the unique perspective and insights shared by Waldos Legend.
- Explore the innovative ideas and vision presented by Waldos Legend.
- Get a firsthand look at Waldos Legend's work and projects.
- Engage with the special guests Waldos Legend for exclusive project insights.
- Discover the latest updates and developments in Waldos Legend's initiatives.
- Learn about the goals and aspirations behind Waldos Legend's work.
- Uncover the impact and significance of Waldos Legend's project.
Behind the Mic
Introduction
Are you two. Yes. Hello. Hello, everyone. Gm Jim, I'm trying to get some people up here. All right. Hopefully you all can still hear me. There is a list of some incredible people that we have for today's space. So I am one by one getting them up here on stage, making sure that we get to hear from these legends. There we go. One more up. Great. As you guys come up, let's make sure those mics work. So, Joshua, phone on mute and say hello.
Getting Set Up
Hello. Sorry, I'm still in the process of trying to walk out of where it is loud. No worries. There's background noise. Worked. Who is that on the. On the Denver account? It is. Action. Action. What's up? Action. Not much, man. Great day. It's been. It's been. What are we at? Noon? So 6 hours worth of spaces so far today. It's. It's been a phenomenal day. Can't complain one bit.
Time Zones and Locations
Noon. Okay. You're on the west coast. I'm in Detroit right now for MCon. Oh, very nice. Yeah, I'm on the best coast over here. I think those are blasphemous words that you're not allowed to say from the East Denver account on the east coast. So there's that. Well, I skipped that. That region. I went from east coast to west coast, so I've seen the span of time zones. Nope. In. In the East Denver universe, we go by mountain standard time. I would actually be okay with that. Totally okay with that one. To be honest with you, it's a.
The Nature of Time Management
Very unusual thing when, like, traveling and interacting with people who believe est is, like, New York standard time. And all of. All of the things that we do are our mountain standard time. Because for four years, I was a founding steward of opelous, another John company, which is also mountain standard time. So I'm just all kinds of messed up. Inconsiderate. Oh, Yonks is here. Yonks is literally in the other room. He and I are both at MCOn right now. I did send him an invite. I'm just waiting for him to actually accept it. You know.
Audience Engagement
I don't see a lot of buffcorns in the audience, though. So this is a. This is a reach beyond our typical. Audience, which is exciting, and this is what we want. Right. We want to make sure that we bring more people over. Now, just a quick reminder, if you guys are supposed to be here on stage, please send that request. I am scrolling through endless tfs here, trying to find everybody. So if you all want to make my life a little bit easier. That'd be wonderful.
Speaker Coordination
I see Mitch down at the bottom. It's down at the bottom for me. I don't know if it is for everybody else. The list of speakers definitely looks different depending where you're actually looking it up from. But we are getting some more people in here, so I appreciate everybody that is requesting. Makes my life a lot easier. So when I'm sending DM's out and invites, I can't actually unmute. So you guys are helping out. I appreciate it.
Acknowledgments and Gratitude
Sure. A quick shout out to beam me up as a buff corn whale. Howdy. Howdy. Thanks for tuning in. There is RuSsell. Fellow Buffalo GM, your rusky so and so. Howdy. Howdy ho. Howdy, who? I was. I was waiting for you guys to see me, but, I'm in now. Yay. Cowboy hat, scuba tank, rainbow sweater club. We are truly unique. Join the board.
Panel Discussion and Transition
I don't know what the exact run of show is for this, but I do only have about a half hour because at 330 ish 345, AMcon's running a little bit late. We're doing a panel on public goods. We're hosted by public nouns, so I'll have to jump off. Russell, you want to take this one away? Because I want to make sure that Joshua does his public good by talking in that public good panel.
Importance of Participation
You know, it's hard to be public good if you can't make it public, so. So, yeah, we definitely want to do that. I mean, I think we should just go ahead and get started. How many of our fellow. Fellow candidates do we have on here? We have quite a few. So, you know, I'm Russell Castanero, and I'm the chief of staff for the next. For the next week or so of sporkdow.
Election Preparations
And I'm really excited that we're having our first election, and it's something we've been talking about for a long time. We've put it off for various reasons, all related to the, you know, to web three and getting everything going and coordinating, you know, how to get all the wallets and how we do staking. And there's a lot of history behind hind Spork and behind staked Spork, and there's actually no one probably in a better, no better person than, I guess, one of the two would be either Joshua or John.
History of Spork
Josh, do you want to. Want to talk a little bit about Spork and how staked spork? And that might, you know, how it. How you get Spork and whole idea of it. And then what you have to do to stake the spork and become a member. Sure. Yeah. I don't see John here, so I'll take the lead on that one. So e Denver, you know, you guys all know the, maybe you all know the history started as a meetup.
The Evolution of Spork
2014, a bunch of the guys in Denver got the Ethereum white paper. The bitcoin meetup kind of turned into an Ethereum plus, meetup. 2017 rolls around and they're like, let's do a hackathon. So 2018, February, they throw the first hackathon. There's still this, like, deep ideas about decentralization and how do we do it and how do we make Ethanver truly owned by the community?
Formation of Sporkdao
And so come 19, 2020, 2021 was virtual. And then the summer of 2021, we formed Sporkdao, which is a Colorado LCA, a limited cooperative association, which we in the Denver scene describe as daos with a legal framework, a legal wrapper. And so I was one of the original nine founders, summoners, whatever, of the sporkdow board. We set up bylaws and pass them.
Voting Structure in Sporkdao
And one of the unique things about Sporkdao as a DAO is we use representative democracy rather than a direct token voting. And so what we do is we have a responsibility to elect, with our stake, spork board members who have, who shoulder the vast majority of the responsibility, legal, financial, whatever. And you've got your Dow members who are.
Membership Criteria
There's two primary ways to become a Dow member or two responsibilities ways. So the first is you have to have attended at least one East Denver in the last two years, and you have to have staked at least one spork. And then that brings us to the conversation of how do you earn spork? And so we established it's either eleven or twelve different categories of patronage activities that add value to Ethamra, that add value to the DAO.
Incentives for Participation
And so what we've done is we've created an incentive for the things that, for these patronage activities, the one that everybody earns for is walking through the turnstile. So if you've attended ETH Denver, you earned, I think we set it at like 52.8 spork. So you earn 52.8 spork for just showing up at ETH Denver, and then you've got some of the greater patronage activities.
Speaker Participation and Contributions
So if you've been a speaker, which the speaker spork after 2022 has not gone out yet, but we're in the process of trying to figure that out. But if you're a speaker at Ethanver, if your organization has sponsored ETH Denver, if you invest in Buffalcorn Ventures, if you participate in the biddle a thon by submitting a project, you're earning spork.
Quadratic Voting System
And then we do a quadratic round where the participants. I actually don't know the exact parameters. I think it changes each year. But if you are a voter, you're able to vote on which of these submissions is eligible for the quadratic voting. And then there's the judges winners. And that's probably the highest amount of spork that you can earn is through being that top of the quadratic voting and also being one of the finalists for stewarding East Denver.
Measuring Participation in Miles
It's like 52,800. You'll notice theme. We do a lot of things in miles. So 52,800 is 10 miles. And then you've got the half of that and then the double of that, and all the denominations are some sort of mileage. Then you've also got buying merch from the store or spork whale pass, or any of the things that, like, you go through buffcorn.com to pay additional money for.
Merchandise and Participation Structure
As you know, ethember tickets are free, but there are upgrades that you can purchase, and you earn spork for those upgrades. What are the other categories we added? Mentors and judges now are in spork for their activity. I know I'm forgetting one. I think for the most part, I got it. What do you think, Russell?
Conclusion and Participation Counts
Buying merch. Sponsors merch? Yeah, I hit about ten of them. You're counting? I always take notes and countenance. So the crew, like some of them, are doubled up categories. So, like, speakers and judges is inside of one category and mentors is inside of one of the others. The biddler. The biddler bucket.
Treasurer Responsibilities
And what we've done is I've been serving as treasurer for the past three and a half years. I set up a series of multisigs where the spork is ERC 20 on Mainnet. We deposited them into the hedge lock contracts. On January 1, the 2025 spork will unlock. I think it's like 26,400,000.
Distribution Mechanics
It gets bridged to Polygon, to a holding safe, and then it's distributed into the various buckets. So you could tell which category you earned your spork from, by which multisig you received that spork from a claim contract. So that's the long of how to earn spork. The why you've got, well, being able to vote in Spork DaO elections, which is probably the most important thing you can do with your spork.
Understanding Token Usage
Because we don't do direct token voting. You are helping to choose the focus and the direction of Sporkdao by choosing representatives who will, who faithfully steward overseeing of Sporkdow. And under Sporkdow is Buffcorn ventures and ETH Denver and the Buffcorp and Piddle Brigade. Those are the primary prongs.
Staking Benefits
And then the reason you want to stake your spork beyond voting is if there is ever a surplus, a profit, and the board determines that it is the right time to distribute, to make a patronage distribution, that patronage distribution would be distributed pro rata, time weighted based off of the stake spork that you have.
Final Thoughts on Participation and Patronage
So you do want to earn more spork, and you do want to stake that spork, and you do want to keep that sport staked so that you can both participate in elections and potential patronage distributions. I was a mouth. That was. That was really nice. Thank you.
Conclusions on Spork Token Dynamics
Thanks, Joshua. You know, one. The one thing that's kind of cool that a lot of people ask about is why can't you go buy spork? And the combination of that, it's meant to be a patronage token, but also that. That because we're. Because we are a co op. Co ops can actually issue securities as long as they're just for their members.
Patronage Activities and Earning Spork
And so that's why we don't try not. They're trying to sell people spork. We want people to earn the spork through patronage activities, and then. And then they can stake it. And that's the way that they. That they join. And some of you may. You'd be wondering, why is it difficult to buy spork? And it's because the cooperative has never set up a liquidity pool, which a lot of organizations, Daos companies, pseudo Daos in our ecosystem, part of their fundraising strategy is a massive token generation event and liquidity, where they'll pay market makers.
Regulatory Compliance
And all this stuff, due to the specific regulations that we are following to maintain this protection from the state of Colorado, we do not sell spork. You cannot buy it from us. It is not possible. And we've never created a liquidity pool, and that's essentially selling it. So we don't do that either.
Closing Remarks
Muted Russell, but I assume you're speaking. That's. That's super exciting. So, let's see. Can. Can you promote John Pauler up to. To a speaker as well. Action. You got it. I don't even see his naked mole right in here. Oh, there he is. Yeah, he's in. He just came on. So, you know, we have three of the stewards.
Open Positions and Board Changes
Have they stepped down and opened up their positions. And that's what we're actually. Everybody's running for. So, John, who is our fabulous CEO and founder, would you. Would you like to talk a little bit of the stewards that have stepped down? He's okay. I don't like that framing. I did not step down. I have not stepped down that. What would you like to. What would you call it? I volunteered my seat. But I'm an incumbent. Stepping down implies that I am leaving the board. That's fair. Yeah. I will step down if I do not win. That is true election semantics. Actually. Can you add. It's just I did. They did request. I did. Adam. I'm going to send it again. There's been a few people that are having trouble getting up here. It could be we're at a limit. 1234-5678 910. Yeah, you got to boot somebody down.
Technical Difficulties and Hosting Changes
Oh, actually, Russell, do you want to. If I can bring you up as a co host to open up more spots. Oh, sure. You should have that invite. There you are. There we go. And make John a co host. Oh, yeah. I do think that the words matter. Well, no, that makes sense to me. Yes, they do matter. Hey, John, I'll accept co host, I. Suppose on my thing that he's a listener. So this is. There he is now. I'm okay. I went from listener to speaker two. Look at that. The world's fastest promotion. Amazing. Do I want it, though? I'm not sure, but. Okay. Well, hello, everybody. Apologies for my tardiness. I'm running around like a headless chicken. I'm in New York City right now, actually, for an opalist thing later tonight.
Event Attendance and Engagement
But you're doing climate week? No, I'm actually here for the freelancer union awards banquet. Oh, neat. Yeah, for ASOS. We've got an event for climate Week in New York tonight. Oh, nice. Are you here? No, I'm in Detroit for MCOn, but. One of my co founders is there. Yeah, I was going to say. Okay, well, I'm only here for the one day, so. Cool. All right, so it looks like we've covered a good amount of. Good amount of ground here. I'm also open to answering questions. If there's anything particular that I can be helpful with. I can also get on my soapbox and pontificate some and sort of talk about the evolution of everything that we've been doing here with governance, with sporkdao and Ethan Burr. But whatever suits the community fancy here.
Stewardship and Governance Discussion
Well, John, if you could identify the, in addition to Joshua, the other two stewards who have made this possible and also maybe talk a little bit about what it's like being on the board. Yeah, sure. So did we go through the history of the board? Did we. And how that all came to be and why there's a board and why it's not just community governance and all that? Yeah, we did. Okay, good. All right, so the two other, so the way that the bylaws and the governance sort of is designed is there's sort of these tranches of elections for board members. So this tranche, there's three, the next tranche there'll be three, and the final tranche there'll be three. And then it'll cycle on a particular schedule where at any one particular time we won't be electing any more than three board of stewards members.
Historical Board Member Elections
So that's the way it's designed. So the three, we had to kind of start somewhere and we didn't have a prescription because everybody was elected at the same time back when we did this on the first sort of term. So we had to kind of, it was either volunteer or draw straws. Right. Like, so we didn't, there wasn't any particular prescription to this. Two board of stewards members, Shannon Ewing and Susie Batt volunteered. They've got other things going on that are taking up their time and they just said, hey, it's been great. Love my time. But, you know, I've got to move on to some other pastures here and I will volunteer to be for our seats to come up for election. And then Joshua Lepidus volunteered to have his seat be elected as well, although he is rerunning.
Current Board Composition
So he's an incumbent, but he's rerunning for the board, whereas Susan and Shannon are not. So that leaves then six existing board members that will maintain their places on the board until the next three, which will happen sometime next year. So we're working on. We'll work on that at some point here shortly, but we got to get this piece done first. So that's the kind of short of it. Now. What's it like to be on the board? Well, it's an interesting question because I think where we're going with this is slightly different than where it started in the beginning, there was really no expectation, no requirement that as a board member that you would be involved in the operations execution of ethanver. It was purely a requirement that you were a contributor to the community in some form or fashion.
Evolving Expectations for Board Members
And we had elections, and then those people got, you know, kind of tapped in to take on board seats. We just took the top nine vote getters, and that was. That was kind of it. Now we sort of have some experience here. We have three years and change of sort of watching, like, what works, what doesn't work. What's interesting about having a cooperative board of stewards is it's very different than a traditional board of stewards or a board of directors, even. You know, I've dealt with, I've been an entrepreneur for 25 years, so, like, I've dealt with many different boards. And often you have investors or VC's or external parties that aren't really. I mean, you could say they're extractive in a lot of ways.
Board Structure and Community Focus
So we've avoided all that stuff intentionally. We don't have outside investors. There's nobody that owns Ethanver and Sporkdow, aside from the people on this call and those that own spork who are staked. That's it. That's who owns it. Okay, so how do we best? And you'll notice we use this word. In fact, I was, if not the first, one of the very first to use the term steward. It's now very fashionable in the web three space, and I think it's a good label to represent what our roles are as community leaders is stewardship. So what's it like to be on the board? Well, it is interesting. It's fun. It's not that difficult, really, but there is an expectation now that you are going to participate and contribute in the development, growth, fidelity of how we create experiences and how we execute on the event.
Board Responsibilities and Contributions
It has gotten much more complicated than it used to be. I mean, when I was first doing this back in 2017, it's pretty much me and Justin Moskowitz doing everything with a handful of other people. Then we had Hannah Reskovich coming in 2019, who was part of the core team, and we sort of slowly grew, but now it's with the amount of people that we have coming every year from all over the world, you know, you can't run anything like that anymore. So the board has become important to the overall execution. So we do, you know, as I'm looking at who I might vote for, you know, I'm looking for people who can offer some sort of expertise and not that it's a 40 hours week job, because it's not, you know, I mean, I have my full time job at Opelous and then I do Ethan Denver.
Managing Board Workload
I mean, I have kind of two full time jobs. I'm not going to lie. But for most of the board of stewards, it's now become something that if they're going to put more than sort of a side hustle amount of work into it's because they choose to, it's not because they have to. So what am I talking about? Like, being involved? Okay, so the way that ETH Denver is broken down is there is these inside the overall entity of Ethan were each. The execution strategy is around this concept called stewardships. So in each stewardship is like some particular thing that needs to get executed. So content stewardship might be one, sponsorship stewardship might be something else.
Stewardship and Organizational Execution
Operation Stewardship, which is like tables and chairs and creative stewardship, which is like design and, you know, all these other things. So what we're really looking for in board members is people who can materially contribute to the stewardship in some form or fashion of the execution of the business on behalf of the community. Right. So it's not that, again, it's not most everything ETH Denver, except when you start getting into like January, February leading up to the event, it's not full time stuff for most people. Okay? There we definitely have full time crew and staff and stewards, but for board members, it's not like that.
Time Commitment and Board Activities
Okay. In fact, I think every. I want to make sure I say before I think about this, before I say it, I want to make sure it's true. Just got to think it through. Yeah, it's true. So every board member has something else that they're doing full time, every one of us, myself included. I just happen to be the kind of captain masochism because I literally have two full time jobs, but I'll cry in my beer later about that or my root beer because I'm actually taking a dry spell till November 15. How about that? I'm like, just. That's a whole different conversation.
Personal Reflections and Board Experience
But yeah. So, you know, the board. I think the most interesting and fun thing about the board is, number one, we're all here for the same purpose. There isn't a lot of competing interests. You know, we don't have external investors. They're trying to maximize their positions or extract the most value or we don't have, you know, just academics that are kind of sitting around, you know, trying to tell us how we should and shouldn't do things. The people on the board love Ethan Burr. We're all here, myself included, because we've been able to create an environment and experience a big tent in a blank canvas that gives people the opportunity to come with as low economic barriers as possible, to come and express themselves creatively in a way that's meaningful for them.
Community Engagement and Event Dynamics
That's it. And as long as we can do that on large scale and maintain our integrity, maintain the ethos of it, will always be free to generally attend, you know, now, sponsors, we depend on them for paying for things, but we also maintain what we call net positive alignment of sponsorship. So, like, we don't allow people to sponsor that we feel like are going to be high detractors from our culture and ethos. We just. We actually say no. Believe it or not, we've said no to many, many projects over the years. But you'll notice there's not a lot of big enterprise businesses and things sponsoring Ethan or not that they haven't tried, but we just don't want it and we don't need it.
Sponsorships and Cultural Integrity
So it's kind of a nice position to be in, especially maintaining free for all of our attendees. So why is that interesting? Because it's a huge experiment. Web three itself is a huge experiment, but I like to say that ethanver is the world's largest live action web three experiment. I mean, it's probably the world's largest act of DaO. Yes, we have a legal wrapper as a co op, but functionally, we're using that framework to our advantage. But we're an event Dao. We're trying to practice what we preach about the contribution economy, where it's patronage isn't just what I buy from you, but it's how I contribute value.
Governance and Community Structure
So we've defined things in a very novel and interesting way. We govern ourselves in a very novel and interesting way. And we do have plans, per the bylaws, to move. Not all, but it'll be kind of like a house and senate kind of thing, with the board of stewards being one body and then the community being the other body. And we're still kind of figuring this out. But eventually we'll push not an insignificant amount of governance to the community to weigh in on things that matter to the community and at minimum, take a pulse on the direction of things. We do this a lot anyways.
Community Feedback and Collaboration
I mean, we're very interested in feedback and how we can optimize how we can improve. You know, not everybody agrees on which things are valuable. But, you know, that's the nice thing about being in an open and permissionless world is like, you don't have to agree on everything, and we will never force anything on anybody, that's for sure. But we try to create as much conversation and as idea sharing and what I like to refer to as creative collisions as possible, because that's really where the magic is. And, you know, in terms of results, Ethan versus been one of the highest, most highest in engaged events in the world for the past seven years.
Event Success and Cultural Challenges
And when it comes to web three and crypto, of course, and we don't plan on changing that anytime soon, you know, now scaling it's been a bear. That's a whole other spaces talking about that one. Trying to preserve culture, but still trying to scale it. The reason why we've scaled it is we've been faced with this situation where we have scores of thousands of applications to attend and like, what do we do? Say no charge tickets and then screen out? By economics? No. So how do we just make a bigger tent? Our inclination is to let as many people come who want to learn and explore and experience and contribute as possible.
Welcoming Participants and Addressing Challenges
We definitely get grifters and people who are purely extractive and don't contribute. But there isn't really a great way to screen out for that. We're working on that membership and staking and contribution. There is sort of a reputation forming here that we'll be able to look at. So it'll be easier to kind of screen out people that we don't want to come in the future. But for now, it's just been kind of like, well, let's just give it a whirl and see how many people we can educate on this emerging technology and give this opportunity to come and experience the future real time, firsthand. And it's been pretty wild.
The Experience of Being on the Board
So to kind of sum it up, being on the board gives you that front row seat. You get to see how the sausage is made. It's not always pretty. You know, we. We definitely argue about things from time to time, you know, but what I love about the board, and I can say this with absolute sincerity, is I absolutely love the people on the board for their sincerity of why they're on the board, because there is an absolute unequivocal alignment in that we are doing something very important, that with our collaboration, we can be an example to others, not even just in the event context, but into other use cases, even, of how to build a future organizational structure that actually scales as sustainable, both economically and from a benevolent standpoint point, which I think are really the core underpinnings of why we're all in web three to begin with.
Purpose Driven Engagement
That's why I'm here. I'm not here, you know, making money. At ETh, Denver was non existent for, like, five out of seven years. So, like, you know, I never did it for the money. I did it because it was fun and because, well, how cool would that be when we actually show the world what can be, what's possible with this? Not just run another event, right? Anybody could sell tickets and market and get sponsors and make money. And, you know, I've been a part of many Twitter conversations or x conversations where it's like, you know, well, we have to make enough money to make it worthwhile.
Reflection on Event Management and Purpose
It's like, that was the litmus test. We never would have done this, you know, but, you know, we've. We've sort of waded through a lot of the tough stuff, and now we're in a place where, you know, I say this with absolute gratitude and not. Not. This is not me boasting or bragging or anything. I don't want it to come across as that at all.
Introduction and the Power of ETH Denver
So I'll preface it by saying that. But Ethan is a force, you know, a force in the world, you know? And the feedback that I get is, oh, my God, you know, eat Denver is the best. It's my favorite event. But then you ask why? And it's. It's. You would never hear this from a traditional conference that you just pay a bunch of money for a ticket. You show up, do the hallway track, meet all your friends, do the side events, and maybe once or twice you go in and listen to some speakers, you know, like, eat Denver is an experience, you know, from art, anything creative, to just the sort of people that are attracted to this, the people watching itself is amazing.
Experiences and Conversations at ETH Denver
And the conversations that I've been a party to, you know, with people from literally all over the world, I mean, I would not trade these experiences for anything. It's literally refined my worldview and, like, it's made me a better person, I think, you know, I have a much more diverse understanding of the world, and I have a much more sort of big picture appreciation for the gravitas of the things that we're trying to accomplish here. And it's big and it's important. And it's like, looking back at my contributions and our community's contributions to these things, I can't imagine anything else I'd want to be a part of, you know, I mean, is it perfect? No. You know, do we have.
Challenges and Intent at ETH Denver
We screwed up some things? Yeah, sure. But our intent has always been good, and we've. We've been very good at making adjustments where we need to, and we'll continue to do that because we don't have overlords. You know, there's no buddy pulling the purse strings or telling us what to do. We get to decide as a community and. Hey, John, I hate to interrupt you, but I think we've got. Dave, David has a question. Sure. I think he's raising his hand. Yeah, I was just wrapping it up. So go ahead, David. You got a question?
David's Perspective on ETH Denver
Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm running to be on the board from the Biddler perspective. I met you guys back in 2018 at an event in DC, and then I was sold immediately signed up for 2019. And the vibe, I just got back from token 2049 and there's no collaboration vibe there. It's exhausting. There's no incentive. Right. And there's no incentive to collaborate. Right. And so, like, I found East Denver to be like a recharge every year. It kicks off the year I come out of there with jobs and new friends every year, and that everybody else going to other conferences, they're looking for something to extract.
Onboarding and Institutional Knowledge
And I really like that you mentioned the journey where it hasn't been extractive. So, you know, this is the first election. How do you envision, like, the institutional knowledge, the good stuff and the ugly stuff getting kind of passed on in an efficient manner? Oh, that's a fantastic question. Well, I can tell you that our existing, the exiting stewards are happy to be available. There's zero contention between any of them and the board. It's just, you know, their kind of time has come and they want to go do other things. But then, more importantly, I think, you know, in addition to just those on the board, there's a really deep bench of sort of systemic institutional knowledge that exists that I think that's available at your fingertips.
Preparing New Board Members
There's really no need to recreate anything. It's mostly just having, just asking for it. I think anybody that's coming into the board, the first thing that I would recommend is I would spend the first six months, well, not even six months. What are we, five months out from the event? So I'd spend the first three months just talking to as many people as you can and more listening than anything, trying to get context. Right. Like, how do things work here? And how can I, where do I plug into all of this. That's where I would start. And there is so much information, if you go looking for it, if you ask for it, that you will feel so well prepared and in a good position to contribute both from a decision making standpoint, but also from an operational standpoint.
Integrating Experience into the ETH Denver Community
Awesome. Since we, since you're talking, David, do you want. Actually, I know that. Is Joshua still on or did he have to leave? He's still on. No, he has to run. Since you have to run, can you give your quick introduction and then we'll go to David next since he was participating, and then we can go down the list of candidates that are here. Just introduce yourself and why you think you're a good candidate. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I'm Xerox Joshua. I mentioned earlier, I'm one of the founding board members. I helped to launch Sporkdao with the initial NFT deployment and then with the Buffacorns in September of 2021. And I'm kind of the buff corn, a floating merch ish steward free Denver.
Reasons for Reelection
The reason I'm running for another term is there's a lot of, I think, improvement that can, that we can, you know, it's a great event and we're not perfect, and I think knowing that we're not perfect is important and being able to continue to iterate and grow and I think that the work is not done. I'd like to continue improving our processes, especially as it relates to the spork token. Amazing. Thanks. Okay. I appreciate and make sure you get some good public goods going on your next chat. David, you want to pick it up where you left off there? Yeah. Thanks, Russell. Again, my perspective has always been from the biddler world, knowing that there are tons of events going on, but heads down with often people I just met.
Experiences and Contributions at ETH Denver
So I don't think there's any, there's going to be any losing going on around here. I would be, like I said, I've been really involved with East Denver since the beginning. I do have a buffcorn ventures portfolio company. I worked closely with Russell and the Josh John to do all sorts of stuff. And I would say Eth Denver has been, you know, one of the biggest life changers, life changing events that I've ever had the pleasure of attending and being a part of. And I'm an ETh dem, a spork whale for life, spork whale forever. And I just, you know, had the opportunity to be participating in this, this board and, you know, joining the election, and I'm like, man, I can't miss a chance to serve the dow and serve the community. And I see lots of opportunities where we can really take spork and build some utility. You know, the symbol of the spork was brought out with the notion that it's this multi, you know, utility based thing.
Utilizing the Spork Token
And I think that there's a lot of opportunities for us to really find ways to extend the value of spork, not through building liquidity pools, but finding ways to use the spork token to actually engage our community, empower people, and bring great new utility to the community as a whole. So again, I'm super honored to be a part of this group. And I'm really happy no matter who you guys vote for, I think you guys are going to be stoked and where this worked out goes in the future. So appreciate all your guys's support and thank you guys for everything you guys do. So looking forward to 2025 is going to be an even cooler event than we've then we've seen so far. So here we come. Rock on. I'll pass the mic.
Changing Perspectives with ETH Denver
Man. I got to say, I don't. I was just in Singapore, too, so I've never heard anybody talk about that event as life changing. So, you know, things are real, Ethan, for when people can actually say that about an event where they meet people and just, you know, not only grow their network, but, you know, literally change the way that they look at this entire ecosystem that we're all a part of. But let's keep the ball rolling here. Alex yet? Yeah, Alex, you're still in here. Mister Captain. Hey, how's it going, everyone? Thanks for calling on me. So a little bit of background about me. I've been in sort of the UX design research space for nine and a half years or so. The latter bit of that has been kind of doing a lot of c level and director level alignment workshops to make sure that those voices get heard and everyone's on the same page. Most recently, I did that.
Mentorship and Community Support
Yonks participated a little bit with unlock protocol down after that. Very recently, actually, in the last month, I become a co founder of a company called Mold Technology. Essentially, we're trying to make sure that we have kind of human alignment with the compute computation that we're working with emergent and not yet emergent technologies. So background done. Right. Let's talk about youth. Denver as well. Life changing. Yeah. So my first year, my biddle group disbanded fairly quickly, so, you know, wipe away those tears, and I realized that there's not a lot of ux people there, or at least that was that year. And so I found that kind of helping and coaching other people was more interesting to me. Right. So last year, I finally decided to mentor. They only gave us like, three spots of mentorship, like required requirements.
Contributions and the Impact Track
And so I worked with Casey and Tippy and decided to come almost every single day very late in the evening. I was able to help coach people for their presentations. Me and Purple squirrel, if you know him, did a little mock presentation before they got on the big stage. And so ever since that first one, I just kind of want to get more involved with ETh Denver and kind of remove as much friction for people as possible, whether that's biddlers, people presenting the stewards. Right? Yeah. Any questions are welcome. Beautiful. And I know for sake of time, I want to make sure we get through everyone here on stage, and we still got two more to go. Chris, Christopher here. Robinson, you had a little trouble coming up on stage, but we finally got you. Yeah. Thank you for doing that, helping me get back up here.
Personal Journey through ETH Denver
Yeah. So my name's Chris Robison. I've attended every ETH Denver, aside from the virtual one, actually, but all the ones in person. So I'm interested in joining the board of stewards because I have been fortunate enough to have the experience of ETH Denver, truly, like, changing my life. I attended the 2018 event without having been to any hackathon before or really knowing much about what the process was like or the industry. From that, I was able to, like, pretty much do everything that I've been interested in doing or I've been able to speak at like, Devcon from that. Honestly, it's profound what this community has been able to give to so many people. For me, I've been able to return each year and I think contribute something unique every year.
Working with Young Developers
So, you know, there's historically been a group at East Denver which is a very young group of students through Apprentio. I've been fortunate enough to work with them, help introduce them to the space. I've been able to mentor a lot of younger people who also first year was East Denver. A few years ago, I brought one team up on stage and was able to help them place 7th overall. I've been able to build some projects with Denver. I helped put together a buffalo corn video game that was featured in the chill room. I think it was in 2019. A couple years ago, I got to be a judge as well. For the hackathon, it was in the impact track, which is sort of like the nonprofit area of East Denver.
Networking and the Next Generation
And for anyone who's, you know, participated as Bill or themselves, you know, it's sort of uncommon for the folks in the impact track to end up placing very high. I think out of the six projects that we chose to go the finals, three of them ended up placing, you know, when I spend time at East Denver, I do love networking with people who have tons of experience and who can open the doors and things like that. There's tons of amazing people. But I do tend to find myself chatting with the young folks who are there for their first time and who are, like, full of inspiration and excitement about what the future of this technology can be, what the future of this community can be. And they're really seeing for the first time how Eth Denver is so different from every other community that's out there.
Advocacy for Newcomers
So I'd be honored to be able to be on the board of stewards, to advocate for people who are interested in jumping into the space and attending the event to really make a difference. I've been fortunate enough to have that experience myself, and so I have been able to see what that path looks like. So any opportunity that I can provide, if it's on the board of stewards or any other way, I am beyond inspired by the folks who are attending and the folks that also have been putting this on for all these years. So I love to be able to merge those two worlds together, man. Chris, I appreciate you, and I think I can say this again and again that I don't think anybody can lose with this kind of counter people, you know, willing to step up to the plate and say, hey, I want to be part of this.
Commitment from Board of Stewards
Consider me. So thank you for that and for everybody here on stage as well. Last but not least, we have German also on stage. Yep, German still here. I want to make sure people get to hear from you as well. Hi. Hello, everyone. Thank you. My name is German Aval. You can say German in English, but on web three, I'm. Are you talking to me? You know, like taxi driver. Are you talking to me? I'm in Mexico City right now. I'm from Uruguay. Originally from Latin America. Today we had two earthquakes here that made all of us go outside the building. Sorry about to hear about the hurricane, but here we are in travel. Also, I'm living. I'm building on Internet since 1996.
Experience in Technology and Hackathons
I was always startuping, doing marketing and investments online, and I studied crypto since 2009 when I discovered bitcoin. And I was interested more in the algorithm side than in the investments. So I'm always on the low level things of the protocols in the web. Three, I'm a hackathon addict. I was two times a global finalist in the past two years, and I also was finalist and top three in the quadratic voting for last in Denver 2024. Regarding being in the board, I know this is a huge responsibility and I'm ready to assume it. Adding value using all my expertise as hacker event organizer and also as a human in the professional side, I want to contribute with my 15 years experience organizing international Internet developer events including ID Cinco de Mayo, which is the biggest web three hackathon in Latin America, pass one for 700 hackers and is a non profit.
Expanding Community Relations
In the community side, I want to look forward very strong in create a big relations with latin communities, builders and companies from Canada to Argentina to be part of Edenberg 2025. There is a lot of latin american communities just in the US. There is 50 million latin american people that are ready to be part of this and needs maybe a little more attention or different language calls and everything. And in the human side, as a parent, I want to work better on opportunities for parents of young children to attend without heavy personality frictions or impossibilities because of these conditions, to Edinburgh 2025 as well. I'm open for any questions and well, I'm a big contributor.
Past Experiences in Denver
I know that I'm a little unknown for all of you. I've been in Denver in the past two editions and I loved it. And well, I'm here to contribute. This is the community things that I'm ready for this. Thank you, Edmond. Gracias. Now, you guys might not know this, but you all should have some tokens if you've attended Ethan or in the past. And I want to make sure people know how this works and how the whole voting thing, everything works and who best to explain that to us.
Getting Involved in ETH Denver
And Russell. Russell, if you don't mind, give us a little breakdown on how people can actually get involved. Because this is not just about people coming up here and saying, I want to help, I want to do this. Everybody else can participate as well, right? Yes, they can. And thanks for hosting this. And I do want to. I am running for the board as well. So I do want to give a quick plug to myself that I feel very blessed to be in with such a great group of people who self nominated themselves and really care and clearly who are talented, have lots of experience. And I gotta say, Herman, I had no idea that's how you pronounced that name.
Inspiration and Community Engagement
And it's awesome. I just wanted to make sure that you knew just a little quickly about me before I talk about the staking is no matter how many times you've come or haven't come to eath Denver, you realize that there's magic and a lot of other people have talked about how people get their career started. What's really amazing in coming to all the ethanvers that I've come to is that I've seen people not just get their start in web three, but like, get inspired totally change their direction even when they're already in it. And I think that, you know, there's a lot of things that can entice you to come into a technology or come into a philosophy, but when you're in it and then you find yourself reinspired, that's really rare.
The Value of the DAO Model
And I've seen it happen time and time again that people come in and they're working in web three. And like, you know what?, I'm going totally rearrange how I'm doing things. And I see more and more people moving towards a real regen approach. And that is what I believe more than anything else, is that we can incentivize and prove out the regenerative model with Sporkdao. That we can show that cooperatives that have a governance model that's set up with a dao can be the thing that changes the world more than the development of the corporation did because it values its members, it can reward its members, it can do things for them instead of looking at everything as an extractive and taking advantage of a customer base.
Contributions to the Crypto Community
So philosophically, sporkdow is where this stuff is really happening. People are looking to see. Most people think daos have failed for various reasons. I say there's a shining example, a few shining examples of daos that are really trying to make it work. And it's the ones that are doing regenerative work. I've been in crypto and since in 2016, I launched a bitcoin cashiering system that was custody less, new to Colorado and Denver because it was a much more conducive great place to do crypto and to do web three ended up getting into the government. And actually I worked with John to bring in the Colorado state government into Ethanver, which has been a fixture in Ethan ever since.
The Importance of Accessibility
And that's been really fun. We've used enough time. They're not going to say a lot more. It's in my profile if you want to see it. So I'll just go jump into talking about staking and your sport. Now, if you haven't staked already, it's too late for you to stake for the election. However, you should stake if you know, if you have spork and you know, you can check that your wallet that you gave us. When you came to any of the past EtH Denver's should have received, even if you were just an attendee last year, you should have received 52 spork.
Voting and Stake Allocation
And you can go in and you can stake that. If you go to the address stake Sporkdao IO and you connect to the wallet that holds your spork, you can very easily do it, whether you've got one. And I even looked at the voting online, there are a few people that only had one spork that they were airdropped last year and they went ahead and voted those. So every vote counts. Every vote is up there. When you stake, which I said is really pretty easy and you don't have to go through a third party to do it. You're doing this yourself. You are not only saying, I'm a part, I'm joining and I'm a part of this Dao, I'm a part of this co op that is trying to do important things in the world.
Future Participation and Community Impact
You are enabling your votes in the future, not in this one, but in the future. You're joining the Dow. And one thing that Joshua pointed out was when the Dow does do well, when there's some sort of profit, it can then allocate that profit to the members. And that's based on how much work you have and how long you've held it. So it behooves you to do it as soon as you can. Another thing about that is in Buffercorn ventures. So I run Buffercorn Ventures, which is owned and operated by Sportdale. And I think that not a lot of people know that 50% of the profit from Buffalo Ventures that goes to the Dow is required to be allocated to its members.
Engagement and the Return on Investment
So that's actually in the bylaws. So when you are going to, and I, and looking at all these different teams and all the services that they have, you are part of an ecosystem that will actually return funds to you, return revenue to you when the whole organization does well. And it's not as a stockholder, it's as a member. And that is a really important difference. There are some posts out there that have the link, the direct links to both staking and to the voting, which is on snapshot. And I encourage you all to visit those. And I encourage you to be as participatory as you can with Sporkdow because we really are trying to do a lot.
The Value of Open Collaboration
We don't have people coordinating everything for us, so it may look a little messy. That's because it is. But already we've affected the world a lot. If John and Justin hadn't when they started Eth Denver said, oh, we're going to have free childcare for everybody. You bet your ass. There's no way ECC would have done that if we didn't have somebody pushing down the price. So you don't have these two and $3,000 price to go to a conference. It's free for members. There would be continuing upward pricing pressure on attending all of these, all these events.
Accessibility and Newcomers
And that is what we are doing. That's what it's all about, to keep it accessible. And that's why there are at least 40% of the attendees every year in ETh Denver are newbies because they see this, and this is what their first taste of web three is going to be. And hopefully we're going to change the world doing it. So thank you. Thank you very much. And hopefully that answered questions. And, you know, we've got a forum up there on discord. We also have one on charm verse. If anybody has any questions, everybody will make themselves available to answer. And, yeah, so back to you.
Wrapping Up and Future Engagement
Action. I appreciate it. And I did jump on my regular account, so that way you guys can hear me a little bit better. But just to wrap it up, here's the main thing you all need to remember. If you don't know the links to anything, just go to eth denver.com dot. That's a place where you can click right in the middle. Right there it says join Sporkdao. You can actually get to a lot of things right from the website. And at the bottom of that page, you can also follow Discord and everything else where you get. You can get connected and making sure that, you know, you stay aware of what's going on with this incredible event.
Acknowledgments and Community Efforts
Just because the price, you know, the pricing pressure is not on the attendees, it's on the team to make it happen and find enough people to pull this thing off. So, Russell, thank you so much for what you do. John, everybody that's on the spork dow, you know, council, it's a big deal. It's a huge undertaking and I don't take it lightly. It's one of those events that it is really life changing. So thank you for all you do. And if you guys are listening and make sure you follow not only the ETH member account, but all of these speakers that are up here, because these are the people making things happen from the dealing with merch to websites, to ux UI.
Continued Engagement and Involvement
Everything that goes on is really thanks to them. So, guys, thank you all so much. This is definitely not the last space. We're just getting started with Ethanver and we're going to have a bunch more things going on.
